| It's very easy to move electrons, it's just expensive to move lot of electrons. Just to illustrate the scale costs of energy moved in the form of natural gas: Nord Stream 1 + Nord Stream 2 with combined capacity of the four pipes is 110 billion cubic metres per annum (3.9 trillion cubic feet per annum) of natural gas. Calorific Value of Natural Gas from 34 to 52 MJ/m3 https://met.com/en/media/energy-insight/calorific-value-of-n... So energy per annum for NS1+NS2 is between 3.74^18 J and 5.72^18 J. The maximal power throughput of NS1+NS2 is then between 118GW and 181 GW. "According to Gazprom, the costs of the onshore pipelines in Russia and Germany were around €6 billion. The offshore section of the project cost €8.8 billion." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nord_Stream_1#Costs_and_financ... So the cost is about $123M per GW of capacity. For comparison: the Biscay Gulf electricity interconnection https://cinea.ec.europa.eu/news-events/news/cef-energy-bisca... "The EPC contracts will cover two high-voltage direct current (HVDC) links (each with a capacity of 1000 MW, amounting to approximately 1600 km of HVDC submarine and land cables), the two converter stations and the civil works associated with the land cables." 2000 MW capacity with cost of EUR 2.85 billion gives: 1425M Eur per GW of capacity Of-course the projects have been build decades apart so inflation plays a big role and Nord Stream pipelines are currently damaged. |
What you really want is electric potential differences that push electrons. It's the difference between having oil and having hydraulic energy (pressure and flow rate).