One key motivator for Morocco to seek alternatives to Oil, is it's neighbor and arch enemy Algeria. Think of it like USA vs Russia and their race to be the Nr 1. All the advancement in telecommunication, Space, Robotics..etc are partly due to this race. Algeria actively supports separatists in the Sahara (Polisario front) for independence. Algeria was a very rich country until the recent demise of Oil price. Morocco has to compete with a neighbor with a very big budget and a military that is buying more and more sophisticated equipment and arsenal. Alternatives had to be found. So for energy, independence is a must have for Morocco, dictated by a geo-political environment that is not stable and very volatile.
I wonder if the cooling it surely provides to the ground under the reflectors would make the land retain more water and be hospitable enough for plants to eventually start growing there.
I don't know about cleaning but the desert sand seems to have little effect on the mirrors:
"Regarding the irreversible degradation on relative specular reflectivity of exposed mirrors on natural aging site, relative low loss of about 0.4%, on average, was recorded after more than 360 days of exposure. This low degradation can be related to the low wind speed on the region."
> Deserts kick up so much dust, I wonder how often they have to clean the mirrors.
Good job for phrasing that as a neutral question, rather than something negative and assuming like "This couldn't possibly work, don't they know that deserts are dusty?"
Well the panels are tracking the sun, so it would make sense to build in a wiper that utilises same mechanical motion. Possibly even use condensation - in the precise time of night at dew point, rotate the panel to a morning position.
surely there are some surface treatments that they can use to minimize the need. I would be just as worried about the abrasiveness of wind driven sand.
"When they are finished, the four plants at Ouarzazate will occupy a space as big as Morocco’s capital city, Rabat, and generate 580MW of electricity, enough to power a million homes"
The other top HN story is about a 1180 megawatt nuclear plant, which outputs about twice the power in a fraction of the space:
Looking at it charitably, you can make more money from renewable projects, if you have a bigger grid, as you can ship the excess energy on particularly sunny or windy days to neighbouring areas. So if the interconnects are non-existant or already used to full capacity, it makes the projects slightly less economically viable.
But since the spanish government recently launched a bit of a full-on attack on solar power, it's more likely to be BS, to pander to vested interests that the power will compete with.
Very inaccurate statement with some elements of truth, I'd say. (But then I'm not an expert, just an interested reader on the topic).
On the first point, Spain has not prohibited new solar projects. It has removed (even retroactively) most incentives to renewable energy production. This is in part because of the speculative bubble in solar investment caused by the previously existing incentives (production goals were overshot by a huge margin), but also, as others have pointed out, to pander to corporate interests (this is very clear in the way self-consumption is being penalized under new legislation)
As for interconnections with France, they have recently doubled their capacity from 1% to 2%. So the EU's 10% interconnection goal for all countries is still very far away for the France-Spain connection. I'm not sure about the reasons for this. There is on the one hand the very high cost of building connections across the Pyrenees (even higher now that they have to be underground due to environmental concerns); a traditional reluctance by France is also often cited, but OTOH I think France is much better connected to other neighboring countries, so I'm not sure what to make of this.
It's the "because" in the sentence that is completely wrong. It's Spain official policy to increase the interconnection capacity with France, due to the huge energy production overcapacity (over 200%) of the country. But it is mostly combined cycle and gas plants that concentrate most of the excess capacity and are way underused. See e.g. http://on.ft.com/1rt0XNG for more info. It's the use of all the gas infrastructure (including regasification plants, etc.) that Spain wants to "push" into Europe's market. The situation in Ucraine may well help with this, because of Europe's dependency on Russia.
Also "The EU has set a target of ensuring that 10% of each member country’s power can be transported abroad by cable by 2020." Is that all?
The governments of this world all seem to suffer from such blinkered short term visions. They can spend billions on a sporting event but a robust Europe wide electricity grid sourcing power from a sunny south...
The article talks about total capacity of plants being 580MW. If that would make Morocco a solar superpower, I am sure India and many other countries already have solar capacity more than that.
So.... if solar can power the world, as seems increasingly within the realm of not-being-crazy, does that mean that since we're using energy that is already under the ozone layer, that we'll also solve global warming?
This is just harvesting energy that's already here, in real time, right? It's not releasing energy that was created over millions of years in one concentrated burst as per carbon-based energy?
Or is much of this energy usually bounced back into space, yet with solar we'll be keeping it on terra firms?
