The complementary advantage of global trade in electricity
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I presented the results of ongoing work with coauthors focused onm assessing the potential for interhemispheric trade in electricity. We first develop a stylized analytical model to minimize the unit cost of electricity in autarky by combining PV with short/medium11 term battery storage and a conventional baseload/backup technology. Then we expand the analysis to different trade configurations. Interhemispheric trade would provide potential benefits derived from combining regions with opposite diurnal/seasonal patterns and global trade would additionally allow all regions to benefit from the lowest-cost PV generation in the best locations. Finally, we evaluate our model using current empirical data indicating the potential willingness to pay for different types of trade configurations for the whole world.