Wednesday, Jul 23, 2008
Oil is so yesterday
Guardian: Solar Power from Saharan Sun could provide Europe's electricity
Plans to build an enormous solar power station. Quick - buy a bit of desert.
Posted by cyril @ 12:47 PM (825 views) Add Comment
15 Comments
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1. drewster said...
Naff all to do with house prices.
"Scientists working on the project ... envisage that by 2050 ..."
That's great, just 48 years to go. I don't suppose the EU has any plans for what we should we do in the meantime?
2. Landedgentry said...
Won't the nomads blow it up?
3. mark said...
we bought some led light bulbs, cool light and look nice, they only use 2w of power... problem is not quite bright enough for a room
4. rickyb said...
By my calculations 1 hectare of desert with an average of 100 watts per square meter falling on it (averaged over the entire year), and a solar to electrical energy efficiency of 10%, would generate on average around 100KW, which at £0.05/kwh, would yield over £40 million per annum.
5. Die Angst said...
These rosy-pink reports always make renewable energy sounds so optimistic and plausible. Oil-companies lobbies (presumably) always seem to keep these proposals at bay though...
I wonder if the committee took into account the threat of sand-storms in the Saharan deserts? Did they study how ultra-fine sand particles may influence or damage PV cells? What are the costs involved in repairing and/or maintaining these PV farms in the middle of no-where?
I also wonder if they took into account the impact of launching such gigantic PV farms in the saharan deserts to the already climbing global temperature? The installation of large number of highly reflective PV cells may cause further increase in global temperature, just as glass high-rise building increase temperatures of dense city centres...
6. Still-waiting said...
Drewster, can I borrow your time machine. Ta.
7. icarus said...
Why are largish areas always compared with Wales?
Most in the global warming industry think the GW tipping point will be reached before 2050 - and this isn't going to be enough to supply Europe anyway.
Maybe by then Wales will be sunny enough to set the thing up there - then there'll be no need to compare the area of the contraption with the area of .Wales. A benefit of that may be that the power lines won't run through terrorist-bandit country. But then again, who knows what the UK will be like by then?
8. mark wadsworth said...
Drewster, 42 years, surely?
Anyroad, the problem is storage. As Africa is due south of Europe and we need most electricity in the evening (I think), the best place for solar would be somewhere in South America, because their daytime peak generating capacity is the same as our evening, and they're in the Southern Hem, so their summer is our winter (when we need more). That'll require some f***-off cables and no mistake.
9. d'oh said...
mark - and given that sea water conducts - fried fish for everyone!
10. Whostolemyendowment said...
Oil is not just used for fuel......what about plastics, fertiliser, etc....and there's lubricationg oil, jet fuel....until you show me how these things can be made out pure energy ie electricity, we will be dependent on oil and its byproducts. Also - electricity cannot be stored in large quantities, so has to be used as it's generated - or its lost.
Oh yeh...and electricity from what could still be unstable countries in the sahara or south america.....erm....might as well stick with the Arabs.
I have a great idea - how about whale oil, we could sea-farm the suckers and make it a renewable source.
11. Charlie Brooker said...
Dudes: I'm working on the problem.
Two of the big problems preventing the mass adoption of renewables are distribution and marketing. The fact is that solar panels and wind turbines are already being masss produced, but not distributed or marketed properly. Let me illustrate:
If you won the lottery this weekend what brand of car might you consdier buying?
What brand of mobile do you currently have?
What brand of TV do you have at home?
Easy enough, right? You know the names, you know where to buy these items and you know roughly how much they'll cost, right?
Now try the same exercise regarding sloar panels.
Not so easy is it? Can't think of a brand, don't where to buy them or how much they'll cost?
Recently Al Gore said in a speech "Right now we're borrowing money from China to buy oil from the Middle East to burn oil that's destroying our environment. Every part of that has got to change".
The Senator comes from a scientific background but science isn't the only thing that's needed to bring about a green revolution - marketing will help too - starting with changing the commonly held perception that change cost a fortune. Truth is if everybody bought solar panels ands wind turbines the cost would fall very rapidly indeed.
Oh, yeah and If Mr Brown wants to win the next election and been seen as Mr Green, how about levying windfall profits on the oil companies and using that to pay to kick start the change?
12. drewster said...
MarkW,
Yes sorry, 42 years - obviously the heat today is affecting my mathematical abilities!
Peak demand is at 17:30 - shops and offices are still open, but people are arriving home and switching on kettles and ovens. There's a nice graph on page 2 of this PDF showing electricity demand over a typical day (from National Grid). Even though solar only helps us during the daytime, it means we can turn off the gas-burning power stations during that time, thus saving what little gas we'll have left by 2050 (most likely none at all).
13. nopensionnohouse said...
>Energy losses on DC lines are far lower than on the traditional AC ones, which make transmission of energy over long distances uneconomic.
WRONG!!!! It's the other way round. Why else do you think the WHOLE WORLD runs on alternating current?
Duuuuur.
Muppets.
14. nopensionnohouse said...
>rickyb By my calculations 1 hectare of desert with an average of 100 watts per square meter falling on it (averaged over the entire year), and a solar to electrical energy efficiency of 10%, would generate on average around 100KW, which at £0.05/kwh, would yield over £40 million per annum.
It is actually more than that. The generally accepted figure is that up to 1kw falls onto every square meter. Plus photovoltaic panels can be much more than 10% efficient.
That’s how you get 400w solar panels that measure about 500mm x 1400mm.
15. Robh said...
re alternating current
From what I was reading via theoildrum website the other day, high voltage DC offers more efficient transfer of energy, the reason the world uses AC is that it is easy to change the voltage using a transformer whereas DC requires electronics (switched mode supply)
I haven't looked for a reference yet, but the argument given is that radiative losses in the form of magnetic fields are greater with AC
They are building a 400kV DC line in the US... that would give you a nasty nip if you touched it with wet hands!