•

A proposal to build a sub-Saharan Africa electrical grid across 12 countries

https://techxplore.com/news/2023-07-sub-saharan-africa-electrical-grid-countries.html

A team of economists and engineers from China, Turkey and Nigeria has published a proposal based on simulations to build a sub-Saharan Africa electrical grid across 12 countries. In their paper published in the journal Scientific Reports, the group outlines which countries would be involved, factors that would be used to build such a grid, and estimated costs.

A proposal to build a sub-Saharan Africa electrical grid across 12 countries::A team of economists and engineers from China, Turkey and Nigeria has published a proposal based on simulations to build a sub-Saharan Africa electrical grid across 12 countries. In their paper published in the journal Scientific ...

21 comments

spindrift

•

China once again investing in african infrastructure.

DoctorTYVM

•

Out of the goodness of their heart, with no ulterior motives to worry about!

kommerzbert

•

Naive question: How is the political situation between all these African countries? Are they "good enough friends" to make this work on from a political point of view?

whoisearth

•

For the most part I would say yes. I live in Canada but can tell you first hand there is a comradery among those expats from African countries that I feel is decidedly unique.

The analogy is if I was on vacation backpacking in Europe and ran into a fellow Canadian.

mikeyBoy14

•

Mate, a good third of the countries on that list are currently suffering such brutal ethnic violence that it might be considered genocide. Close to half are riddled by islamic terrorism, usually directed towards ethnic minorites. At least two of them are in the middle of civil wars.

ladybug

•

This comment made me realize that South Sudan isn’t on the map in despite the power grid near it.

dyathinkhesaurus

•

A lot of those expats left those countries for a reason. Source: am african expat.

TheFairywarrior

•

I have no idea if this is actually possible, but if it ends loadshedding in South Africa I'm all for it!!!

dyathinkhesaurus

•

They'd have to figure out how to stop people stealing all the power lines for the copper, first.

whoisearth

•

Ignoring part of the problem is cupcake and his government fucking shit up lol

Seriously though the loadshedding is redonkulous

Hamartiogonic

•

Sounds good. If they actually manage to build it, it might even become possible for Africa to start selling solar energy to Europe.

AstralJaeger

•

The distance is still a killer for that, it would either require to build an AC line from Morocco to Spain, a highly politically charged region or a high voltage dc line from Tunisia to Italy, which is quite the distance to cover.

Hamartiogonic

•

Indeed, there are huge issues with that idea, but at least now there’s a plan to take a step in that direction. Who knows if we ever get there though.

AstralJaeger

•

The main issue with this plan, in my opinion, is that there (atleast seem) to be no redundant links. African countries barely manage to share borders, not to talk about rivers and resources, for the sake of safety this system should have atleast 2 links to different neighbours.

Hamartiogonic

•

That’s certainly an issue, but I guess you have to start somewhere. If political chaos and turmoil doesn’t ignite all the cables and towers, they absolutely need to expand it later.

Serpent

•

There is a project "Xlinks" to build an HVDC cable from Morrocco to the UK for this purpose. Who knows if it will succeed but it does have real backing.

AstralJaeger

•

Thats one hell of a distance, I really need to look more of these projects. But in my corner of europe people like to block these projects even tho they are so important

n00b001

•

Transmitting and storing the electricity is going to be tough

Why not use the elec in Africa to create hydrogen from salt water?

Store it if needed Ship it in pipes (easier than electricity in powerlines) Ship it in cylinders

Hamartiogonic

•

That sounds like a pretty good option too. Transporting hydrogen is pretty exciting, so I wonder if there would better form instead. Maybe some chemist out there could point out some obvious way to use the electricity to make a chemical compound more suited to this purpose. Hydrogen is really nice once you start converting it back to energy, but while in transit it has some highly concerning properties.

Moc

•

That would be ideal

tdawg

•

Would love to see this! Without the influence of any foreign government interest... Ya know like how has been the case for the last 200+ years now