Why can't we build huge great big solar power plants in sunny countries and ship the electricity in batteries

Question

well, surely this makes a bit of economic as well as environmental sense - it would show the developing world amongst others that we're serious about helping these nations to develop their environmental resources to aid their wellbeing, as well as aiding our own need for energy resources

Answer 1

easier to send it overseas by wire, surely!

Answer 2

Shipping mountains of batteries back and forth would probably use as much resources and make as much pollution as we're doing now, the sun shines on the whole planet, admittedly in varying degrees, but none the less the answer is to produce the power where it's being used. I saw a statistic that said a solar panel 100 miles on a side could provide all the power the US needs, putting panels on every house and business already in place would be much bigger than that and consequently provide more power than what we need while eliminating the need for new power plants ( weather oil/ coal or nuclear ) and the pollution and waste problems associated with them and without using huge amounts of resources to ship batteries all over the place or even transmit it over very long distances, which in itself results in considerable mechanical losses.

Answer 3

Current technology limits the amount of electricity produced from solar cells.  They're extremely inefficient.  We would need them to return at least 90% of the energy they absorb.

Then, as another person here has mentioned, what about the dead batteries?  What kind of batteries would be used?  Certain rechargables contain high levels of toxic materials that often are hard to recycle.  

Phurface

Answer 4

Blimey the shipping cost would be horrendous

We can get solar panels that are more compatible with our colder climate

Answer 5

lol..i just did that question in engineering class...firt of all solar power as we use it today cannot replace oil....not enough energy...second of all battery technology is not good enough....we need to have batteries that can hold lots of energy....right now hydrogen power is the best..but its dangerous

Answer 6

They've already got all the Oil, we don't want to give them the bloody power as well !

Answer 7

any idea of what that cost would be?

it would probably be cheaper for them to develop alternative fuels ...  everything really IS driven by money ...

Answer 8

And what do you think would be the energy burden of making and shipping the batteries? You would use more energy than you save.

It may make sense to develope solar energy plants in countries that have the right conditions. Perhaps they could then export it by cable.

Answer 9

Photo-voltaic cells are still terribly expensive. But input materials such as solar-grade silicon are coming down fast! Also, the panels being built recently are designed to minimize the total silicon used by focusing the light onto tiny threads of the stuff. It's coming.

Batteries, however, are nowhere near that level of development. Ultra-high-voltage transmission is much more efficient. A really impressive consortium of brain-power on this issue is econcern.com.

There are so many ways of generating power that are ALREADY cheaper than fossil fuels and econcern is on top of most of them.

Take a look.

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Answer 10

The huge solar plants would shade the ground and some lizard, mouse or plant might die.  Endangered species! Alarm! Alarm! Environmentalists unite to stop them. They are ugly and the wild desert must remain pristine and beautiful.  ;p

Batteries are impractical as many have said above, but so are transmission lines across oceans.  However the main problem with solar electricity is that when you need it most, at night, there isn't any.  Talk about people stumbling around in the dark, atticboy, you certainly are.

Answer 11

It would be unimaginably expensive, but worth every penny

Answer 12

Similar idea to towing freshwater icebergs to drought stricken countries.

There are many untapped forms of power. e.g. If a conduit is dangled from space to earth the static electricity created would be large. Rumour has it they tried it once but the conduit became tangled so they gave up.

When we really start running out of traditional fuel or doing major damage from carbons, that even the unevolved dinosaurs can see. Watch the research on cold fusion heat up exponentially.

Answer 13

Because of cost, shipping, the size of batteries you would need, the constent replacing etc.

And where do the dead batteries go - the cost more money to recycle....

We are better to invest in natural power research in our own country like water and wind power and then help them develop thier own.

Answer 14

Totally unfeasible with current battery technology. HOWEVER - if you were to use the electricity generated to electrolyse water into oxygen and hydrogen, you could compress the hydrogen and transport that around in tankers, which might make better financial sense.  And you'd have a large supply of oxygen which is always useful.

Answer 15

Batteries are quite expensive, its hard to store lots of power and especially to do it cheaply. But if anyone can come up with a way they would become very rich.

It would good to create solar power in hot countries and then using it there, wind power in windy countries, tidal power in others etc.But one of the major problems is expense, hydrocarbons are such cheap sources of power, all that energy just lying about and all you need to do is ignite it to get at it.

Answer 16

A major problem with transporting energy is that the energy could be released with devastating consequences.

Transporting charged batteries would be energy intensive.  If the batteries are lead acid, it would use more energy to transport them than they carried.  Other types of battery are possible, but technologies like Ni-Mh and Li-ion use more energy making the battery than they can carry over their usable life.

A solution that could work would be to use solar and wind power where these are plentiful and use them to electrolyse water.  The oxygen can safely be released into the atmosphere.  The hydrogen, being lighter than air, would be cheap to transport.  The only problem is, how do you protect the hydrogen from terrorist activities.

