Heck no, but only if it was THE UNITED STATES OF THE WORLD! There is too much chaos in the world to be energy dependent on other countries for power and vice versa. If there is another war, what countries do we cut off and keep on during said war. I'm sorry, but this concept is not a great idea and would only work in Sci-Fi books or movies.

It will not work, states want to be energetical independent.

Why not build a giant solar plant in Sahara and use its power for electrolysis to generate green Hydrogen and build one giant pipeline to supply that hydrogen to a Regional Gas Pipe Lines, and Countries in that region can store and pump it to neighborhoods/ factories using existing gas supply lines ,and each Consumer can have small fuel cell at their premises as per there need , and the by product will be oxygen from solar plant and water from consumers side. its much more economical

While solar power in the middle of the desert may well be very efficient, the transportation costs of that energy makes the wide-scale viability questionable. If that can be solved then obviously it should, nay, must be leveraged. That said, there's entirely too much energy being wasted *not* to use in some fashion - even if just for desalination.

Even if the US went to a "single" power grid, it wouldn't truly be a single grid. Every business that owned the lines would be responsible for their own upkeep. Good luck getting Duke Energy on board with making less money. They're possibly one of, if not THE worst power company in the US.

Robert, that's good news about the HVDC break even distance coming down so fast. Can you tell me how easy it would be for a solar or wind farm to inject power directly to HVDC?

@@solarute6066 That's a hard question. There aren't any commercial products that I know of, but the design itself is reasonable. The biggest hurdle in power systems is the inertia. If something isn't done already, no one wants to do it. But I know that Wind Farms using MVDC backbones have been proposed, and it's pretty trivial to go from MVDC to HVDC, but the MVDC lines are usually just connected to the AC grid. The big thing about DC is that you can save about 20% of your conductor material for the same power level. And since wind and pv give off power in DC at generation, you can save the DC/AC inverter for where it makes the most sense. But if we ran a DC grid, we wouldnt even need the inverters. But that's another topic, I stan DC power really hard.

@@Robert-qq9em Thanks Robert. You've answered my question. In Australia, to my knoledge there are only a couple of HVDC interconnectors, Bass straight being one of them. It seems to me that we should be using more HVDC interconnectors, with big batteries suppling inertia at the load end, and huge solar farms at the edge of the desset connecting to the HVDC.

@@Robert-qq9em i would have thought it impossible to take solar DC and bump it up directly to HVDC. you would need some intermediary step for practicality (to get the power from the farms to the link) and isolation surely? there would be savings to be made by converting to medium voltage DC rather than artificially creating a AC that needs to smoothed out the other side. but would the savings be enough to develop new equipment rather than use what everyone knows (not facts here, just spitballing)

​@@njipods You can step up the voltage from residential DC to HVDC, but you need the power behind it to actually do it without lots of losses. This can be complicated, because 1 solar panel isnt what we are talking about, but instead MWs of power. HVDC lines are moving massive amounts of power. A 525kV DC line moving 1000Amps is pretty common, but would be something like 2.75 Million 5m solar panels of power (depending on location). So stepping up the voltage a few times would make sense just from a transportation logistic, I agree. But if you wanted to, you could connect all those solar panels to voltage links to step up using semiconductors. How to do things like this are the current challenges, it's not that it's impossible, but where we need to come to some agreements for mass production. If this has happened it happened since 2020 when conversations on standardized LVDC voltages were still pretty open. I know a Dutch company wants a 350v standard, and I like that for a 208vAC replacement, but there are strong arguments for a 48vDC standard like cars use. As for Medium voltage, or distribution voltages, That is even less worked out in my experience. I know of a single University putting in a MVDC distribution line, and Siemens has some publications on it. Honestly, if DC grids interests you like they interest me, you should consider a Masters in Electrical Engineering with a focus on Power (and if you are young enough or willing), or moving to that field in general. It's still in it's infancy and I expect the field will need lots of hands on deck if we want to meaningfully reduce the footprint of the power system. The lack of smoothing of voltages creating more efficiency is something that has been seen in laboratory tests. A lab based in California did a comprehensive test of existing AC appliances and to see which could run with the equivalent DC voltage and found energy savings averaging around 10-20%, with some high draw appliances like single phase Air Conditioners seeing up to a 68% decrease in power consumption. Heating appliances like hotplates saw no change in performance, and sometimes didn't work, but anything using power electronics would theoretically work unless it was poorly designed in the first place. So yes, if we went to DC we would see a lot of savings, based on testing and not real world experience. However real world experience is important when discussing things that determine life or death (ventilators operating for example). One fun fact, transformers for 50-60Hz AC use more metal than DC converters of the equivalent power, so a switch to a DC grid would reduce material in the grid across the board. Downside, is that nothing being sold for residential use has been certified for DC operation at the point of connection to the grid, which would be very expensive to do. Final Note, when discussing voltages, there's some cross-over nomenclature. I'm using Low Voltage to mean residential or below 1000v, medium voltage is distribution level, and high voltage is about around 69kV and up, with medium voltage being between the two voltages. That's not encompassing of all voltage classes, and is pretty specific to power engineering. If you don't work in power, my nomenclature may be confusing.

