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Comment by Retric

7 hours ago

Transmission lines can act like storage when there is PV to the east or west of you. This doesn’t remove the need for storage, but can dramatically reduce it.

The old model of cheap peaking power plants and cheaper base-load power is equivalent to cheap peaking power + cheap but inconsistent green energy. It’s a very complicated optimization problem to work out the optimal mix of locations and quantities to of each, but price signals can help assuming you haven’t completely distorted the market.

That only work on large continuos mass of land that expand east-west. Small countries or Chile have problems

  • National borders don’t limit power transmission.

    Chile still wants transmission north south because in the winter solar closer to the equator has longer days and in the winter solar near the poles does.

    • > National borders don’t limit power transmission

      Oh boy, you are very naive, ain't you? No country will put their energy stability in hands of their neighbors. Or do you see China, Korea, India and Russia interconnect their grids? What other supranational grids you know of?

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