The energy is converted to electric energy, but when you use it it gets eventually turned back into thermal energy.
In the extreme case you make it worse since the solar radiation that would have been bounced back by the 'white' desert is now absorbed by the 'black' solar panels, which convert some of it to heat and some of it to electricity which in the end also gets turned into heat.
Anywhere else but the desert, and the ecological impact would stop such projects. Its ironic, since the desert is a more fragile environment that most others. This project would likely exterminate many species and sterilize all the land under the mirrors. If anything thrived there, it would be completely unlike what is there now, causing an incalculable rippling ecological impact elsewhere.
But desert projects get a pass on all this for some reason. I guess because, people don't like to live there. Same reason fuzzy mammals get protected status, while lizards and worms get nothing - human preference.
Is it a concept or is it an actual project(are the still talking or actually building). Because I've heard ideas like this before( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desertec ) which abandoned quickly. IMO Decentralization is the answer not MEGAProjects.
This is no concept. CSP technology is quite real. Spain has the largest number of CSP plants in the world, with over 2GW installed to date. This would only be a quarter of that capacity, but the largest single plant.
From the article: "When the full complex is complete, it will be the largest concentrated solar power (CSP) plant in the world , and the first phase, called Noor 1, will go live next month."
"When they are finished, the four plants at Ouarzazate will occupy a space as big as Morocco’s capital city, Rabat, and generate 580MW of electricity, enough to power a million homes. Noor 1 itself has a generating capacity of 160MW."
I wonder at which point solar energy gathering will significantly influence local climate. As I understand right now we are far from that, but what about future trends?
You should read about the urban solar effects. Cities are warmer than the surrounding areas. Are you more worried about that than CO2 in the atmosphere?
Can we please ban from humanity any journalist that writes "will be able to power X homes" ...
Just give GW, it would be enough If you want to put to scale use something else (will provide the output of 1/2 hoover dams, will be able to supply 0.1% of US electricity or power 5000000 tumble dryers or 3 ATI cards) Homes just don't need electricity to exist ...
To be fair, they provided both metrics. I think when you say "500 megawatt" to the average person, they have no idea how much that exactly is. When you say "500,000 houses", they do, even if it might be somewhat inaccurate.
Agree that the power required for a home is variable and so it is a more complex measure but I think that something that can "power 1 million homes" means more to the average person in a measurable way than "XYZ GW".
To those replying that people don't know what GWs are - it's pretty sad, really. One would hope that in the XXI century, especially in a technological civilization of the west, every self-respecting human would know what a watt is. As it is now, even journalists don't expect anything from their audience anymore.
If you look at the economics of journalism, it's understandable why they write this way (the economics view explains most of the ways modern journalism is crap), but it's disheartening that nobody minds writing about "calories" (which should be kcal), or "horsepower", but watts need a "X homes" explanation.
[+] [-] Dinoso|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] adventured|10 years ago|reply
Their GDP per capita is around #100 in the world. It ranks below Jamaica, Serbia, Fiji, Namibia, Angola, Iraq, etc.
Their total GDP, pre oil drop, ranked them around #50 in the world, but they're #34 in population.
Before the oil drop they were a lower middle nation in terms of wealth, nowhere near rich.
[+] [-] nextos|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] oska|10 years ago|reply
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ouarzazate_solar_power_station
[2] http://www.worldbank.org/projects/P131256?lang=en
[3] http://www.nrel.gov/csp/solarpaces/project_detail.cfm/projec...
[4] http://gulfbusiness.com/2015/01/saudis-acwa-power-wins-1-7bn...
[5] http://www.acwapower.com/project/14/acwa-power-ouarzazate.ht...
[+] [-] adaml_623|10 years ago|reply
http://www.cspworld.org/cspworldmap
[+] [-] Asbostos|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] geon|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JDDunn9|10 years ago|reply
Deserts kick up so much dust, I wonder how often they have to clean the mirrors.
[+] [-] Luc|10 years ago|reply
"Regarding the irreversible degradation on relative specular reflectivity of exposed mirrors on natural aging site, relative low loss of about 0.4%, on average, was recorded after more than 360 days of exposure. This low degradation can be related to the low wind speed on the region."
Surface wear damage of glass solar mirrors in Moroccan desert environment: http://www.researchgate.net/publication/266078057_Surface_we...
[+] [-] nnethercote|10 years ago|reply
Good job for phrasing that as a neutral question, rather than something negative and assuming like "This couldn't possibly work, don't they know that deserts are dusty?"