@@rogerstarkey5390 scotland produced an amount equivalent to 98% of its annual energy demand from renewable sources - not quite the same thing. scotland exports its surplus power (mostly to England) and imports at other times. It also has 4 operational nuclear reactors. They have the advantage of being a small part of a larger grid (like Denmark). Ireland (north and south) has a tougher time as it is a standalone grid and must balance itself. Ireland has so far managed about 45% renewables, with a target of 70%+ by 2030. However a lot of renewable energy is lost from constraints, lack of long term storage and a need to balance the system in real time

The interconnections that you mention are only a small percentage of the total load, the whole of Europe needs more interconnection capacity. Over Christmas we exported to France at full volume.

From what you said i understood that the UK really doesn't need the electricity from morroco

@@Muppetkeeper Yes, currently 8.4GW of installed cables, or 25% of a typical peak demand, but the typical actual demand for imports is around half that, even at evening peak.

@@nalat1suket4nk0 The more options available, the lower the overall supply risk.

The problem is that you can't just "plug-in" large powerstations which are far away because one power line can't transmit an infinite amount of energy. If you have a solar farm in the Sahara desert, you would transmit the power over e.g. Italy and there you would need many power lines across the country which could carry the energy to central Europe and split it there as well etc. So you would have large amounts of land and landscapes with power lines only to carry energy out of the country again which the people wouldn't like ofc.

But in general it could work well for less far away powerstations

If any government is involved. The project is doomed. Look at what Elon Musk is doing.

@@traktionskoeffizient6270 yes, it’s not a direct transmission, but “pass the parcel”. Each hop is shorter and the overall supply and demand evens-out across the whole grid. Eg in the Europe grid, Spanish solar being sold to Sweden actually directly powers eg Germany, and then the German power which would’ve been used is what’s sold to Sweden. (Or maybe Spanish solar gets used in France, then French nuclear gets used in the Netherlands, then Dutch wind gets used in Sweden.)

@@rogerstarkey5390 What if they make unreasonable demands? Too much power in one place? Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely?

@@rogerstarkey5390 Global stability is not inherently good, it can be quite bad if it is predicated on removal of certain freedoms, especially if enforced by crazy people.

We already know what happens when the source of energy is in a foreign country as it happened already with the oil. It seems that still UK believes the world is theirs and can command Africans to give their land for their energetic purposes.

@@rogerstarkey5390 And is that a good thing? What is global stability? More importantly WHOSE global stability? You might not like what you get so then what do you do? I like my freedom which I won't give it up without a fight.

​@@BlueFrenzy Buddy, the people running the corresponding African countries agreed to the projects

And a few months ago a community-funded baseload river water-turbine was installed in Oxford! (Fish migration friendly, too.)

Exactly. :)

Doesn’t it cost more power to make windmills than they ever produce and the blades are an environmental disaster to deal with

Windmills kill billions of birds a year. Greenies just don't care.

@@scottslotterbeck3796 And oil doesn't kill birds, right?

@@mothsilly1616 No. You say you are environmentalists, but then you push windmills that kill millions of birds a year. Don't you see what hypocrites you are? Nuclear power is the only answer to an electric economy. But you be scared...lol.

This is the best way. I work in Transmission, and I believe a blended approach is the best to overall reliability and cost balance. Simply put, in some areas sometimes the sun doesn't shine and the wind doesn't move, and it simply isn't cost effective to build triple the infrastructure or generation needed to balance a small region. Good example is just last month my region had a major energy emergency due to high demand and lack of generation because of the extreme cold. In extreme cold wind doesn't often flow and solar isn't an option in Northern December (only 2 hours of actual power generation). As a result all our fossil fuel plants were working max and we had to import power of all the surrounding regions. We were seconds away from a Texas style incident, but because of the "macro"/Transmission grid we got through. If we were islanded we would have had a collapse during -50C temperatures.

