<story><title>SoftBank Group and Saudi Arabia plan to spend $200B building a solar power plant</title><url>https://techcrunch.com/2018/03/28/softbank-group-and-saudi-arabia-plan-to-spend-200-billion-building-the-worlds-biggest-solar-power-plant/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>lewis500</author><text>I always look for the surprising angles in a development of this kind: the knock-on effects. Given 200GW of capacity, in Saudi Arabia, on some days there will be endless electricity.&lt;p&gt;What I&amp;#x27;m thinking is that this will lead to innovation in industrial processes that can productively use a lot of energy in a 4-8 hour window...something you can turn on in a big way and then turn off. Such a process effectively &amp;quot;stores&amp;quot; the energy in the product. The larger the electricity share of such a process, the closer the marginal cost gets to zero during sunny times.&lt;p&gt;Most modern industrial processes aren&amp;#x27;t like that: either they&amp;#x27;re not very power constrained (e.g., a toy factory) or they need the power to be on for a while (e.g., a steel mill). But then again it makes sense these are the types of processing we&amp;#x27;ve perfected, since that&amp;#x27;s the kind of power we&amp;#x27;ve hard so far in large quantities (coal, nuclear).&lt;p&gt;Does anyone know of products that can be made quickly by the application of raw energy? I don&amp;#x27;t know how desalination works, but (just as an example) if there were such a desalination process then Saudi Arabia could desalinate tremendous amounts of water and store it...or even export it to neighbors.&lt;p&gt;I am not so excited about the idea of a fundamentalist monarchy---one that is helping starve the poor Yemenis---getting even more power, but I am excited about the downstream innovations the fact of nearly-free electricity could potentially create. If SA invents such processes, then they could be copied in other places.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Robotbeat</author><text>To search for ideas of what would be a good candidate for soaking up excess electricity, look at capital cost per watt consumed:&lt;p&gt;For instance, if I have an efficient computer system that costs $100 for every watt consumed, it&amp;#x27;s not going to make sense to run it only during that 20% of the time there&amp;#x27;s excess electricity. The effective capital cost is then 5 times greater. I&amp;#x27;d be better off investing in a battery and extra solar to allow it to run it 24&amp;#x2F;7.&lt;p&gt;But if, instead, I have something which has incredibly low capital costs, like 10 cents per Watt consumed, and which can tolerate being shutdown and restarted, then even though it might only be operating 20% of the time, the effective capital cost is still just 50 cents per Watt, even cheaper than a battery capital cost. So it makes economic sense to use that to soak up the extra electricity demand.&lt;p&gt;This is why the key for hydrogen electrolysis isn&amp;#x27;t so much efficiency but capital costs: a variable-renewables-heavy grid will have enormous amounts of excess electricity at times, but only for fairly brief periods. You can&amp;#x27;t economically &amp;quot;store&amp;quot; that electricity using hydrogen if your electrolysis capital costs are so high you need to run your electrolysis cell 24&amp;#x2F;7!&lt;p&gt;If you want to make the hydrogen economy a reality, FORGET about hydrogen cars. Focus on hydrogen electrolysis capital costs!!!</text></comment>
<story><title>SoftBank Group and Saudi Arabia plan to spend $200B building a solar power plant</title><url>https://techcrunch.com/2018/03/28/softbank-group-and-saudi-arabia-plan-to-spend-200-billion-building-the-worlds-biggest-solar-power-plant/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>lewis500</author><text>I always look for the surprising angles in a development of this kind: the knock-on effects. Given 200GW of capacity, in Saudi Arabia, on some days there will be endless electricity.&lt;p&gt;What I&amp;#x27;m thinking is that this will lead to innovation in industrial processes that can productively use a lot of energy in a 4-8 hour window...something you can turn on in a big way and then turn off. Such a process effectively &amp;quot;stores&amp;quot; the energy in the product. The larger the electricity share of such a process, the closer the marginal cost gets to zero during sunny times.&lt;p&gt;Most modern industrial processes aren&amp;#x27;t like that: either they&amp;#x27;re not very power constrained (e.g., a toy factory) or they need the power to be on for a while (e.g., a steel mill). But then again it makes sense these are the types of processing we&amp;#x27;ve perfected, since that&amp;#x27;s the kind of power we&amp;#x27;ve hard so far in large quantities (coal, nuclear).&lt;p&gt;Does anyone know of products that can be made quickly by the application of raw energy? I don&amp;#x27;t know how desalination works, but (just as an example) if there were such a desalination process then Saudi Arabia could desalinate tremendous amounts of water and store it...or even export it to neighbors.&lt;p&gt;I am not so excited about the idea of a fundamentalist monarchy---one that is helping starve the poor Yemenis---getting even more power, but I am excited about the downstream innovations the fact of nearly-free electricity could potentially create. If SA invents such processes, then they could be copied in other places.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>onetimemanytime</author><text>Great point. They&amp;#x27;re not doing it to save the world or anything, they see dollar signs. As you said, they&amp;#x27;ll desalinate enormous amounts of water, and that is life.&lt;p&gt;While $200b is about $200b more than virtually all of us have, all the Crown Prince has to do is hold another Ritz Carlton party. This time they know he&amp;#x27;s serious so they&amp;#x27;ll pay in a few days.</text></comment>