[+] [-] TeMPOraL|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Keyframe|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dzhiurgis|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Shivetya|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] threeseed|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] melling|10 years ago|reply
The other top HN story is about a 1180 megawatt nuclear plant, which outputs about twice the power in a fraction of the space:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10450171
[+] [-] adaml_623|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] illumen|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wayanon|10 years ago|reply
- I'd like to know more about this.
[+] [-] ZeroGravitas|10 years ago|reply
But since the spanish government recently launched a bit of a full-on attack on solar power, it's more likely to be BS, to pander to vested interests that the power will compete with.
[+] [-] aldel|10 years ago|reply
On the first point, Spain has not prohibited new solar projects. It has removed (even retroactively) most incentives to renewable energy production. This is in part because of the speculative bubble in solar investment caused by the previously existing incentives (production goals were overshot by a huge margin), but also, as others have pointed out, to pander to corporate interests (this is very clear in the way self-consumption is being penalized under new legislation)
As for interconnections with France, they have recently doubled their capacity from 1% to 2%. So the EU's 10% interconnection goal for all countries is still very far away for the France-Spain connection. I'm not sure about the reasons for this. There is on the one hand the very high cost of building connections across the Pyrenees (even higher now that they have to be underground due to environmental concerns); a traditional reluctance by France is also often cited, but OTOH I think France is much better connected to other neighboring countries, so I'm not sure what to make of this.
It's the "because" in the sentence that is completely wrong. It's Spain official policy to increase the interconnection capacity with France, due to the huge energy production overcapacity (over 200%) of the country. But it is mostly combined cycle and gas plants that concentrate most of the excess capacity and are way underused. See e.g. http://on.ft.com/1rt0XNG for more info. It's the use of all the gas infrastructure (including regasification plants, etc.) that Spain wants to "push" into Europe's market. The situation in Ucraine may well help with this, because of Europe's dependency on Russia.
[+] [-] adaml_623|10 years ago|reply
Also "The EU has set a target of ensuring that 10% of each member country’s power can be transported abroad by cable by 2020." Is that all?
The governments of this world all seem to suffer from such blinkered short term visions. They can spend billions on a sporting event but a robust Europe wide electricity grid sourcing power from a sunny south...
[+] [-] bibinou|10 years ago|reply
Nice graphs on pages 13 & 14 of this presentation: http://www.siemens.com/press/pool/de/events/2015/energymanag...
> France-Spain power exchanges: balance France -> Spain of 3.6TWh
[+] [-] skbohra123|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vegabook|10 years ago|reply
This is just harvesting energy that's already here, in real time, right? It's not releasing energy that was created over millions of years in one concentrated burst as per carbon-based energy?
Or is much of this energy usually bounced back into space, yet with solar we'll be keeping it on terra firms?
[+] [-] kaybe|10 years ago|reply
In the extreme case you make it worse since the solar radiation that would have been bounced back by the 'white' desert is now absorbed by the 'black' solar panels, which convert some of it to heat and some of it to electricity which in the end also gets turned into heat.
[+] [-] JoeAltmaier|10 years ago|reply
But desert projects get a pass on all this for some reason. I guess because, people don't like to live there. Same reason fuzzy mammals get protected status, while lizards and worms get nothing - human preference.
[+] [-] awjr|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] the_rosentotter|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Bouncingsoul1|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] antr|10 years ago|reply
Some info: http://www.cspworld.org/cspworldmap
[+] [-] chillax|10 years ago|reply
"When they are finished, the four plants at Ouarzazate will occupy a space as big as Morocco’s capital city, Rabat, and generate 580MW of electricity, enough to power a million homes. Noor 1 itself has a generating capacity of 160MW."
[+] [-] snambi|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] r721|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] adaml_623|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|10 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] venomsnake|10 years ago|reply
Just give GW, it would be enough If you want to put to scale use something else (will provide the output of 1/2 hoover dams, will be able to supply 0.1% of US electricity or power 5000000 tumble dryers or 3 ATI cards) Homes just don't need electricity to exist ...
[+] [-] stingraycharles|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nnethercote|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 3stripe|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] trengrj|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TeMPOraL|10 years ago|reply
If you look at the economics of journalism, it's understandable why they write this way (the economics view explains most of the ways modern journalism is crap), but it's disheartening that nobody minds writing about "calories" (which should be kcal), or "horsepower", but watts need a "X homes" explanation.