World's Largest Solar Power Plant To Supply Enough Energy For 1.1 Million People (computerworld.com) 298
Lucas123 writes: The world's largest solar power plant is now live and will eventually provide 1.1 million people in Morocco with power and cut carbon emissions by 760,000 tons a year. Phase 1 of the Noor concentrated solar power (CSP) plant went live last week, providing 140 megawatts (MW) of power to Morocco. Phases 2 and 3 will be completed by 2018 when the plant is expected to generate more than 500MW of power. The Noor plant, located in south-central Morocco, will cover 6,178 acres and produce so much energy, that Morocco may eventually start exporting the clean energy to the European market.
Excess (Score:2)
"that Morocco may eventually start exporting the clean energy to the European market."
Question:
If Morocco is just across from Spain, why would Spain pay for the energy (i.e. cost of production, plus payoff of initial outlay, plus transportation, plus the company profits) rather than just build their own?
It's not like the two are on hugely different latitudes which greatly affect the amount of solar available, and the transportation losses, especially under 50km of ocean at best, must be quite substantial.
An
Re:Excess (Score:4, Insightful)
Maybe the price of land. Maybe Morocco gets fewer cloudy days. being that close to one another does not mean they have the same conditions, Maybe the cost of labor to keep the mirrors clean. And just maybe Morocco had the will to build it while Spain did not.
I am very sceptical of the claims of solar but this is interesting. I hope it works out well.
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I was going to say the same thing about nuclear. You are very generous in saying it'd only require 1/10 of the land area. A 7 core (with 1 gigawatt each!) facility in Japan takes up 1100 acres, with the majority of that likely being security buffers and whatnot.
Re:Excess (Score:5, Funny)
True, but the Government can declared that land "nature reserve." It's different when you build a gigantic industrial factory over the entire span of land, milling down trees and compacting the soil until there's nothing left.
We already lock up millions of acres of land as protected in the United States; since we see this as an important management action, it makes sense to position nuclear generation facilities in areas where we're semi-confident we'd like to protect that land. That is: treat protected land as non-binary, recognize land that we only barely accept for development (because of its importance as undeveloped land), and then put a nuclear plant there. Then the land is both protected *and* developed: it's left in its natural state, but used as a nuclear buffer zone.
This assumes the risk of a nuclear accident has larger general consequences than the (partial) loss of the protected land surrounding the plant.
Still, a 7,000MW plant takes up 1,100 acres; a 160MW plant takes up 6,100 acres. Every 25 acres around that nuclear plant represents one of those 6,100 acre solar plants; 6100 acres of land consumed by nuclear would represent almost 243 of those solar generation facilities.
So it would require 1/243 of the land area; and we can partially discount most of that area by declaring it nature reserve, with the discount relative to the degree to which we would have considered the land an important nature reserve otherwise.
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You'd need 1/1000th of land dedicated to power production. The nice thing is, you don't need arible land to make power. Put it in deserts and such. The other thing is, that though you need 1/100th of the land area to power the planet, you could instead use 1/2000th of the water area. That may end up the better solution, as the napkin numbers I gave are based on the power usage from TFA (low for USA level over-consumpt
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Re:Excess (Score:5, Informative)
"That space of land could feed over 6,000 people [farmlandlp.com] if properly arable, or house 2.8 million people. "
But it is not arable and no one lives on it.
I personally am pro nuclear and I am even getting optimistic about fusion thanks to the Lockheed High Beta reactor and the Pollywell.
BTW this is a thermal solar plant and not photovoltaic.
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This plant occupies less than 25 km2 so there is space for a few more.
Remember this is part of the Sahara.
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Of course, that's all moot if the land isn't arable without expensive water importation. Or even livable beyond nomadic population densities. Look at the maps and pictures.
You generate the power where people don't/can't live and pump it to where they do. Just like we do in the USA. At least when we're not creating new Superfund sites.
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You don't need arable land to build houses. We have transportation infrastructure to move goods to wherever; I get my food from 3,000 miles away.
The question is: do you cut down 8,000 acres of old-growth, virgin forest land to build a new Olympic Stadium, or extinct 237 species of lizard and insect to build a new Solar installation in the desert?
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First of all: the world does not suffer from a lack of food. But from greed that prevents that food that is needed at a certain place is available there.
