Global energy

 

I read something from Bill Gates about how difficult and expensive it is to store energy.  He wants to bring electricity to the quarter of the people on our planet that don’t have access to it.  Of course he wants to do it in a sustainable way.  He doesn’t want to just build new coal powered power plants all over the planet.  He wants to generate electricity with wind and solar, but they only produce energy intermittently.  He needs a way to store electricity after it has been produced so it can be used later, and battery technology is not there yet.  He’s thinking big, but he’s stumped.

 

Maybe he should think bigger.  I’ve mentioned this before.  Locally, there is a dramatic rise and fall in the amount of energy used over the course of each day.  Globally though, the demand would be fairly constant.  If we could produce and use electricity on a global scale, instead of a local scale, we wouldn’t need to store it at all.  If we have the capacity to distribute energy efficiently over large distances, then there will always be enough energy being produced somewhere on the planet for the people that need it on the other side of the planet.  Conceptually, doesn’t this work?  A worldwide source of clean energy!

 

We have hammered battery technology hard for a hundred years.  We’re doing great but we’re no-where near the point of storing solar energy for cities overnight, or wind energy on days that are calm.  If we applied the same effort to energy transmission as we have to battery technology, wouldn’t we be more likely to find an immediate solution to the transmission problem than the battery problem?

 

This wouldn’t change the economics of energy production versus use.  If a place like Arizona can produce more solar energy than it uses, it can sell the excess to the grid.  It will cost Arizona something to produce its energy, but it could be a net gain for their economy if they sell more than they produce.  Seattle might have no hope of producing enough solar or wind energy, but they have hydro-electric.  They might have an energy deficit and have to purchase energy from the grid, but they’re already paying to produce that extra energy with power plants right now.

 

If it seems that it’s not fair for some parts of the country, or world, to benefit from the energy they produce, while others have to pay for what they can’t produce themselves, that’s not any different from how it is right now.  If you want to burn coal in power plants and your region doesn’t happen to have any coal reserves, you go buy your coal from West Virginia.  It costs you money and West Virginia benefits.  It would be the same, just distributed differently, but with the bonus that the energy could be clean.

 

Now how do I get this message to Bill Gates so he can implement it?