Should We Fill the Sahara With Solar Panels? (bbc.com) 386
An anonymous reader writes: A panel of experts at the BBC discuss the possibility of re-purposing the Sahara Desert. Instead of having over 9 million square kilometers of barren sand, we could start a massive project to gradually fill it with solar panels. The remarks are illuminating: "The technology is good. It's matured a lot in the last few years in terms of thermal storage. And the Sahara desert is so big that if there is cloudy weather, it's localized, and with thermal storage, it can provide absolutely reliable power." The difficulties turn out to be mostly political: "The biggest potential pitfall is that it's politically complicated. You're not going to develop solar energy in the Sahara unless you have a very strong state involvement, both on the side of the consumers and the project developers." And one of the panelists points out that Africa must have a large share of the benefits: "Things have changed. Africans are self-confident now, they want to participate in their development, and they want to have part of their resources, they are not just there to always give to the rest of the world and remain poor."
Sand Storms (Score:5, Insightful)
Solar panels don't like sand storms.
Re:Sand Storms (Score:4, Funny)
Nor sand worms
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I don't like sand. (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Sand Storms (Score:5, Interesting)
As part of the infrastructure they build in defences to prevent the mirrors getting sandblasted. Those can be anything from trees to walls. One of the benefits of a project like this is that it halts and reverses desertification.
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Trees in the desert? Wouldn't walls high enough to keep out a sandstorm also keep out the sun?
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You need some irrigation for the plant anyway... And you don't need high walls, just multiple lower walls to remove all the energy from the storm over time. Countries that have sand storms know all about this.
Re: Sand Storms (Score:2)
Mirrors and thermal is the way to go here. A focused arrangement the sand would be self clearing...no panels only reduced reflectivity in some cases where sand that does get deposited does not slip off. Cleaning could be automated in any case or at least be cheap
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If the mirrors can get in there first, they can be used to melt the sand into glass.
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Sandblasting mirrors is bad too.
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If only there was a nearly inexhaustible supply of material from which new mirrors could be made simply blowing around out there.
Forward scattering [Re:Sand Storms] (Score:5, Informative)
Solar panels don't like sand storms.
Sandblasting mirrors is bad too.
Actually, sand blasting is much worse for mirrors than for flat-plate photovoltaic panels. Sandblasting the surface of a photovoltaic panel had very little effect-- it roughens the surface, but roughened glass still lets light through. Roughened mirrors, however, while they still reflect light, reflect it diffusely, which is useless for concentrating sunlight.
Dust is a more of a problem, because it sticks, but there again, it's worse for concentrating systems than for flat plate panels, since much of the scattering by dust particles is forward scattering.
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That's a bloody good explanation compressed in a small space, thanks.
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hear, hear old chap
Re:Sand Storms (Score:5, Funny)
Melt all the sand into glass for the solar panels!
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Sure, let's build some machine similar to the one below; input: sand, output: solar panels:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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Melt all the sand into glass for the solar panels!
Assuming you could solve the sand problem, there's a bigger one: transmission loss. The Sahara isn't all that close to Europe and when you're talking anywhere from 1 to 7% transmission loss per 100km the 2,000km trip just to get to Spain's border would be bad enough let alone making it to any major centres. The closer you can build your power generation to its source the better.
Re:Sand Storms (Score:4, Informative)
That's why the new ultra high voltage D.C. systems are being used in places like India, it reduces transmission loss. This is perfect application
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That's the low end of the scale (1%) you're talking about 180MW+ loss on a 1000MW system just to get it to the European grid let alone the loss in converting to the voltage of that grid or distance to a major population centre. It might be viable to power Cairo, Israel, the Ivory Coast, etc. but not much more. Germany has the right idea - generate the power where it's used.
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The input is free but the panels are not. If we had to take that kind of hit on our installation it'd nearly double the payback period or extend past the lifetime of the panels.
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That's why the new ultra high voltage D.C. systems are being used in places like India, it reduces transmission loss. This is perfect application
Right, because nobody will possibly think to steal a shitload of copper cabling which is left lying around in the middle of an uninhabited, barren wasteland with no effective government or police forces.
Re:Sand Storms (Score:4, Interesting)
3.5% per 1000 kms for HVDC, which isn't too bad. Currently HVDC is used for the Rio Madeira run of 2375 kms, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]. HVDC is also superior for under water use, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org].