Secondly: That space of land could feed over 6,000 people [farmlandlp.com] if properly arable the plant was built in a damn desert. Hello!!!! Anyone at home? Solar plant? Hu? Mirrors! Hu? Morroco? Any idea where that country with that name is? Hello? Still no one awake or at home? Africa? A continent? Heard about it? Everything of it close to Europe is de
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Comparison with arable land and with living space lets you identify how much land 6,000+ acres is. How about I just tell you I can build a more efficient plant on a span of 1,000 plutons?
Building in a desert has its own problems [kcet.org].
For reasons I've never understood, CSP salt towers are usually about 17% efficient; Photovoltaics range from 15% for your standard fare to 19% for top-end panels. By contrast, parabolic reflectors using a dish pointed at a small sterling engine mounted where a radio dish woul
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You live in a fucking desert!! Nothing grows out of here! Nothing’s going to grow out of here!Come here, you see this? Huh? This is sand, yeah it‘s sand. You know what it’s going to be 100 years from now? It’s going to be sand! You live in a fucking desert!
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Re:Excess (Score:4, Informative)
The Desert Sunlight Solar Farm (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desert_Sunlight_Solar_Farm) is in California and produces 550MW. The Topaz Solar Farm (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topaz_Solar_Farm) also in California produces 550MW. CVSR produces 250MW, IVSP produces 99MW, MSS produces 265MW, and the Blythe Solar Power Project will produce 480MW when completed. So in a very small area of California, we have nearly two gigawatts of capacity, far more than this project will reach upon completion, despite the sinister machination of the "Greens of California."
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Yes, but there are a *lot* of roof spaces.
The problems with deploying on roof spaces are numerous. Wide-spread management incurs higher total cost. Interference with roof operations (e.g. repair) increases total cost. Up-front costs are placed on consumers, instead of amortized through service from a generation facility (i.e. poor folk can't install solar panels; rich folk can, and *extremely* rich folk can front the money for installation of solar panels to supply poor folk). Up-front costs are highe
Re:Excess (Score:4, Informative)
The solar plant is near Ouarzazate [cnn.com], which I estimate is about 300 miles from the southern tip of Spain. It's on the edge of the Sahara Desert, which should be a good location for more sunshine. Ouarzazate gets a little over 3,400 hours of sunshine per year [wikipedia.org] while Gibraltar gets about 400 hours less [wikipedia.org]. Also, as you go poleward, the sunlight is spread over a wider area, meaning that it's less intense at any given location. Gibraltar is at the southern tip of Spain, so this gets more pronounced if you go farther north. If you go north to Madrid, you can subtract roughly another 200-250 hours of sunlight [wikipedia.org] each year while being nearly ten degrees latitude farther north. There's also a whole lot less seasonal variation in the amount of sunlight at Ouarzazate than at either location in Spain, making it more suitable for a constant supply of electricity that doesn't require being supplemented by something else.
The solar plant is actually at a great location, so it probably makes sense for Spain to by their electricity from Morocco than to build their own solar plant. In cold enough climates, the electricity demand might be high enough during winter that, if it can't be met with solar, it would be necessary to build another type of plant to supplement it or to buy the electricity from another country. It's much more cost-effective to have the plant in Morocco.
By the way, the original plan was to build the plant with European funding and supply the electricity to Europe, but the partners in Europe pulled out [gizmodo.com] requiring the African Development Bank and the government of Morocco to save the project. Obviously the approach made sense to Europe at one point and, now that the plant is being built, might still be lucrative to them.
Economics (Score:4, Interesting)
If Morocco is just across from Spain, why would Spain pay for the energy (i.e. cost of production, plus payoff of initial outlay, plus transportation, plus the company profits) rather than just build their own?
A good question and the answers are mostly fairly straightforward. In no particular order here is a non-exhaustive list of reasons why they might decide not to build their own. Not all of these might be the case here but all are possible.
1) If they build there own it might result in overcapacity which would make the economics not work
2) Spain isn't in great financial shape so the financing might be a problem
3) Exchange rate risk. Currently the Euro is relatively strong [xe.com] versus the Morrocan Dirham. This means that 1 Euro can buy relatively more KWh.
4) Cost of land might be significantly higher in Spain. Spain has about 5/7 the land area with about 4/3 the population.
5) Politics (need I say more?)