@Jorn Paul Winkler France power mix is mostly Nuclear, whereas Switzerland and Sweden are mostly hydro with significant amounts of nuclear. Nuclear is my favorite power source, same with most people who actually work in power. Renewables are a pipe dream.

I live in Kent, where abouts was the fire? Not heard about this.

@@mrpugster 15 th September, near Ashford .

@@mrpugster Sellindge. They are now saying 2 years to get back up and running. It was at the IFA plant.

@@louisleflick You could build a whole new station in under 2 years. Maybe 2 for the paint to dry on the toilet doors but operational in under 12 months assuming few setbacks. It does however add weight to the eggs in one basket argument as does the French threats to shut down power to the channel islands.

this isn't an argument against having interconnections though.. its an argument for having LOTS of interconnections to lots of different sources so that no one source or interconnection is a big problem.

Serious question: Do you trust the West enough to sell them power? Wouldn't they end up trying to control Algeria again, like they control the oil exporting Gulf States.

@@domtweed7323 I don't trust West of course. I talked about being a potential source of energy. Politics is a big part of it as you say, as much as control.

Especially over time.

@@dac545j the losses on mega volt HVDC are very small. Look at the HVDC line between UK and Norway or within china. If the Transmission voltage is high enough the losses will be just a few percent.

Can you say Russia and Ukraine

I'm not entirely sure I understand what you are saying. The inherent problem with a micro-grid is that every member will be having the same problem at the same time - I would only "share" my electricity when my battery is full and I'm generating a surplus over my consumption. If the local weather is crap then all my neighbours and I be in the same boat and there'll be no benefit to anyone.

That was bullshit, he should be embarrassed for making it and you should be embarrassed for buying into it. Channels like this do more than good putting out crap like that.

@@nustada oh, that one was a scam he accidentally hyped? well not too surprising since he touts a lot of new tech stuff all the time. bound to fall into a trap from time to time.

as I understand it, the 40% is what can be readily accessed. As you said the newest turbines have a capacity UP TO 63% IN THE RIGHT LOCATIONS (and probably under optimal conditions). When dealing with power grids/utilities they need to be conservative with estimates.

Windmills kill billions of birds a year.

@@scottslotterbeck3796 no they don't

@@calebmauer1751 So hundreds of millions of birds killed by windmills is OK to you? Loser.

You are forgetting the power requirements for industry and irrigation.

Agreed. Adding communal geothermal wells and neighbourhood power systems can incorporate redundancies into multiple nano-grids that can connect to micro-grids and possibly even manifest a macro-grid. Should disasters strike.

The problem is you are ignoring economies of scale. It is much much more expensive for every home to have individual power generation and storage than it is for large systems to serve whole towns.

@@adrianthoroughgood1191 Then there wouldn't be an ROI for solar, yet there is.

@@adrianthoroughgood1191 Wrong. It isn't much more expensive to have individual power generation (IPG). The people against IPG makes it more expensive by putting blocks (Local regulations, fines, etc.) to prevent the adoptation. They have a lot to lose, billion of dollars. But, IPG cannot be stopped, technology and innovation and general population inventiveness will prevail. IPG means freedom from the "Power producing barons" and better living conditions.

But cables are resource intensive too. I think microgrids spur innovation as you need to make due with what is around you.

Good comment Edmond. I'll take your argument one step further. Engineering, not politics, should predominate the decision-making .....

@@solarute6066 Good point. With an engineering approach there's also room to include business continuity / continuity of operations considerations which are often ignored by purely economic considerations. As national critical assets (not to mention safety of life), power grids should have strict reliability requirements.

Here in the Western world, modern history favors political might over economical reason. Support of the Macro is the de-facto route that politicians seem to favor as it has a more conventional familiarity.

Is there a general graph on where electricity is used? Heating, Lighting, Industrial, Consumer electronics, Food, etc.

@@JeffPalmer42 Not that I know of, but you can probably find one. I just shared what I am most familiar with at the moment.

much of commuter rail and most if not all subways run on electric (in the US). The problem with extending their use further is mostly that the infrastructure isn't there. As solar/wind farms become more of a thing, the ranges for electric rail increases.

