These deals all sound so grand when they are being pitched but end up being exposed as simply grandiose.
From Morocco World News, June 26:
In mid-May, Xlinks, the British company behind the ambitious project to connect Morocco and the UK via undersea power cables, temporarily paused its Development Consent Order (DCO) examination process.
Marrakech – The British government has decided to reject the major renewable energy project that would have imported solar and wind power from Morocco to the United Kingdom.
According to Sky News, Energy Security and Net Zero Secretary Ed Miliband has chosen not to proceed with formal negotiations with Xlinks, a privately owned company seeking a 25-year price guarantee agreement.
The £25 billion project, chaired by former Tesco chief executive Sir Dave Lewis, promised to deliver enough renewable energy to meet nearly 10% of the UK’s electricity demand.
The decision comes as a surprise to energy industry executives, as Xlinks had pledged to provide large quantities of power at approximately half the price of electricity generated by new nuclear power stations.
A Whitehall insider indicated that the government’s decision was partly motivated by a desire to focus on “homegrown” energy supplies....
....MUCH MORE
3,800-km Cable: "Xlinks hopes to send solar and wind power from Morocco to Britain by 2029"
That's a long cable.
And it sounds like a cross between Desertec:
From our Jan. 31, 2011 post "Say, About That Plan to Supply 15% of Europe's Electricity from North Africa.... (Look for Desertec to go with Natural Gas instead)":
Some commentators thought it was lunacy to put Europe's power supply in the hands of Tunisia, Algeria, Libya and Morocco.
The French in their haughty way believe they can control the governments of the Maghreb. Events of the last two weeks should give them and the German companies backing the plan reason for concern.
If you've forgotten, Desertec was a planned $555 BILLION plan to use concentrating solar thermal to produce electricity in the North African desert and ship it to Southern Europe. The World Bank was on board, Siemens, E.on, Deutsche Bank, Munich Re and a host of other Germans were ready to make money and then, darn, revolution.
Here's a bit of insight from Solar Novus:
Revolution in Tunisia May Threaten Dii Goals
—Last seen in 2015's "Desertec's Plan for Saharan Sun to Power Europe Burns Out".
And the Australia to Singapore Sun Cable. From our final post on the project, January 2023:
Solar: The Plan For The World's Longest Extension Cord (Australia to Singapore) Is Dead
But who knows, maybe this one goes through. From the electrical engineering mavens at IEEE Spectrum, November 30:
At first glance, North Devon, an expanse of rolling hills and gentle seaside cliffs deep in the English countryside, may not seem like a place to find the future.
But if a company called Xlinks can realize its plan, North Devon will be a conduit for one of the most ambitious renewable-energy dreams to date. By 2029, Xlinks hopes, the North Devon coastline will host the landing site for two electric cables providing as much as 8 percent of the United Kingdom’s electricity needs. At the other end of those cables, there will be a vast complex of yet-unbuilt solar panels and wind turbines in the Moroccan desert thousands of miles away.
This is the goal of Xlinks’s Morocco-U.K. Power Project. If successful, the project may be a model for an entirely new global grid in which long-distance cables carry clean electricity between continents. But Xlinks and its backers must overcome a significant gauntlet of political, logistical, and financial hurdles before their their own project can switch on, let alone inspire others.
“It seems to me that the level of seriousness of these projects is certainly increasing,” says Will Todman, deputy director and senior fellow in the Middle East Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C. “But I don’t think they have truly been proven yet.”
A record-setting power-cable planXlinks’s plan rests on the simple premise that Morocco can generate renewable energy when the U.K. cannot—for example, the infamously dreary North Sea winters prevent solar power. The company plans to install 11.5 gigawatts of solar panels and wind turbines at an unannounced site in Morocco’s largely arid Guelmim-Oued Noun region. Notably, the region straddles the internationally recognized border with the occupied Western Sahara, although Xlinks told the nongovernmental organization Western Sahara Resource Watch that the company would not build in “contested territory.”Xlinks plans to build 200 square kilometers of solar photovoltaic panels. Bolstering the solar panels will be a wind farm, harnessing breezes that Xlinks claims are at their strongest in the late afternoon and early evening—peak hours in the U.K., which shares a time zone with Morocco during the summer. The plans also call for a 5-GW battery facility in Morocco capable of producing 22.5 gigawatt-hours of energy storage....
On second thought, nothing like Desertec except North Africa.
Then there was the Sun Cable project:
Is The Plan For The Australia - Singapore Power Cable Dead Or Alive?
Our last post on Schrödinger's extension cord was January 2023's "Solar: The Plan For The World's Longest Extension Cord (Australia to Singapore) Is Dead"