6) NIMBY [wikipedia.org]
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Morocco is run by a Monarchy. Extremely powerful leaders make megaprojects like this a lot easier to steam roll over environmental studies/protests etc. Makes land aquisition, rezoning, funding etc etc a lot easier with a royal decree.
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"If Morocco is just across from Spain, why would Spain pay for the energy (i.e. cost of production, plus payoff of initial outlay, plus transportation, plus the company profits) rather than just build their own?"
What makes you think Spain doesn't have their own facilities?
With regards of why paying others instead of doing yourself, you could ask the same basically about everything else. And the answer is, of course, always the same: because of circunstances.
In this case:
* Morocco is at a lower latitude, th
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Spain buys and sells from/to France and Portugal to stabilize its own grid.
No "country" in Europe is selling or buying power to "stabilize" its grid. That is an utter misconception. Power trading is basically done for monetary reasons only.
In most cases the deals are "years ahead" or "day ahead".
Power transfers that occur minutes ahead or "at the minute" or "at the second" are extremely rare. Non of the grids in Europe needs external "help" to keep it stable.
It is just a matter of "cost" if France e.g. run
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If Morocco is just across from Spain, why would Spain pay for the energy (i.e. cost of production, plus payoff of initial outlay, plus transportation, plus the company profits) rather than just build their own?
Firstly, Spain does have their own; one of their chief exports is renewable power into Europe. What Spain will probably do is take advantage of it's proximity to Morocco to establish a connection into their power grid for cheap. From there, let's say that Spain sells power to its own people for say 10 cents a KWH (completely made up figures) and it can buy power from Morocco for 8 cents a KWH (even if it's only during peak usage to keep their own equipment running at a higher efficiency) and sell to the res
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Spain has the available land and sun to build similar, as a matter of fact since 2007 they have their own thermal plant called PS10.
At the moment they have over 50 such stations of about 50MW each.
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Erm ... you completely lost us at this: and the transportation losses, especially under 50kmof ocean at best, must be quite substantial.
The transportation loss over 50km is basically: zero
Why there are plenty of reasons to buy energy from Morroco that is cheaper than you can produce it at home is left to you to figure. The keyword is: cheaper.
Regarding neighbours: obviously the neighbours are customers until they have built up their own plants. A no brainer that the first who has such plants wins the busine
That's about 9.5 square miles (Score:4, Informative)
To put it into perspective, it's nearly 10 square miles. Pretty big, but in context it's a tiny part of the country.
This is apparently it, although it looks like this is older photography from before construction:
https://www.google.com/maps/@3... [google.com]
export energy? (Score:3)
500 MW is pretty small. Morocco needs much more than that. How can they think about exporting?
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I understand, but Morocco consume on average 2.5 GW of electricity, and that will probably only raise as the country gets richer, and with population growth. An extra 500 MW by 2018 won't change much in the net export/import balance of the country.
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Give them some time.
Night time? (Score:2)
I'm guessing that it's never dark in Morocco for more than 8 hours? I would hope the engineers who designed this thing allowed for a generous margin. It would suck to wake up in the morning and not have any power cause the salt went cold.
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I'm assuming it's not the only source of energy. Solar is not here to replace all forms of energy but if it can sustain a large portion of daily activities (which accounts for more of the power use in North American) then you have a win-win solution. The next step for solar power is storage.
It's also important to note that the technology and materials used are not done improving so panels will get better and the yield per square foot will increase while the cost continues to decrease. This wiki about solar
Re:Night time? (Score:4, Interesting)
The next step for solar power is storage? Good new from TFA :
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Yes, for these types of plants yes. The future of solar energy is to avoid having plants all together and harnessing local energy (e.g. your home). This is achieve with solar cells WHICH cannot be stored in the same way.
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Math (Score:4, Insightful)
If the eventual 500 Mw plant will provide power for 1.1 million people that means that the average person uses 455 watts. That is not a lot of power.
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Translates to about 330 kWh/month per person.
That's much more than my household is using now (about 350-400 kWh/month for the past two months; it's a cold winter). Yearly average is more like 300 kWh/month. That's like 100 kWh per person per month. Another 200 kWh/month left for use elsewhere: trains, restaurants used, office, school, etc.
Developed country; lights; TV; computers; washing machine; fridge; heating, water heater for shower; aircon - all electric.
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If the eventual 500 Mw plant will provide power for 1.1 million people that means that the average person uses 455 watts. That is not a lot of power.