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Efficiency of power transmission is proportional to the voltage squared.
Quoting any efficiency numbers without specifying the voltage is completely meaningless. The highest voltage lines routinely transmit power economically over thousands of kilometres.
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With a DC line the loss can be figured to be due to conductor resistance. A back of the envelope calculation shows that to get 3.5% loss per 1000km would require each pole to have ~5,000mcm of aluminum conductor. At 600kV, it would be a good idea to use a bundle of 4 conductors to reduce corona loss, so each conductor would need to be ~1,250mcm of aluminum, which is a common size for ACSR conductors.
1.1% loss per 100km sounds more like a 230kV AC line.
Re:Sand Storms (Score:4, Informative)
The wiki article on HVDC that I referenced above. They got it from a paper from Siemens AG, http://www.energy.siemens.com/... [siemens.com]
To quote,
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> Dune-polished Saharan sand is particularly (pun intended) bad at coating surfaces
Quite possibly true. But if experience in the US desert Southwest is any guide, wind blown sand does an excellent job of rendering surfaces like windshields opaque by covering them with tiny pits. Won't do wonders for efficiency. (Sand also does a number on auto paint jobs).
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Yes, we should come up with a term to describe that. Oh! I've got it.... Sandblasting.
I.S.I.S. (Score:3)
Re:I.S.I.S. (Score:5, Insightful)
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As Islamic fundamentalism spreads through Africa...
Long-term, fundamentalism fails. Remember how the Christian Church used to be?
Destructive movements run counter to humanity's natural desires for comfort, safety and security. There's a reason why the most virulent movements spawn in the most backwards areas, where comfort, safety and security are at their lowest. And why they spend so much effort attempting to attack people who have moved on, trying to destroy their sense of security so that they, too will revert to barbarism.
But comfort is a corrosive inf
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Okay, will you please contribute to my Solar Sahara project. We intend to populate Libya with solar panels but we need backers with money. Yours will do, fork it over.
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Long-term, fundamentalism fails. Remember how the Christian Church used to be?
There's at least one big, big, big difference: when the Christian Churches were fundamentalist, they were around the top of the human cultural development of their age, while this Islamist fundamentalism is at the bottom, at least from a western point of view.
I can't see a Thomas Aquinas or a William of Ockham coming from ISIS (or from Saudi Arabia), nor I can see ISIS employing the next Bernini and Borromini.
Re:I.S.I.S. (Score:5, Insightful)
As Islamic fundamentalism spreads through Africa...
There's a reason why the most virulent movements spawn in the most backwards areas, where comfort, safety and security are at their lowest.
According to THIS [washingtonpost.com], it's well-educated engineer types who are most likely to embrace terrorism.
See also the recent terrorist attack in California. The male attacker (at least) was a well-educated, well-paid, long-term resident. He and his wife had a brand new baby, and the innocent people who they slaughtered had given them a baby shower earlier this year. That new baby is an orphan because the parents decided that slaughtering innocent people was more important than living their very successful lives and raising their child.
Islam is different..
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Truly. Don't underestimate the "some people just want to watch the world burn" types. Groups like Boko Haram exist to destroy things they think are "too western," and are happy to slaughter whole towns full of people just to keep their profile up. As Islamic fundamentalism spreads through Africa, large and long-term projects like this - fragile things with a huge attack surface - will become favorite targets of the medieval-minded theocracy crowd.
Terrorists care less about attack surface and more about getting maximum bang for the buck, either literally or figuratively. This makes solar panel farms less attractive than a dam, skyscraper or nuclear power plant. It would be far easier for a terrorist groups to simply sabotage the electric grid, destroying a few critical transmission towers, than destroy individual solar panels across hundreds of squares miles of desert.
Good God I hate that phrase (Score:2)
When you say crap like "Some people want to watc
Re:I.S.I.S. (Score:4, Informative)
Except the Sahara is big. Really, really, really big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. At 9.4 million square kilometers, it's over twice the size of the EU, and about 6% larger than the contiguous area of the contiguous 48 US states.
So forget the idea of covering all the Sahara with solar plants; it's way too big. Since the idea is to supply Europe with power, you start with the parts that are closest to Europe, which are coincidentally the parts farthest from Boko Haram. Let's say the Mahgreb states of Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Libya. These states are unstable by European standards, but they're way more stable than Niger and Chad. Plus they are sparsely populated and conveniently located for NATO military intervention. You could easily fly sorties from land bases in Italy and Spain.
