[walrus01]

Long distance transmission of massive amounts of electricity is a solved problem, it just requires funding and political will to do it. Look at the Pacific DC intertie which takes power from the massive hydroelectric dams associated with the Columbia River down to California.

There is no serious reason why solar power plants in the UT, CA, NV, NM and AZ deserts can't transmit power 1000 to 1500 km to far-away loads.

[Animats]

This is what modern long distance transmission looks like.[1] This is a 12 gigawatt line running at 1.2 million volts.

China does a lot of this, because the good power sources are in northwest China, and the big loads are in the Southeast.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZ2KfrP_R3s

[seanmcdirmid]

Did they ever get their ultra high voltage grid going? Last I checked, it was still in the planning stages, and they were still running coal in the east because they couldn’t tap renewable power from the west. Looks like they are still building:

https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/chinas-state-grid-in...

So one link at least according to your video, I would be curious about actual numbers about how much they can move already.

[Animats]

As of 2020 there was about 400 GW of installed UHV transmission in China now.

For comparison, Hoover Dam is about 2 GW.

[seanmcdirmid]

Source?

According to https://rethinkresearch.biz/articles/chinas-uhv-transmission..., they will be at 105 GW by 2025 (the article is dated 2022). 50% of the power on these lines will be from renewables by 2025 (right now at 43%).

I can't find any .cn estimates of UHV capacity.

[PaulDavisThe1st]

1500km from those deserts doesn't even begin to reach most major population centers. It needs to get much further than that to be impactful on the bulk of the population.