Posts Tagged ‘solar energy’
[LINK] “Should we solar panel the Sahara desert?”
The Dragon’s Tales linked to a BBC feature discussing the idea of covering North Africa’s Sahara desert with solar panels, to generate energy for profitable export to Europe. The people interviewed, including proponent Dr. Gerhard Knies, seem at worse cautiously positive about the idea.
“Fifteen minutes after I learned about the nuclear accident at Chernobyl, I made an assessment of how much energy comes from the sun to the earth. It was about 15,000 times as much as humanity was using, so it was not a question of the source, it was a question of the technology.
“When the climate change issue became more prominent, I said we have to pull forward this solution, because it solves the industrial vulnerability problem of our civilisation, and at the same time, the climate vulnerability.
“My strategy was to look for amplifiers. A very good one was The Club of Rome, with its president, Prince Hassan from Jordan. We had a seminar with experts. We included European participants, but also people from North Africa, Jordan and the Middle East. They all said ‘Yes, that would be great for us to have such a thing.’
“We did a study so that we had numbers which are scientifically sound, based on the present knowledge in a clear way. We got support from Greenpeace and from several scientific institutions and big companies.
“We didn’t want politicians in the game; it should just be scientifically sound and economically viable. But politicians liked it, and when the Desertec Industrial Initiative launched in Munich in July 2009, we were flooded with politicians. When they see the potential for a solution they get interested.
[LINK] “Tapping the Outback Sun to Send Electricity to Australian Homes”
Australian solar farms are the subject of James Paton’s article in Bloomberg.
Broken Hill is known for its 130 years of history as a mining community. Now the Australian Outback city is home to one of the first large solar projects that’s feeding electricity to the country’s national grid.
The AGL Energy Ltd. and First Solar Inc. plant reached full capacity in October, sending 53 megawatts of clean energy to the national electricity market. It will produce enough power to meet the needs of 17,000 homes a year.
The Broken Hill plant has about 678,000 solar modules installed at a 25-degree angle, facing north. Those panels are wired together and connected to inverters that transform the direct electrical current that’s produced into an alternating current. That power can then be fed to the grid. The solar farm is linked to an existing substation almost 3 kilometers away through a 22-kilovolt transmission line.
In the national market, high voltage electricity is converted to low voltage, with distribution lines carrying the power to homes, offices and factories that use electricity for lighting, heating and powering appliances.
It works as a “pool”, or spot market, where power supply and demand is matched instantly. The national electricity market serves about 19 million residents and has 40,000 kilometers (25,000 miles) of transmission lines and cables, according to the Australian Energy Market Operator.
[LINK] “Solar Energy Is Cheapest Source of Power in Chile, Deutsche Says”
Bloomberg’s Vanessa Dezem notes the profitability of solar energy in the context of Chile.
Solar power is now the cheapest source of electricity in Chile, according to Deutsche Bank AG.
That conclusion is based on the results of an energy auction in October when renewable projects offered the lowest prices and won contracts to supply 1,200 gigawatt-hours of power, Deutsche Bank analyst Vishal Shah said in a report Tuesday.
That may lead to more than 1 gigawatt of new solar capacity installed in Chile this year, Shah said. It will help the country reach a target set in 2014 by Chile’s government of having 45 percent of its installed electric capacity powered by renewable sources.
Three solar farms offered to sell power for $65 to $68 a megawatt-hour in the auction, Shah said. Two wind farms bid $79 a megawatt-hour, and a solar-thermal plant with storage offered power at $97. Coal power was offered for $85 in the same event.
[LINK] “Morocco poised to become a solar superpower with launch of desert mega-project”
The Guardian‘s Arthur Meslen reports from the scene of a promising solar power megaproject in Morocco. Vast desert expanses ripe for solar power generation may be quite economically useful.
The Moroccan city of Ouarzazate is used to big productions. On the edge of the Sahara desert and the centre of the north African country’s “Ouallywood” film industry it has played host to big-budget location shots in Lawrence of Arabia, The Mummy, The Living Daylights and even Game of Thrones.
Now the trading city, nicknamed the “door of the desert”, is the centre for another blockbuster – a complex of four linked solar mega-plants that, alongside hydro and wind, will help provide nearly half of Morocco’s electricity from renewables by 2020 with, it is hoped, some spare to export to Europe. The project is a key plank in Morocco’s ambitions to use its untapped deserts to become a global solar superpower.
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. The mirror technology it uses is less widespread and more expensive than the photovoltaic panels that are now familiar on roofs the world over, but it will have the advantage of being able to continue producing power even after the sun goes down.
[. . .]
As engineers put the finishing touches to Noor 1, its 500,000 crescent-shaped solar mirrors glitter across the desert skyline. The 800 rows follow the sun as it tracks across the heavens, whirring quietly every few minutes as their shadows slip further east.
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.
[LINK] “Renewables to Beat Fossil Fuels With $3.7 Trillion Solar Boom”
Bloomberg’s Ehren Goossens reports. I would also add that other energy technologies should be taken into consideration–nuclear energy comes to mind.
Renewable energy will draw almost two-thirds of the spending on new power plants over the next 25 years, dwarfing spending on fossil fuels, as plunging costs make solar the first choice for consumers and the poorest nations.
Solar power will draw $3.7 trillion in investment through 2040, with a total of $8 trillion going toward clean energy. That’s almost double the $4.1 trillion that will be spent on coal, natural gas and nuclear plants, according to a forecast from Bloomberg New Energy Finance.
