alt Hacker News>some wires.
Id look into that statement some more if I were you: There’s much difficulty building houses and starting industry because the net is congested.
As always: if it’s as easy as a random commenter suggests, it’s probably not that easy.
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I think that's because we've made it politically difficult to build transmission. In the United States, you have to get approval from every jurisdiction and landowner along the route, so valuable transmission lines are politically impossible to build. (See: SOO Green, Grain Belt Express, BECI, other planned lines).
Oil and gas pipelines are centrally approved by FERC, so there is no such difficulty. It doesn't have to be so difficult to build transmission, and it would unlock a lot of wind and solar development.
Whenever wires don't make sense, as is the case for aircraft, synthetic liquid fuels can make sense. In a world where the inputs are free, the inefficiency of the process is not relevant.
Grid congestion in The Netherlands is highly localized: the last-mile wiring is at its limits, but higher up there is plenty of capacity. Furthermore, the congestion is time- and condition-dependent: people living in a home want 24/7 access to power, and want it to be reliable.
Some temporary dredging barge getting a high-voltage hookup, which is only running during sunlight hours, and whose operations can be vetoed by the grid operator at very little notice? Not a problem.