I would say it is probably in the ballpark for a country where central heating/cooling isn't common, and many people may not even have refridgerators. The rule of thumb I use in the US is 1,000 to 1500W depending which part of the country we're talking about.
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455W/person is quite reasonable for a country in northern Africa. Obviously they don't have a lot of heating requirements in winter, and in summer their homes are built to require less cooling than those in other developed nations further north. Also keep in mind that it is per person, so if a family is living in a house their pooled usage isn't likely to be 4x as much as a single person living on their own.
Re:Math (Score:5, Informative)
It's not a lot of power by American standards but it seems totally reasonable for Morocco. When I visited a decade ago, electricity was used primarily for lighting, and virtually all bulbs were compact-fluorescent. Space heaters generally used propane or kerosene, not electricity. Power-hungry appliances like clothes dryers and dishwashers were not at all common, and their cuisine depends far less on refrigeration than ours does.
Export, not electricity (Score:2)
discrepancy in photos (Score:3)
The first and third photos show parabolic reflectors used to focus light on pipes running the length of the mirrors. The second photo shows a bunch of flat reflectors all focusing light on giant towers. Maybe there are also PV panels on the left side of the image--it's hard to tell.
Which is it? Or are there multiple parts of Noor, using different technologies?
Re:As long as you keep population constant? (Score:4, Funny)
The solar plant will not produce any more people, so your moronic attempt at first post is moronic.
Another Shining Example; (Score:5, Interesting)
An interesting tidbit. Despite its desert location, this plant needs 1.7 million m3 of water per year to keep the reflectors clean.
This CSP plant appears to be even more expensive than Ivanpah, which is still not running to its promised capacity, and requires the burning of natural gas keep operating. Has Ivanpah even reached much more than 50% of its promised output yet?
Re:Another Shining Example; (Score:4, Informative)
Meanwhile, India is planning to build a single nuclear facility that will produce 62 times as much power, for less than three times the cost.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Re:Another Shining Example; (Score:5, Insightful)
"An interesting tidbit. Despite its desert location, this plant needs 1.7 million m3 of water per year to keep the reflectors clean."
That is not interesting. That is meaningless. 1.7 million m3 of water per year compared to... what, exactly? How much water does a coal/nuclear plant use? How much to mine, refine and transport the coal/uranium? What's that calculated in litres per megawatt hour? What's the tradeoff in terms of emissions and waste?
Also, I found $3.9 billion per 160 MW peak is just for stage one; the total project is projected at $9 billion for 580 MW peak (and NOOR uses molten salt storage - so unlike Ivanpah, the NOOR plants will continue generating power at night). That rather alters the ratio, doesn't it.
As it happens, the amount of water usage is apparently about twice that of a wet-cooled coal plant, though (1) only NOOR's first stage is wet-cooled, (2) the post-process water quality is also important and (3) really, a proper study would examine the complete life cycle of solar vs coal vs nuclear power generation including all ongoing costs (e.g. fuel, emissions, cleanup, etc).
This is supposed to be news for nerds, stuff that matters. I am unimpressed when people offhandedly mention a big-sounding number and then go on to make vague derogatory apples-and-oranges comparisons.
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Rather obvious, right?
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Offering a local environment of cleaner Air, and possible cheaper reliable energy, may attract additional people in the area. As well these people may be healthier thus have a better reproduction rate.
Or all that solar radiation might sterilize them!
Re: As long as you keep population constant? (Score:3)
/., where slightly more moronic is normal.
Context (Score:2)
>> provide 1.1 million people in Morocco with power and cut carbon emissions by 760,000 tons a year
The carbon emission of Marocco is 1.600,000 tons, btw, so this is half!
>As long as you keep population constant?
You just need to increase the number of solar panels at a similar rate.
Re:Context (Score:4, Informative)
Actually, it's a solar thermal plant. So it works in the dark too. Morocco doesn't need a lot of heating, but in some parts of the world it can provide carbon free heat too.
