GREENPEACE LIKES EU SMART GRID

Greenpeace says Europe smart power grid affordable
Vera Eckert (w/ James Jukwey), November 20, 2009 (Reuters)

"Revving up European power transmission networks to transport 90 percent of renewable energy by the year 2050 could be achieved at affordable sums, pressure group Greenpeace said in a study…

"European policymakers dream of getting away from fossil fuels but even if these were replaced with wind or solar generation systems, sceptics say the bloc's decades-old grid systems would effectively hamper shipping the volatile power."

Part of the Supergrid will carry North Sea and Baltic Sea wind all over the continent. (click to enlarge)

"Greenpeace said the cost of strenghtening cross-border lines and building new interconnections to create so-called smart or supergrids [209 billion euros, or $310.9 billion] would be small [0.15 cents per kilowatt-hour over 40 years, or euros (40 cents) per month] if it was spread over 40 years and split between hundreds of million of Europeans…

"…[T]here is also concern that over reliance on wind or solar could leave consumers short of power when the wind does not blow or the sun does not shine…The Greenpeace study compared 30 years of weather data with European annual demand curves and concluded that there is only a 0.4 percent -- or 12 hours a year -- chance that high demand correlates with low solar and wind generation."

Another part of EU transmission will deliver North African sun. (click to enlarge)

"Apart from wind and solar, [the Greenpeace study] also mentioned chances to exploit geothermal and ocean energy, and biomass…

"The 209 billion sum was broken down into 100 billion for 11 new connections inside Europe, 90 billion euros for new lines to capture Sahara desert solar power, 16 billion for upgrades of direct-current high voltage lines between European countries and 3 billion for alternating-current ones."