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Comment by berkes

2 days ago

Interesting side effect is that this reliance on cables introduces a dependency on copper which already is in short supply and which can be mined only in specific regions.

So it re-introduces some geo-political dependencies. Not in the way fossil fuels or unranium do, because a copper cable won't "burn up" to produce the energy, but they do need some upkeep.

Another dependency this introduces is the network itself. A failure in specific regions could lead to massive blackouts (Like recently in spain/portugal) or could even become political pressure instruments like currently the russian-natural-gas-pipelines in Europe are

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berkes

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TheOtherHobbes  2 days ago

The Spain/Portugal blackout happened when network management failed to predict a workable source mix. Basically human error.

Political pressure is hardly a renewables problem, and is more likely to mitigate it than make it worse.

Currently we get a lot of energy by shipping it as physical cargo around the world through various unstable regions after it's produced by hostile regimes - which is not exactly a recipe for reliability.

https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/investigation-into-s...

Tade0  2 days ago

It's a non-issue. Copper isn't that short in supply.

A typical car uses ~25kg of copper - that's enough for approximately 0.5m of HVDC.

The EU currently produces 12mln cars annually, down 3mln from the 2017 peak.

In other words there should be no issue with ramping up demand for the equivalent of 1500km of HVDC annually in the EU alone - a rate much higher than the local bureaucracy could manage issuing permits for.

  • jcalvinowens  2 days ago

    Do any of these HVDC lines really use copper? I think aluminum is much much more common.

    • Tade0  1 day ago

      I'm no expert but it appears both materials are used - there must be a trade-off of some sort.