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Libya is more stable than Niger, seriously?
One of the benefits of renewables lost (Score:5, Insightful)
Cost vs Benefit (Score:5, Insightful)
The Sahara has some benefits (right weather, low cost land), but probably has more costs than make it worthwhile. As the article says, there are significant political issues. They will require huge bribes, either directly to the politicians involved or to organizations that 'represent the people' (that don't really). When someone says that Africa must have a large share of the benefits, you know that means that lots of people need to be paid off.
Sadly, it makes more sense to do it someplace with a better political system, better technical infrastructure, and closer to where the power will be used. The overall cost will turn out to be lower.
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Not all of Africa is a wasteland. Unlike other power generation technologies, solar panels are a technology that can be assembled quite easily, not requiring much other than a basic infrastructure to have. Even if a region is corrupt, solar panels can be easily deployed in small villages. Start small, and from there, scale up.
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This is probably the most sensible comment in this thread. Top-down, such a thing is not going to work. One would need to do it bottom-up. Showing e.g. a village in Mali or Niger that it, i.e. each and every resident, can make solid money from solar panels - it would be a great way to get things going. Only later on the need for at-scale integration and, especially, standardization, would come in.
What? (Score:2)
"The technology is good. It's matured a lot in the last few years in terms of thermal storage........... The difficulties turn out to be mostly political:
So, thermal storage is the only technical problem, and is now considered "matured". What are people smoking?
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And where can we get some of it for ourselves too?
Corruption still too high in Africa. (Score:5, Interesting)
It will improve but if you were to put a billion dollars into solar panels, you would see a fifth the amount of solar actually built there which changes the cost/benefit equation substantially.
Plus it becomes a massive target for attacks and blackmail over attacks. You could patrol and militarize the region but that would cost money and change the cost/benefit again.
And... some of the dunes in the sahara are 75 stories tall and they drift around and could cover your facility if left unchecked.
And finally, creating that much shade under the panels would probably change the microclimate. You might see changes under the panels- life taking a foothold in the shade. Not sure what unintended consequenes that might have.
And that's why it won't work. (Score:2)
You're not going to develop solar energy in the Sahara unless you have a very strong state involvement
And that's why it won't work. Top-down revolutions have a difficult time taking hold. What works is empowering the individual to increase their livelihood in a way that provides a mutually beneficial relationship with the rest of society. Imposing economic change via dictate or "imminent domain" results in discord, perhaps more so in a place like saharan Africa.
Advantages and disadvantages (Score:3, Informative)
One big disadvantage of solar power is that it only works some of the time. The intermittent nature of both solar and wind is a serious problem. There's some amount that they help each other out, because in many locations the wind is strongest at night. Because of the intermittent nature of solar power, one cannot have large scale grids be completely solar without a lot of improvements in storage technology. Right now, battery technology is improving but it isn't where it needs to be. The best storage for most purposes right now is pumped hydroelectric https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped-storage_hydroelectricity [wikipedia.org] where one pumps water high up to a reserve when there is excess and then recovers it using a hydroelectric plant. This is more efficient than batteries. However, it requires specific geology to work well.
The other big issue with this plan is an issue is efficient transmission. If you are putting a large fraction of the entire world's power in one area, you are going to need to have massive transmission lines. Transmission is a major loss of power already. There have been small scale projects to use superconductors for transmission lines which need to be kept very cold but have very high efficiency. Holbrook Substation in Long Island for example has a 600 meter long superconducting line https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holbrook_Superconductor_Project [wikipedia.org] but this is literally multiple orders of magnitude smaller than the distances needed for the proposal,some of which would likely need to go underwater, and there has never been a serious superconducting line run underwater.
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The article mentions that the Sahara is big, really big, so big you have no idea. The sun is usually out during daytime on a large part of it. Granted the large part moves a bit with the weather but at any one time, it is still a large part.
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The Sahara is in 3.5 time zones. That means on average at least 1/4 of the Sahara is in daylight 15. hours/day. Which also means that all if the Sahara is dark on average 8.5 hours/day.
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Both problems have been solved.
They are actually talking about using solar thermal, which works 24 hours a day. It's not intermittent at all, you get solid power all the time, suitable for base load and dispatch as needed. Energy is stored as heat in molten salt as an integral part of the system.
