[chrisco255]

There's communication cables laid across the sea. There's no examples I know of High Voltage transmission with enough power to operate Europe. It's not only the instability of Sahara, but laying a cable across the sea for the transmission of enough energy to power Europe would require defense of the cables. A submarine could otherwise attack the grid and take Europe offline. This is unpractical on a lot of levels and hand-waving this as a reasonable solution is silly.

[xorfish]

So your point is exactly my point?

The technology isn't a problem. Superconductors wouldn't solve anything. It is a political problem.

[chrisco255]

You can't run Europe on a single 1000km line running out of the Sahara over the Mediterranean. Period. Not only would a sea cable need to follow the surface of the bottom of the ocean (therefore the line would be much longer), it would experience significant power loss as it gets stepped down from higher voltages as it distributes across Europe. It's not technically feasible at all. You would lose anywhere from 20-50% from transmission. No joke. Resistance happens. A superconductor would fix this problem. You wouldn't have to send power over dangerously high voltages to save power.

[xorfish]

You would probably start with one cable and increase it over time.

HVDC cabels are already routinely build undersea. There is a 700km long cable under construction between the UK and Noreway. The longest HVDC connection is over 2000km long in Brazil.

Superconductors have a maximum current, if you go above that current, the superconductor will gain resistance and the heat will destroy it. So you would still use high voltage transmission.