@@Babarudra I know, but I think we should get more of that infrastructure and phase out cars as much as possible. Cars are not great forms of transportation.

@@SgtKaito the problem I have with that line of thinking is that it's really the production of electricity that contributes the most to environmental issues, and transportation of goods via truck, rail and ship after that. Politicians and corporations like to point at individuals as being the problem, but it's really their own interests that are the problem. They know that no matter what, we will buy their new cars, and use their rail lines, and buy their products. We are the once that are the only ones who wind up changing anything. As for changing the infrastructure, you know who will actually pay for that too, right? If we want serious change in the US, we need to change how things are paid for. Most European and Asian infrastructure is so much more advanced than the US because they upgrade things, in the US we repair things when they break, and we do so with the minimal cost. We only replace things when there is no cheaper alternative. The financial bottom line is the only thing that makes changes in the US.

The losses you are talking about are because low voltage, indeed, at same voltage DC has less losses. The advantage of AC is that it can be transformed to high voltage, transport it over long distances with low losses, then transformed back to low voltage easily. But nowadays the same thing can de done with DC, the equipment is more expensive, but the reduction is losses is worth in certain caes.

Thomas Edison vs Nicola Tesla, but that's what I understood too. First power plants were DC, however a generator was needed every few miles due to DC line loss. Tesla came up with AC which can be transmitted long distance with far less loss.

That was actually a low voltage DC line. Power loses occurs not because it's AC o DC but because of the voltage level. At that time the technology to convert High Voltage DC to transmit and then Low voltage DC to actually use it, wasn't practical (the known method was using a synchronous motor) so AC won because it could be converted easily with high efficiency using transformers. Tesla won because he thought in everything... Over Thomas Alva Edison 😁

@@equednow Exactly. And AC has the disadvantage that it emits electromagnetic radiation, losing some energy in the process.

@@arcachofo So, AC has that collapsing field which allows a transformer to cheaply boost voltage for transmission. Today's electronics allow high voltage AC to be converted to high voltage DC, which has big long distance transmission advantages. Well, that's pretty dang cool! Lots happening with electric power these days!

I appreciate that

Windmills kill billions of birds a year. Disgusting.

Is wireless transmission not the answer to all?

@@scottslotterbeck3796 "Wind turbines are estimated to kill between 140,000 and 500,000 birds a year through accidental collisions, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service." Various safeguards have been and are being implemented to reduce these deaths. Both the National Wildlife Federation and the Audubon Society also support the expansion of wind power, however, on grounds that greenhouse gas emissions and climate change pose a far bigger threat to birds than turbines. WSJ published an article on this in June 2021. Meanwhile, house cats, cars, and buildings continue to kill billions of birds a year in the USA.

@@musicbycarleton4516 I hate windmills and Left wing nuts claim they are for nature, when in fact all they care about is F---ing Money! Are you one of the greedy bastards? No more windmills! Nuclear power doesn't kill birds, does it?

@@musicbycarleton4516 the Audubon society is just a buch of f---ing hypocrites and no amount of bull crap from you will change that Nuclear power kills no big rds. You money grubbing SOB freeze in the dark turd.

So, a mini-One-World type of thing. Other countries might join in and then this "sharing" could grow kind of organically ... am I right?

@@dac545j Indeed - after all, who is going to get together and plan this stuff worldwide? You can't rely on politicians to do anything unless someone is giving them money to get off their behinds. There are a number of shorter (as in a few hundred km) cables suggested to connect Southern Europe with North Africa, a cable has been suggested to connect Icelandic geo-thermally generated electricity to the UK ("Icelink") and thence to Europe. That's a 1200km cable - Iceland to Labrador in Canada would be about twice that distance. Australia to Singapore has been proposed so that solar electricity from Australia can supply Singapore, and there are numerous shorter proposals. At the moment the key restriction is the the lack of cable production - once that is solved then it could be like the 19th century railway boom.

Not a problem in the UK, electricity will be 50p per kWh soon…

Deport all 32 million illegals, starting with the 2 million Europeans here illegally.

@@scottslotterbeck3796 hopefully you’re on your imaginary list too.

Works fine for housing, but there’s plenty that it wouldn’t work for e.g., industry (makes up about 30% of energy consumption), powering electric trains etc.