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Well then, that's the problem. God only wants us to produce energy via fossil fuels. The use of non-CO2 emitting fuels is evil Communist plotting. WE should immediately execute anyone who wants to use any source of energy other than oil, they are subhuman fiends. We should pass a law allowing the good citizens of this God-fearing country to anally rape anyone who dares even think about solar panels. Solar panels are Satan's work, and only the righteous use of oil and coal forever can keep the forces of wick
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Why was this modded down? It's true [rawstory.com]
"The wicked and lazy master was the one who buried his talent in the ground and didn’t do anything to multiply it... That’s essentially what those who say we need to stop using oil, coal and natural gas are telling us to do. Just leave those resources buried in the ground, rather than pulling them out and multiplying their value for human benefit."
Re: Context (Score:2)
And you misquoted that passage significantly. Idiot.
The misunderstanding of the parable is understandable.
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You do realize that God's real plan is to cover up the whole dinosaur thing by making us burn all the evidence?
You're such a pawn.
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And where have you seen social conservatives come out against renewables qua renewables?
Re:Total Carbon? (Score:5, Funny)
I would like to know How many trees will need to be knocked down to build the solar farm.
Read the story, it's in Morocco, a place renowned for it's abundant forests.
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Trees???? A major part of Morocco is in the Sahara Desert!
Or are we building power plants out of wood these days?
How much carbon does it take to make a fossil-fuel boiler, ship it, set it up?
We're actually not talking much difference, anyway - this is not a photovoltaic solar farm, it's a heat-converting facility. Same as coal or oil based generating systems, but without shipping in coal or oil to keep it going. You can do an awful lot of maintenance if you don't have to budget for fuel or fuel-shipping cos
Re:As long as you keep population constant? (Score:4, Insightful)
What does it matter if population changes?
The only things that would invalidate the numbers are if the same number of people started using more or less electricity, or competing electricity production methods started producing less carbon.
If these things did not change and Morocco's population doubled this year, the plant would still provide 1.1 million people power and cut carbon emissions by 760,000 tons/yr compared to whatever production method was being compared here.
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Obviously if 1.7 million people all try to get electricity from this solar plant, all the light will be sucked out of the sun and the sun will become a black hole killing all life on earth.
Orrrrrrrrr! The other .6 million people will get power from gas or coal or nuclear or whatever, Instead of using coal to produce 700MW of power and 1064000 tons of carbon, the end result will be using coal to produce 200MW of power and 304000 tons of carbon, a reduction of 760000.
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You might think that the unit "(mega)people" is standardized, but in fact there's still quite a difference between an American person and an African person [a bit like swallows, I guess.] Concretely, an American uses 12,954 kWh per year[1], while an average Moroccon uses 875 kWh. Thus, the electricity used by 1.1M Moroccons equals the electricity used by 70 thousand Americans. So, while the unit might sound like everyone can relate to it, it's pretty horribly inaccurate.
The Computerworld article doesn't ev
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If you have 1.7 million people and they need 700MW of power and you're still only producing 500MW of power, you have a problem.
It's not a big problem, though. Just add 200MW more power generation, if you feel the need to do so.
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If you have 1.7 million people and they need 700MW of power and you're still only producing 500MW of power, you have a problem.
...
No you have not. The power plants producing power for the actual living 1.1 millions do not magically disappear and are still capable of producing the power for the suddenly popping up 0.6 million
Also it is not unheared of that you can upgrade a plant to produce more power or add a second plant.
Finally: what would you do in a situation where the solar plant does not exist and y
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"Solar typically supplies slightly less often than wind, at least in Europe,"
Err, Morocco is in north Africa you halfwit.
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To his defense, I'd point out that Europe is the most likely customer for North African power, and Spain is quite close to Morocco, plenty close enough for power transmission, assuming that it was worth it to do so.
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Yes, but morocco is on the border of the Sahara desert. I don't think there'll be many problems with sunlight during the day so his comparison with overall european effectiveness of solar power is idiotic.
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heck depending on the config of these things they could get pocket money by renting the ground below for parking (just have one end for car parking and the other end for camel parking)
Re:But when ? (Score:4, Informative)
So these types are systems are interesting in the long run only if the energy storage question is answered, permitting a shift between the time the solar panels are producing and the when the energy is consumed. So to me the big "Green" energy question is not Wind or Solar or whatever your favorite renewable is, but how to store large amount (We're talking GWh at least on the scale of a country) energy and release it when needed
D.
If you read TFA* you would see that this is a solar/thermal and not solar/voltaic power station and that there is energy storage via thermal mass already built into the system.
*You did read TFA didn't you?
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*You did read TFA didn't you?