Answer 17

We cant even do it for ourselves let alone some other country . I live in Michigan the only state that had a recession that's all i need is more tax dollars coming out of my pocket to give energy away to some country that's probably better off then Michiganders . Give us the money take care of your own people first

Answer 18

solar power doesn't have to mean photovoltaic.

consider http://www.renewableenergyaccess.com/rea...

and electric can be sent between countries via dc-dc cable much more efficiently and reliably than using batteries.

electric car batteries connected to the grid would improve the utilisation overnight, when dark. http://www.acpropulsion.com/releases/10-...

Answer 19

Sort of right thought wrong details. The real question is Why not collect renewable energy (any kind, solar, wind, geothermal etc) where is is plentiful and transport it in the most appropriate way to where its needed?  If that is the question, then the answer is purely that there is not the political will to do so. But there soon will be.

We already move much of the worlds energy needs all over  the globe, in oil/gas pipelines, inter national electricity grids, oil and gas tankers etc.

Most renewable energy sources are dilute, so will require large areas of land to collect enough. Some countries/states/counties have spare land and suitable sources of renewable energy. Watch as over the next few years more and more people start to collect that energy and sell it both domestically and internationally.

Batteries are simply not a workable option for large scale power transport, too expensive, use to many natural resources, contain too little power. Solar cells are still expensive but prices are becoming competitive in some situations.

A more low teck approach, cheaper and easier, is to grow bio fuel plants. These can reach similar efficiency to that of solar cells and have more side benefits, cost a whole lot less to set up and need less technical backup. Bio fuel can then be shipped in the same vessels that now carry fossil fuels. The infrastructure already exists. This will have all the benifits you speak of.

This is already happening. Here in Papua New Guinea, there are 2 large scale cassava projects (Chinese company) to produce ethanol for bio fuel. There is plenty of room for expansion as casava grows on marginal land that would otherwise go unused.

Elsewhere in this country both coconut oil and oilpalm oil is being used to make bio diesel or even used directly in diesel engines. Both are also exported, but not yet as fuels.

I am not a great fan of the hydrogen concept for energy transport as the infrastructure required to produce and maintain a hydrogen economy is just unnecessarily complex.  I see that even a fossil fuel economy is hard to maintain in poor remote areas. There are plenty of alternatives. Any electricity produced in surplus can be converted into any number of stored chemical energy options. Many of these are as solids or liquids with a lot less risk associated with them than hydrogen. Let the chemists  come up with a good solution.  In the end it make little difference which particular solution works out as long as it does work out.

To the engineer who suggested Solar won't be enough. Suggest you revisit the figures. Sola constant 1.5KW per square metre hits the earths outer atmosphere. Assume 50% is absorbed reflected etc, leaves 0.75KW. Assume 10% efficiency for the solar cell, Gives about 75W per square metre. (actually a lot more energy his the surface on a clear day and cells are now getting up to 25% efficiency)

But even with just 75W per square metre that is still 75MW per square kilometre! A square 10km x 10 km gives you a total of 7500MW, you are talking some serious power here.

Do the sums find out how much land you would need to cover to meet your energy needs, it is not that much really! Multiply by 4 to take account of the limited daylight hours and the inherent inefficiency of any energy storage system used to even out the supply and demand. still not to big an area to contemplate. Consider that it would be best distributed into several locations to avoid total cloud cover, to spread it over several time zones to extend the combined daylight hours, etc and it starts looking very attractive.

Add the fact that much of it could sit on current roof space and they you don't even need to pay for the land!

Answer 20

Think how much energy would be required to build these sites, ship the batteries and so on? Anyway batteries are hardly likely to be much use to anyone they would need to be massive and it would blow your argument of economic sense out of the water at the cost of moving them around, if it were even theoretically possible.

It will not be popular to say but surely the sensible option is to invest in nuclear power, use the money to develop a way of handling the spent fuel that keeps the tree huggers happy and it is a win, win situation. Cheap power with next to no nasty emissions and the coal powered stations could be phased out. Man's ingenuity can find a solution to the few nuclear drawbacks but for as long as it is not politically correct to talk about it then I guess it won't happen.

Answer 21

Why not?

Answer 22

MOst batteries are extremely heavy. Lithium ion batteries anc short out and explode. The AC high voltage distribution systesm developed by Tesla has still proven to be the best way to move electric power. The problem however is storage. The best solution to safel store energy to suplement peak power needs so far has been the racoon mountain project.

Answer 23

It's a good idea.  Bear in mind, however, that storing significant amounts of solar energy would require very dense, very heavy batteries.  Manufacturing these batteries, transporting them to solar sites, and then shipping the charged batteries over great distances might well consume more energy than the batteries could store.  The result would be a net loss of energy.