I'm crazy excited that this might actually have a chance to come to fruition. Back in my salary-man days, I worked for Hiroshi Fujiwara when he was doing work on Superconducting DC technology.<p>The idea was similar to this one -- set up solar and wind generators in the Gobi desert, and transmit the energy through a superconductor network to Japan, Russia and other countries. The Superconductor system (I believe) could transmit energy at nearly 99% efficiency,<p>We got to see the 200m superconductor track at Chubu University, which was amazingly cool.<p>[1]<a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1875389212021268" rel="nofollow">http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1875389212...</a>
Maybe the biggest blocker for this project is the nations involved. Can such degree of cooperation be made between nations that have huge political differences, violent history and territorial claims between each other?<p>Other than that, this could set the precedent for more regional integration, which is awesome.
The article's about two months old - but I thought it was a fascinating idea.<p>I know that one of the challenges of harnessing renewable energy is battery technology not being up to he task (yet), but I'd never thought about creating a grid large enough that demand is smoothed out over a large region.
> The next step in the process was the establishment of the nonprofit Global Energy Interconnection Development and Cooperation Organization<p>Interesting, that reminds me of IXPs. E.g. AMS-IX is one of the world's largest exchange points (shared infrastructure) and it is a non-profit.