Long distance transmission (actually not that long distance when you look at it) was solved decades ago in Europe with high voltage DC lines. They only became practical when we developed high power electronic AC/DC
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Solar thermal doesn't have as extreme intermittency problems as panels but it still has them. You see a power drop off as the night progresses, and cold spells with clouds can still lead to dips. This is why a lot of solar thermal actually includes direct heating elements being heated by burning fossil fuels http://www.volker-quaschning.de/articles/fundamentals2/index_e.php [volker-quaschning.de]. So if one of your goals is to get rid of fossil fuel use, then you cannot use solar thermal unless you are willing to have a substant
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A big disadvantage that is easily overcome. I used to live on 100% solar power in northern michigan. it is trivial to store what you can when the sun is out and use that storage until the next time the sun comes back. I had enough storage to run 14 days without having a single watt generated from my solar array.
Albedo (Score:5, Interesting)
I do not see the word “albedo” in this article. This is worrying. A lot of ecologist militant consider solar and wind energy as free energy just there for the taking. This is mostly true, but not entirely true.
Covering a large area of land with solar panels (even assuming they are thermal panels, not too fragile and with not too much fabrication byproducts) would change the albedo of that area, i.e. the proportion of solar light that is reflected by the ground. This will in turn change the climate of the area, and if the area is large enough, change the climate of the whole planet by changing the trade winds. It is entirely possible that in this particular instance the change would be for the good, but it is very hard to predict.
The same applies to large farms of wind turbines: they capture energy from the wind, and therefore weaken prevailing winds. Any large-scale localized change to elements of the climate has very complex consequences.
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Exactly. What could go wrong? It is just a desert anyway. ;-)
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Until there is research indicating otherwise I would not believe humans could either draw enough energy out of the wind, nor install enough solar panels to change the climate one bit.
This study [nature.com] concludes that large solar farms will cause a localized cooling effect.
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Yea I saw the study after posting. It required covering every square inch of the Sahara with solar farm which resulted in the 2 degree drop. That many solar panels generated 600 TW, total worldwide consumption right now is 1.5TW. Covering all of the Egyptian desert with solar panels generates 60 TW and it's local climate change was minuscule. We cannot alter the climate without the massive building I mentioned. We have no need for 600 TW right now so no one is going to do it.
The fact is if we put solar pane
...and the power goes where? (Score:3)
To get any good out of that much electrical power, you'd need a huge market to sell it to.
Europe wouldn't be it - too far away, across the Mediterranean. The rest of Africa? Maybe once the political landscape settles down. No bets on that one, though.
Sell electricity to the locals? The poor ones? In a region where oil prices are naturally low?
Build a whole bunch of new industries to use it? You're in a chicken-and-the-egg situation there. Nobody would build the factories until the power was ready, and nobody is going to build the solar system until they know they can sell the power. Then, of course, you need to ship raw materials in, and train a whole generation of factory workers from scratch, in a relatively short period.
And, as others have mentioned, solar plants in deserts have the "sand question" to deal with. Beside the whole issue of sandblasted glass, you have to keep them clean, which means, in general, water. Which is in incredibly short supply in the Sahara.
Of course, the authors admit these issues, but handwave it with "state involvement," which means "we need to get governments to pay for this silly thing."
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HVDC interconnectors disagree with "too far away, across the Mediterranean".
Rgds
Damon
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HVDC interconnectors work great, but not through areas where there are a lot of violent people who like blowing up things that belong to Europeans.
There are a few places they could install underwater HVDC lines, but it would be tough to find someone to fund the multiple billions of dollars in hardware it would take.
I think its not a savvy play, but (Score:3)
To get any good out of that much electrical power, you'd need a huge market to sell it to.
Europe wouldn't be it - too far away, across the Mediterranean. The rest of Africa? Maybe once the political landscape settles down. No bets on that one, though.
All of non-Scandinavian Europe is within 1500 miles of the Sahara. About 200 million Africans live farther away from the Sahara than that.
And 1500 miles isn't that far. For one thing, we've got plenty of under sea cables spanning distances on the order of the width of the Mediteranean, be it the ~10 miles near Gibraltar or the ~100 miles from Tunisia to Sicily, or even the ~350 miles from Egypt to Turkey. For example, NorNed is a 360 mile undersea cable between Norway and the Netherlands. Of course, there w
More than just the cost of the cells (Score:2)
Not unless you're also going to build the unprecedentedly massive infrastructure needed to distribute that power across the world, and pay for the huge army that will be needed to protect it from sabotage, invasion, or attack.
