I recently read an article in Spiegel, www.spiegel.de
a famous german magazine, about some "desert electricity"project. Some
scientists plan to generate a large portion of Europe's electricity in the
Sahara, obviously with photovoltaic panels. They estimated that for the
whole world's (!) electrical needs they needed a surface as large as
Nordrhein-Westfalen (one of Germany's little states). They said that to
transmit all that power to Europe all they needed was a HVDC line. This
seems like a generic answer, without any facts or calculations, like "all
you need for a warp drive are dilithium crystals". Also, about the hype with
the electric cars. A Spiegel articcle said, that for an electric vehicle to
be feasible, we need a battery with three times the capacity and three times
less the cost. And, ok, let's say we make a working electric car. What will
happen to other vessels, like trains, airplanes, ships, trucks, buses? All
electric? With hydrogen? I'd like to see a main battle tank with batteries.
I don't say of course that I have "a magic solution", as probably there
isn't such a thing. I'm just a bit..sceptic.
--
Tzortzakakis Dimitrios
major in electrical engineering
Tzortzakakis Dimitrios
major in electrical engineering
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