[harisenbon]

I'm crazy excited that this might actually have a chance to come to fruition. Back in my salary-man days, I worked for Hiroshi Fujiwara when he was doing work on Superconducting DC technology.

The idea was similar to this one -- set up solar and wind generators in the Gobi desert, and transmit the energy through a superconductor network to Japan, Russia and other countries. The Superconductor system (I believe) could transmit energy at nearly 99% efficiency,

We got to see the 200m superconductor track at Chubu University, which was amazingly cool.

[1]http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1875389212...

[codesnik]

but how much would it cost to operate such a channel?

[Gravityloss]

Looking at some ballpark estimates what targets it should hit, Japan consumes about one petawatt hour per year. We assume 10% of electricity consumption for one cable and a 10% slice of the value for transport. Electricity price 20 c/kWh:

10^15 x 0.1 x 0.1 x 0.2 x 10^-3 = 2 billion dollars per year

I have been saying it for a while. Looks like the renewables will cause a lot of long distance electricity transfer lines to be built.

It's an industry ready for some disruption too.