Shifting Sands (Score:2)
Needs water (Score:2)
Probably not. (Score:3)
At least not yet.
The cost of transmission would be significant. The cost of construction would be non-trivial (get the panels form a nearby port to the site, get enough labor locally, supply chain all of their needs, etc). The reliability risk of putting so many eggs in one basket (both at the site and the transmission across the Mediterranean). And, concentrating the solar in one place results in unnecessarily diurnal production.
Instead, put some panels in the Sahara, sure. But before that, keep putting panels in low-cost locations nearer to load. Rooftops. Sites containing waste (capped landfills, etc) or otherwise economically non-productive and ecologically not interesting. Roadsides. The installation cost per kW will be higher, because of a lack of economies of scale, higher labor cost, and additional equipment necessary. But, you get the value of saving on transmission and distribution construction costs and line losses, the smoothing and stretching of production due to geographic diversity, and both the energy security and the economic boost of doing work in your own country,
Why? (Score:2)
Why do we finally create a technology that is capable of drawing energy from the sun while being small enough to localise at the energy user and then insist on on building it in the middle of nowhere?
I hate the idea of solar power plants. I love the idea of a panel on every roof.
Lots of problems to consider (Score:2)
Before we get too excited there are some pretty substantial environmental and political and technical issues to consider.
1) What is the effect of large scale solar panel deployment on local atmosphere and climate conditions as well as ecosystems? That is a LOT of sunlight being reflected no matter what technology you use. I could see a "sea" of solar panels creating it's own climate and not necessarily a beneficial one.
2) The governments in that part of the world aren't noted for their stability or integr
Local climate (Score:2)
Avoid politics (Score:2)
Like this (Score:2)
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They tried that in michigan. they were going to install a wind farm several miles offshore in lake michigan. a lot of the really whiney really stupid people demanded they don't do it.
Environmental impact? (Score:2)
No, we very much should not (Score:2)
We are currently living at the mercy of arab nations and their ideology of hate. Changing to solar power in the sahara would _once again_ place us at the mercy of that same ideology. Let's build thorium plants instead, and finally develop fusion to production level.
We spend what, a billion per year on fusion now? And 50 billion or something on agriculture (including such "vital" substances as wine, tobacco, etc.)? Let's turn that around for a few years, see how quickly fusion will become a reality...
Also, I
Solar strategic advantage (Score:2)
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It's far, far, far easier to use an ICBM than a rail gun in the way you talk of. or are you suggesting that we shoot THROUGH the earth... Because that would be bad for everyone involved.
Desertec all over again (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.desertec.org/ [desertec.org] They tried to launch an initiative to build solar power in north Africa. However, they did not succeed so far. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Stability... (Score:5, Insightful)
If you're going to build a massive solar installation, it makes sense to start with somewhere like nevada or arizona - politically stable, infrastructure already in place and plenty of nearby demand.
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If you're going to build a massive solar installation, it makes sense to start with somewhere like nevada or arizona - politically stable, infrastructure already in place and plenty of nearby demand.
The political stability in this case is not an asset. Much of the available land which would be suitable for this purpose is currently owned by the BLM, in our names. Problem is, if you want to put an oil well on it or do some clear-cutting of timber, you can get a permit no problem, but if you want to build a solar plant there, they tell you that you need to do a multiple-year environmental study to assess the impact.
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And sending power from africa to europe is equally stupid with the current state of african countries... You'd be better off building the panels in the currently stable middle eastern countries, although those countries would rather just sell you their oil instead.
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It's terminology. Go read the Wikipedia article about "Middle East". In America, we consider that region (Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, Syria, and also Egypt) to be "Middle East". It doesn't matter what you consider "east" or "middle" or "near", that's the term and that's what it means here.
After all, why do you guys call yourself "Europe" instead of "Asia"? Or "Eurasia"? It's all one land mass. You do it because that's the convention, and we use conventions so that people understand each other.
I don't kn
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As I said: the terminology is a different story: point is, except for Egypt (and depending on the vague definition for "middle east" of the US, Lybia): the Sahara is not in the middle east and thousands of miles away from Saudi Arabia.