The figures show the traditional dominance of coal and natural gas suppliers will slip in the coming years as cheaper renewables mean developing nations can tap less-polluting sources to meet their swelling energy needs. The forecast from New Energy Finance also indicates that coal will remain an important fuel, suggesting policy makers must take further steps to control greenhouse gases.
“We will see tremendous progress toward a decarbonized power system,” Michael Liebreich, founder of New Energy Finance, said Tuesday in a statement as the research group released its findings in London. Despite this, emissions will continue to rise “for another decade-and-a-half unless radical policy action is taken.”
[LINK] “Australia’s rising solar power ‘revolution'”
Al Jazeera’s Royce Kurmelovs argues that, despite advancing (and indigenous!) solar energy technology, Australia remains over-wedded to coal.
Within Australia, the industry is supported through subsidies such as the Renewable Energy Target (RET), which requires the government to ensure that 41,000 gigawatt hours of the country’s energy is produced by renewable sources by 2020.
The other function of RET has been to promote both large and small-scale investment in renewable projects, which helped grow the Australian renewables sector to become a $20bn industry.
But with a government review of the programme and uncertainties around its future, large-scale investment in renewable energy projects such as wind farms has ground to a halt.
While no government decision has yet been made about the future of the programme, the uncertainty it created effectively caused the bottom to fall out from the industry, slowing its growth.
Meanwhile, smaller-scale investment – such as roof-top solar systems – has so far escaped the same fate as consumers who install such a system could receive an upfront payment.
[LINK] Two links on a potential solar power renaissance
“This is the highest efficiency ever reported for sunlight conversion into electricity,” UNSW Scientia Professor and Director of the Advanced Centre for Advanced Photovoltaics (ACAP) Professor Martin Green said.
“We used commercial solar cells, but in a new way, so these efficiency improvements are readily accessible to the solar industry,” added Dr Mark Keevers, the UNSW solar scientist who managed the project.
The 40% efficiency milestone is the latest in a long line of achievements by UNSW solar researchers spanning four decades. These include the first photovoltaic system to convert sunlight to electricity with over 20% efficiency in 1989, with the new result doubling this performance.
[. . .]
Power towers are being developed by Australian company, RayGen Resources, which provided design and technical support for the high efficiency prototype. Another partner in the research was Spectrolab, a US-based company that provided some of the cells used in the project.
A key part of the prototype’s design is the use of a custom optical bandpass filter to capture sunlight that is normally wasted by commercial solar cells on towers and convert it to electricity at a higher efficiency than the solar cells themselves ever could.
The rise of shale has posed a rare challenge to Middle Eastern oil, culminating in a global oil price war and moving OPEC members to slash profits to retain market share. But at a time when OPEC’s hegemony over the oil markets has been challenged, let us not forget there is another abundant natural energy resource the Middle East possesses – the sun.
The abundance of sunlight (and therefore solar power) offers Middle Eastern energy producers an opportunity to achieve first-move advantage in a market that appears to be the longer-term future of energy. In light of recent instability in oil markets, the importance of alternative renewable energies, particularly solar, has become all the more pronounced. The drop in oil prices has precipitated an efficiency rush in energy production in all producer nations. In the US, oil producers are leaving no stone unturned in the hunt to become as efficient and sustainable as possible.
[. . . T]he possibilities associated with harnessing Middle Eastern solar energy could be a game-changer. Solar is becoming much cheaper to invest in, and now has an established and ever improving infrastructure. Substantial investment in solar will act as a shield for the region’s more valued commodity; oil. Saudi Arabia alone for example, could have made $43.8bn in additional oil revenue in 2013 were it not for its spiralling domestic consumption.
The possibilities associated with harnessing Middle Eastern solar energy could be a game-changer. Solar is becoming much cheaper to invest in, and now has an established and ever improving infrastructure.
It also would have acted as a massive stimulus to the country’s finances. Earlier this year, Saudi Aramco, the state oil company, announced it would be making solar energy investments across the country in an attempt to diversify the country’s energy supplies. It is also expected to conserve the country’s oil resources primarily for export.
[LINK] “Solar’s $30 Billion Splurge Proves Too Much for Japan”
Bloomberg’s Chisaki Watanabe notes the excessive success of solar energy in Japan.
After spending almost $30 billion on solar energy in a single year and installing as many panels as exist in the whole of Spain, Japan is preparing to ratchet back its boom in photovoltaic power.
At least five of the nation’s utilities are restricting the access of new solar farms to their grids. Utilities say two years of rapid expansion has strained their capacity to absorb all the new electricity from sources that generate only when the sun shines.
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s government offered some of the highest incentives for solar in the world to build PV as an alternative to the nuclear reactors shut down after the meltdowns in Fukushima more than three years ago. That made Japan the second-biggest solar market, balancing a slowdown in sales in Germany and Spain, which once led the industry.
“Everyone was entering the solar market because it was lucrative, and that has strained the market,” said Yutaka Miki, who studies clean energy at the Japan Research Institute.
Japan’s trade ministry has approved plans for about 72 gigawatts of renewable energy projects since July 2012. The country installed almost 7.1 gigawatts of solar capacity last year, more than currently exists in all of Spain, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance. A gigawatt is about the size of a nuclear reactor.
A Bit More Detail 