Hacker Read

jankeymeulen | karma 236 | avg karma 3.37 · 2018-08-07 18:56:32+00:00

Supposedly you went to business school then? :-)

HVDC has losses at about 3% per 1000km, from Saudi Arabia to the center of Europe is less than 5000 km as the crow flies. Doesn't seem too bad to me.

reply

Baeocystin | karma 6536 | avg karma 3.47 · 2018-08-07 19:19:32+00:00

Out of curiosity, I googled current HVDC lines, and was surprised at how rapidly it has started to replace HVAC for long-distance transmission. It now strikes me that getting a line from the peninsula to europe will be more of a political effort than a technical one, which is not the conclusion I was initially expecting.

mrguyorama | karma 11050 | avg karma 1.74 · 2018-08-07 19:30:04+00:00

I thought the losses were nonlinear and complex? IE 10,000km is not 30% loss

fizx | karma 5250 | avg karma 4.32 · 2018-08-07 19:44:42+00:00

Actually, you should do better than 30% loss due to the non-linearity:

    1 - 0.97**10
    => 0.2625758731050719