The anit-carbon industrial complex at work (Score:2)
I guess proponents of this don't know how tough blowing sand is on transparent materials. No matter, the anti-carbon industrial complex is predicated on planned obsolescence. Lots of people will be making lots of money on replacement parts for decades. Said rich people will then be lobbying heavily against better technology e.g. fusion.
Nah (Score:2)
Let's not and say we did.
who is this "we"? (Score:3)
If the question is "should Western governments spend massive amounts of money to put solar panels in the Sahara desert", the answer is "no".
When it becomes economically feasible to do so (taking into account political risks and transportation costs), investors will start doing so.
The only reason for Western governments to do this is because Western militaries could (and would) implicitly subsidize the necessary security arrangements. "Subsidize" here means that once our government had built massive solar farms there and we were energy depend on it, our military would do and spend whatever it takes to defend them.
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Yep, the political will for the EU to get involved and provide security and stability for the area. The EU wouldn't be willing to simply rely on the host countries for power, it would need control and security so that if things turned sour it could basically take over and keep the lights on. The host countries would probably have to join the EU, perhaps not as full members but at least in some way that allows tight integration.
It could be great for both the EU and Africa though. The EU gets masses of cheap,
Re:Of course! (Score:5, Insightful)
Does the EU even have enough troops to protect something that massive in such an unstable region? Nine million square kilometers and surrounded by notoriously unstable countries with weak governments? Without a WWII-sized massive military force to protect it, every tinpot mercenary leader and dictator will be demanding perpetual extortion not to sabotage it.
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The nice thing about solar thermal over an area that large though is that it is pretty decentralized. There isn't a main facility to attack except the transformers and cable landing, so you protect those and the rest will protect itself through sheer redundancy.
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HVDC transmission losses are of the order of a couple of % per 1000km IIRC. So, yes, we have a solution to the transport problem called "interconnectors" which I've no reason to believe is overly ambitious.
If you want ambitious, try:
http://www.earth.org.uk/note-o... [earth.org.uk]
Rgds
Daomn
Re:Of course! (Score:4, Informative)
And why not wind too? They aren't mutually exclusive. It would provide some power at night time. I believe the Sahara is a pretty breezy place. Am I wrong?
No, you are not - in a general sense, though. There are many places in the Sahara with wind during the night (not to speak about daytime). The problem is knowing exactly where the strongest winds blow during the night. Remember, the Sahara is a more than vast place. Note: I have traveled the Sahara extensively: Morocco, Mauritania, Chad, Egypt. Egypt - the "eastern desert", between the Nile and the Red Sea - had the weakest winds during the night, Mauritania the strongest, and, more important: the most reliably blowing night winds.
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To get strong winds, you want the greatest gradient between air temperatures. The best place for that to happen is between the boundary of ocean/sea air and land air. When it is sunny, the land heats up faster than the ocean, so you get a breeze blowing inshore. At night-time, the land cools down faster than the ocean/sea, so that the breeze blows offshore. Because of the smooth surface of water, wind speeds are usually faster offshore than onshore.The following map gives a good idea of how the speeds diffe
Mars, like the Sahara, but less atmosphere (Score:2)
I've been told how simple, easy, and cheap "in situ resource utilization" will be on Mars, so clearly it should be super simple to do it right here?
I guess we're just lacking the political will to do it, though.
Typical ISRU proposals for Mars are designed for an operating lifetime of 2.2 years, which is the amount of time between Mars launch windows.
I'll also point out that, "The Martian" [popsci.com] notwithstanding, there aren't destructive sand storms on Mars.
Re: We want to do that in Canada too! (Score:5, Funny)
This a good plan; there is no other justifiable purpose for Saskatchewan
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LOL
I gulped wine over the table upon reading this. Mod parent up !
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The RCMP cadet school has been located there in the mean time to fulfill some kind of purpose I guess...
http://www.rcmp-grc.gc.ca/recr... [rcmp-grc.gc.ca]
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Idiot. Morocco is not Saudi-Arabia or is Canada like Mexico?
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Look at Namibia, Libya, Gabon, Mauritius, and Seychelles. And that is not even a full list of non shithole African countries.
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Was colonialism really bad? People were safer and more wealthy under colonial rule then modern mob rule. Look at crime in South Africa for example.
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Exactly. All of these people promoting examples of socialism are examples of capitalist economies that are so rich that they are able to provide for a welfare state. If you tried a welfare state in Africa it wouldn't work because there is nothing to redistribute.