Your UID is lower than mine, but I'm going to throw out the obligatory "You must be new here." anyway.
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pretty sure it's in the desert, 0 vegetation there.
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Only to environmentalists. To the rest of us, at best they're illustrations that life can hang on in pretty tough conditions.... but 500MW is more useful than 10 square miles of desert crust any day of the week.
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Deserts in the US are rather rich biomes.
Whose to say this won't make it richer? The shaded areas under the collectors might provide micro-climates well suited to some, shade-preferring desert species that don't generally do well on account of the general lack of shade.
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So they're destroying 6,178 acres of vegetation and covering it with solar panels and/or other collectors, which are made from caustic chemicals and other non-biodegradeable materials, in order to generate power.... How is that "green"?
Until you compare that 6000 acres with the equivalent area effected by a coal mine or a uranium mine or a bunch or natural gas wells, plus all the area needed for the ancillary equipment to process and supply those fuels to their respective power station types, then your complaint of this solar plant not being green is meaningless.
Care to try for round 2?
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Not trying to troll, but how much acreage does it take to get the equivalent output for a coal, nuke, or natural gas plant/wells? My knee-jerk guess is that it's a lot less, but I don't know.
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But things like coal, oil, natural gas come from underground.
Most mining is now strip mining, so anything that has to be mined automatically loses. All three of these are also sequestered carbon; when we produce them, and then burn them, we cause ourselves problems related to CO2 release. Natural Gas production is now predicated upon fracking (we otherwise have already hit peak natgas, in terms of just getting it out of the ground as opposed to making it) which has its own severe problems, not least being based on injecting refinery wastes into the ground instead of
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Sure, that's easy... I did not say that traditional energy sources had a zero footprint, they do have a footprint. But things like coal, oil, natural gas come from underground. Most of the refineries, processing facilities and power plants are already in place. Mining more coal or extracting more oil to generate power will not consume much more surface area of the planet (zero in the case of existing mines and wells). Any expansion of solar will consume more surface area and destroy vegetation (even in a desert), unless we get smarter and utilize the roofs of existing structures....
By ignoring existing infrastructure you are already starting off with a false equivalence. You have to count everything in order to have a far comparison. And that also includes the byproducts of those power stations.
Anyway, I have nothing against solar, but it's not as "green" as everyone seems to pretend it is. Any source of energy has a "cost" associated with it. Even if you covered every square inch of the planet in solar panels, you still couldn't generate enough power to meet demand. Solar is great, but it's not the end-all be-all solution for energy. We need to responsibly use multiple sources. Coal, oil, and gas are natural products, btw. Wind is nice too, unfortunately the big turbine blades are killing a lot of birds.
You say you have nothing against solar, but you used "green" as a pejorative and as an absolute. And this comment about "Even if you covered every square inch of the planet in solar panels" is totally wrong. These calculations are easily done and the total area needed is less than 0.5% of t
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Even if you covered every square inch of the planet in solar panels, you still couldn't generate enough power to meet demand.
Last year solar energy passed the 1% of Global energy demand and when I look around me we have more than 99% of area remaining.
Have a look at this article, it explains world-wide demand is met by a surface area comparable to Spain:
http://www.techinsider.io/map-... [techinsider.io]
Re:Environmental concerns (Score:5, Insightful)
You are comparing a developing technology with a very mature (and still highly subsidised) one. Much of the investment in this plant will be paid back by exporting the experience, knowledge and technology developed for it.
Plus, Morocco can't just decide to build a nuclear plant. It has to rely on foreign assistance for the designs, the knowledge, the fuel, handling the spent fuel and the clean up. Moroccans see how much money they have to export to get the nuclear they do have and figure they could develop their own clean energy source and start having people send them money instead.
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Nuclear power: 500MW is considered a "small/compact" nuclear plant, costing about $1.5 billion with a footprint of a few acres with a lifetime of approx. 40 years.
So where did you get your costs from? My quick google pops up the current cost of a nuke plant as up to $9B nowadays.
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Nuclear power: 500MW is considered a "small/compact" nuclear plant, costing about $1.5 billion with a footprint of a few acres with a lifetime of approx. 40 years.
So where did you get your costs from? My quick google pops up the current cost of a nuke plant as up to $9B nowadays.
Regardless of the actual cost, a typical nuclear plant can output 20,000 GWh a year.
