Has the war in Ukraine killed HVDC from Northern Africa?

By Brian Clegg

Every now and then someone points out that you could power all the UK’s needs, or even all of Europe with solar panels located in a relatively small area of North Africa. Of course, there is a technical problem with this – getting the electrical energy all the way to its destination. The preferred solution tends to be HVDC – high voltage direct current.

Traditionally, we’ve used AC (alternating current) to transmit power, because it’s easy to switch voltages of AC using transformers. High voltage is desirable for long distance transmission, because this reduces the amount of current required to carry the same amount of energy, and the lower the current, the less that is lost to heat. However, now it is far more practical to convert DC to AC, HVDC has become important because it can reduce both the cost of the transmission process and the energy loss. It is now used for many of the interconnectors that allow electricity to flow between countries.

Perhaps more obvious than the selection of HVDC is the reason for suggesting North Africa, as the nearest region for Europe that has such high levels of sun exposure combined with a lot of unused/otherwise unusable open space.

I’ve always been concerned that this approach is naive. The science might now be feasible, but the politics has always been worrying. Energy supply is crucial to modern civilisation – and it would be unwise to place a large proportion of our electricity generation in the hands of another country. 

This concern has, in the past, been represented as xenophobic, but over the years, the nations that supply one source of energy – oil – have demonstrated time and again how they can use their near-monopoly to political gain. And now, the impact of the war in Ukraine on energy supplies to Europe and the associated costs of disruption (which include some countries re-opening coal-fired power stations – horrendous from an environmental viewpoint) has demonstrated just how important it is that countries generate as much of their energy themselves as they can.

What always seemed to some degree an impractical suggestion has now, I would suggest, been shown to be a totally irresponsible concept. If anyone is still suggesting it, they need to think again.

Image: HVDC power lines in North Dakota by Wtshymanski from Wikipedia

This has been a Green Heretic production.

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Now Appearing is the blog of science writer Brian Clegg (www.brianclegg.net), author of Inflight Science, Before the Big Bang and The God Effect.