Sahara Solar Plant

A few years ago, an australian miner told me over a few beers that he did not like being a miner and that he just 'did it for the money'. That was kind of funny, because this fellow looked like he was built to be either a miner or a professional wrestler (he later told me his real passion lay with writing short stories - which is tough if you spend your time working in a copper mine).

Because I knew Australia to be a very coal-dependent country, the conversation quickly turned to the effects of mining on the environment, and much to my surprise, he mostly agreed with me. But there is one thing that really sticks from this particular conversation.

As he was getting ready to leave, he said 'you know, I just dont understand why they dont put solar collectors in the Sandy Desert'. (Oh yes - there actually is a desert in Australia called Sandy Desert)

The reason I mention this mate of mine - I think his name was Jim or something - is that he and I have not been the only people thinking about the energy potential of deserts. That potential is quite obviously huge - there are no clouds 'to block the view' for the collectors and the sun basically shines all day. What better a place to set up a solar plant?

There actually are a number of obstacles to setting this up in any desert, sandy or not. After all, the constand bombardment with grains of sand and the build-up of dunes, not to forget the problem of storing/transmitting the energy/electricity to where it is needed.

But a number of german companies (including Siemens and Deutsche Bank) are apparently convinced that they can actually best all obstacles and actually make a fortune by putting a huuuuuuge solar power plant in the Sahara (or did you actually think they were doing it pro bono?) at an initial cost of just over 550 billion dollars.

The wh*** operation is called Desertec, their homepage can be found at desertec.org

(Image property of Desertec)


I assume that most of you guys at least have a basic understanding of how solar collectors (or more precise: solar thermal power) actually work (by converting the heat from the suns rays using mirrors and water to make it into something we can use to power our phones with).

But I am not an engineer, so I am not sure how their ideas work out exactly, but from what I understand, its just an armada of solar collectors, connected and set up somewhere in the Sahara Desert, using huge tanks of batteries to store and some form of superconducting wires to get the energy to Europe without heavy losses.

Quote from Der Spiegel (6/16/09):
"[Desertec] which promises to be the largest green-energy project in the world, could provide around 15 percent of Europe's energy needs.
Unquote.

15 percent. That is not as much as one might have hoped, but then - its a start.

So what do we learn from this?

Well, for one, one of the arguments against solar collectors is that they look ugly and destroy the 'style' of roofs. Yes, I also think that this is not really a valid argument, but by putting them in a desert, we bypass that problem (because who is going to complain?) and also get the maximum sun exposure possible on earth (and putting them into space is just too utopian for now).

Maximum sun exposure essentially means the maximum utility/power generated.

If problems such as the constant sand build-up can be solved (and for snow and research stations in the antarctica, this was basically solved by putting them on stakes) and provided enough political stability in northern Africa, and also provided that this does not mess up global warming (because less sunlight is being reflected into space from the deserts) even more, this might provide for a real opportunity.


HTH




In Addition, I have put some more links down here, if you wish to further read up on the theme.

Renewable Energy
Article @Time Magazine
Worldchanging
... and Google can show you hundreds more.