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Regardless of the actual cost, a typical nuclear plant can output 20,000 GWh a year.
And what would a country like Morocco do with so much power?
Solar energy Spills (Score:3, Interesting)
Nuclear waste and Accidents remain a problem, perhaps even an increasing one in the days of terrorists and unstable gov't. Sure maybe in the US this is a lower problem, not negligible, but where does a small country park its waste?
When there's a huge solar energy spill it's called "a good day."
Economics of solar vs nuclear (Score:5, Insightful)
Nuclear power: 500MW is considered a "small/compact" nuclear plant, costing about $1.5 billion with a footprint of a few acres with a lifetime of approx. 40 years.
A nuke plant will cost far more [psr.org] than what you are claiming. Costs currently are running between $5000-8000/KW. And that is just to build it - you didn't consider operating costs at all which are far more substantial for a nuke plant than a solar one. The waste disposal alone is a huge cost that doesn't exist with solar.
Why the hell are people investing in solar? The economics make absolutely no sense whatsoever.
Really? You can't figure this out? Solar has no failure modes that can render a location uninhabitable. Solar has no serious fuel waste disposal problem. Solar has no weapon proliferation risk. Solar is insurable by private companies rather than nation states. Solar doesn't require getting fuel from elsewhere. Frankly solar has quite a lot to recommend it over nuclear in many (though not all) cases. Nuclear has its advantages but let's not pretend that it doesn't have some very substantial drawbacks.
Re:Environmental concerns (Score:4, Insightful)
Solar power: 6,178 Acres to generate 500MW and will cost nearly $10 billion dollars and has a lifetime of approx. 15 years.
Nuclear power: 500MW is considered a "small/compact" nuclear plant, costing about $1.5 billion with a footprint of a few acres with a lifetime of approx. 40 years.
Why the hell are people investing in solar? The economics make absolutely no sense whatsoever.
So tell me, how are solar sales going in the town of Chernobyl? Oh, that's right, I almost forgot. The ground is still fucking glowing there.
Oh and speaking of economics, let's not forget about the Chernobyl Shelter Fund, which drove over three dozen countries to become members or contribute over a billion fucking dollars just to try and build a new cover for the damaged site.
In case you needed a rather obvious reminder as to the benefits of solar. We don't have to talk in measurements of half-lives or billions of dollars when humans fuck up, which is only a matter of time.
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Trotting out Chernobyl as a reason for not building modern nuclear plants is as dumb as using the Hindenburg as a reason to not build 787s.
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You're forgetting about politics, and the other human factors that are involved here. It's more than about pure economics.
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"Why the hell are people investing in solar? The economics make absolutely no sense whatsoever."
For the one that lacks the knowledge, maybe.
Does Morocco have land to spare? By spades.
Does Morocco have sun to use? By spades.
Does Morocco have Uranium to use? Not at all.
Well, in fact Morocco *does* have plenty or Uranium reserves but being Sun renewable it makes all strategic sense to rely on solar and sell Uranium to other countries or even sit on top of it waiting for oil to be on shortage (but if too long,
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Nine billion dollars and ongoing maintenance costs is free energy, lol.
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Wow, you need to disturb a lot of habitat to make that happen. Even in the desert.
The sand fleas will be crushed. No, literally, they will be crushed. Seriously, desert is notable for hosting minimal quantities of biomass. Sure, we could wipe out some inconsequential species. That would even be sad. But I think most of us would trade some obscure lizards and bugs for clean power... which has serious positive ramifications for protecting habitat for many more species.
Ideally we'd mandate if not PV installs then at least proper solar siting for all new construction worldwide, which would l
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This is in California, where the land is probably 10x as valuable. Also about 10 square miles of space, maybe 5 square miles of solar cells. Another three of four square miles of solar cells 5 miles ESE of this spot.
https://www.google.com/maps/@3... [google.com]
This is desert. Deserts will be covered on solar cells within 20 years.
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Based on their own numbers, they would have been better off putting PV panels on already existing buildings. 1/10 the cost (assume $1/watt for panel and $1/watt for installation).
This is $20/watt with generous rounding.
I'm betting this was a typical humanitarian project in Africa. Every government official had to be bribed and every high official's nephew put on salary, in order for the project to go forward.
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And it would be fairly simple tech to increase the reserves to cover the whole night.
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