> Run a simple thought experiment. Would it be easier to deliver power 100 meters or 100 km's? That's what we are debating here.
What you're debating is the cost of using a grid that already exists and is already in use.
> I'm unsure about what the cross section of aluminum has to do with the size of a province,
The answer is right there in the same post. Multiply them together to find out how much material you need (and by extension cost); likewise resistive losses.
The material costs for making an extremely efficient grid are trivial compared to everything else involved in the supply of energy that already exists and has already connected all those "various small towns distributed around the province".
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Also, I demonstrated with my maps that if you put a copy of the German borders around the Calgary-Edmonton conurbation, you'd get almost the entire population of Alberta, so your stat is misleading.
What you're debating is the cost of using a grid that already exists and is already in use.
> I'm unsure about what the cross section of aluminum has to do with the size of a province,
The answer is right there in the same post. Multiply them together to find out how much material you need (and by extension cost); likewise resistive losses.
The material costs for making an extremely efficient grid are trivial compared to everything else involved in the supply of energy that already exists and has already connected all those "various small towns distributed around the province".
--
Also, I demonstrated with my maps that if you put a copy of the German borders around the Calgary-Edmonton conurbation, you'd get almost the entire population of Alberta, so your stat is misleading.