I agree with everything you said but would like to add that being self sufficient kn installation as well as just owning the system is a big part. If you buy or build a tractor then you can dig your geothermal setup which is most of the cost for geothermal. Personally I believe 80% of our needed energy can be supplied be the ground and the sun with a few basic methods. I like the idea of a heat pump preheating water from an electric well getting filtered and then going through a solar water heater and then an electric tankless water heater. I feel this method will heat the water to about 150F and then if you need it hotter the tankless heater can boost it but it reduces the need for electric ti very little.

I currently live in Belgium in a Passive House with lots of solar and a 36kwh battery, but I really need a wind turbine for my winter power usage (can’t charge my electric car and heat my buffer vat with hot water with 2kwh sun we get on a sunny winter day) I’m looking into a small wind turbine, But due to the laws of physics a bigger one that is shared within the community makes a lot more sense indeed. I might set up a test case with a small vertical axis one on top of the shed, it that will never cover everything. You seem to have a lot of the same ideas as I do, feel,free to hit me up if you have some more ideas for me ;)

I think Moltex's SSR-W reactor should be the replacement for coal in countries that already have PWRs. Though I believe that we need renewables to give us flexibility for our energy sources.

According to lazard even amortized nuclear plants cannot compete on cost with renewables plus grid scale storage. How is that gonna be any better with new constructions?

@@Tobias-ld2pv The costs being suggested are 3.5 - 7 cents KWh Renewables are great, it's just I'm not sure what storage can be used when the wind is really weak over Europe for a week or two, esp in winter. UK uses about 40 GW per hour. For 30 GW x 24 x 7 = 5040 GWh. What storage can cover that?

Ideas don't always translate perfectly in reality. Let's hope we stop using things that can destroy us or our planet to power our planet.

I don't have any faith in anything that requires multiple governments to cooperate. 4th generation nuclear sounds like a real base load solution

We will be using dilithium crystals to generate power in the future.

Future power grids will depend on z combination of dispersed and centralized generating and storage systems. We're already on this path with PV systems which are both dispersed (e.g. rooftop) and centralized (PV farms); however, not all locations are practical for PV systems and there's the issue of night time generation. Future energy production will depend much more on solar (PV and wind), geothermal, hydroelectric, and tidal generation of electricity. Nuclear power will be a thing of the past and will be joined by burning fossil fuels. The key will be storage systems.

@@DynamicHaze It is the power produced that ultimately makes it dangerous.

Imo, both, micro won't be able to supply power to large industrial centers

Not to mention 50hz vs 60hz. A surprising number of commercial and consumer electronics utilize their local AC frequency for sync and other timing

Except that the "one sun, one world, one grid" concept is anything but "all eggs in one basket". Europe already has, effectively, a single grid. It also currently has energy connections outside of Europe - the controversial natural gas pipelines from Russia, natural gas from Tunisia , electricity from Morocco etc. There are proposals to build an interconnector from Iceland to Europe so Iceland can export electricity generated from it's geo-thermal areas. There are others around the World - there's a proposal to build a 4,200km, 17-20GW inter-connector from Australia to Singapore (the "sun cable") for instance. And many of these connections will be a two way street - the UK is planning to "over build" off-shore wind power, for instance and at certain times it will be a net exporter to it's neighbours. Not all of these things will be built but enough will be that there will be an ad-hoc worldwide grid - you are reading what I type because exactly this kind of thing has been built worldwide for the internet. Given redundancy then a problem in one place can be avoided as energy is routed around it.

Yes, take the energy where it is the strongest, and use it for areas that don’t have it

half of Nevada and Utah as well... you could easily retire all the coal fired generation west of Denver... but you have to have HVDC and/or super conductors developed to pull it off.

Don't you worry that, if the West starts importing power from North Africa, they'll seek to control it like they control the Middle Eastern oil exporters? (not that they don't already try, but they'll have more incentive to interfere.)

Sam Francisco should secede from America. No one wants your sh*t. Literally.

@@rogerstarkey5390 yeah I don’t understand people’s point on this. Energy is valuable, if you have to buy it from someone else, of course they will have pressure on you, no matter how you get the power.

@@rogerstarkey5390 My point (which was perhaps not explicit enough) was in favour of local generation / storage / micro grids rather than just shifting to another environment that puts power on remote states for energy supply.