Egypt’S 1.8 Gigawatt Benban Solar Park Nears Completion
spectrum.ieee.org
spectrum.ieee.org
If there are any changes they are probably for the better though.
If the panels are high enough up to be able to fit a tractor/harvester under them, the cost of foundations and pillars is going to get high, plus the extra complexity of 'working at height' to install and maintain them.
Large parts of the deep Sahara is just... sand, and a few rock outcroppings. I'm sure there's some tiny microbiome I'm missing, but it ties anywhere on earth (except maybe the deep Antarctic ice sheets) for "completely devoid of life."
Any infrastructure requires some trade-off... but this really is a pretty good one.
It's interesting that they seem to be using lots of different types and arrangements of panels?
Are they using many suppliers to try to get competition? Or many different technologies to amortize tech risks?
Of course things like base load generation and you know...night time need to be taken into consideration, but I think it really puts it all into perspective. A few more years at their current growth, and renewables will be generating more electricity than coal globally. Coal is also decreasing which helps.
I used some data from here to make rough estimates:
https://www.iea.org/statistics/electricity/
I did this to make myself a little less depressed about global warming. Fight for renewables in your towns!
edit: oh yah, that would cost $26 Trillion...but that's for ONLY solar panels which isn't practical.
"China and India have accounted for 85% of new coal power capacity since 2005, according to the Global Energy Monitor report. China permitted construction for the generation of less than 5GW of coal power in 2018, compared with 184GW in 2015. India permitted less than 3GW in 2018, compared with 39GW in 2010. India has added more solar and wind power capacity than coal over the last two years"
Natural gas is some ways away from being overtaken by renewables, but trends need only hold for a fairly short period for that crossover to occur.
The future isn't all rainbows yet, but things do seem to be headed in the right direction. Economics strongly disfavor the carbon economy going forward.
https://www.pv-magazine.com/2019/06/28/los-angeles-seeks-rec...
$33 is under 1/2 the price of new coal generation. To the engineers who build this stuff it's all over - talking to them they seem to thing the long term price of generation and storage will drop to near 0.
Projects like this are contracted over fairly long initial periods to cover capital costs and so forth, but not so long that governments are locked into bad deals long-term. At the end of a contract period, a new deal is negotiated to continue operations unless it isn't beneficial to do so.
Solar plant operations and maintenance costs are relatively low compared to other kinds of generation, so it's unlikely that the plant will become defunct at the end of the 25 year period.
Solar panel performance at the end of a 25 year period will likely be between 90-80% of initial performance. This is well within what is required for useful economic generation. Most likely, a new deal with be made at lower prices because no capex is needed.
Panel degradation is relatively constant at ~0.6-1% per year. This means that a well-performing panel would be producing 50% of it's rated output after a century, or 36% with poor performance.
These are long-term solutions.
The cynic in me says no, we'll just see existing players exploit those countries, but the optimist in me says there's a chance that many communities could see an economic boost or even transformation if they can get sufficient energy exports set up.
If we could place a huge solar farm in the Sahara and find a way to transport this energy worldwide, I think it would be great for them. They wouldn't have to transport directly, they could create some sort of fuel that could easily be transported all over the world.
There are hundreds of ways forward to a sustainable future and the technology already exists, and the political landscape is getting better every day. People aren't just going to give up, they are going to keep complaining until something is done. The majority of the world seems to know what is going on and they are upset about it. They aren't going to calm done until we are on the right path.
If carbon prices became very high, Iron/Steel would be the same (although with high carbon prices, aluminium would replace many uses of steel).
I hope it was as competitive and efficient as the article alluded to but have my doubts.
It gets dark.
Source: I used to live in a middle eastern country.
In the day when its light again you take those resources offline. This is a really well tested system world wide.
https://www.google.com/maps/place/%D9%85%D8%AD%D8%B7%D8%A9+%...
Actually if you zoom out enough, it disappears...
My home still disappears at certain zoom levels, and I see the construction site instead - it was built in 2016.
The zoomed-out levels also have a ©2019 and not showing any signs of solar, while first modules went online spring 2018 [0]. Probably no big deal for google maps, but there might not have gone everything as intended, either.
This seems like it will likely meet that definition.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_structures_visible_...
Lots of land there... Seems ideal for further development and exporting energy?
Seems so, yes! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desertec
This solar park is 37 square kilometers in almost a square. Well over all those thresholds.
100km is where there's barely too little air to keep a plane up, and you have to be moving at orbital speeds. But you still need a lot of constant thrust to stay up there.
Even at 200km, your average object will fall out of orbit in a day.
At 300km you're reasonably stable, with about a month of orbit life if you don't boost.
At 400km you find the ISS, where orbit life is somewhere around a year.
There are a lot of milestones between 50km and 600km where you could pick any one and make a reasonable argument that it's the edge of space.
A watt-hour is a measure of energy. It measures the power used over time.
Giga is an SI prefix. 1 gigawatt is 1*10^9 watts.
It's normal to measure the output of power plants in megawatts or gigawatts.
I fear that large-scale asymmetric warfare will become more common, especially in the volatile Middle East.
Any drone big enough to carry 'small cluster sub-munitions' to do any sort of serious damage to a solar farm will be big enough to get noticed immediately by the military. Couldn't even dent 1% of the panels with what was used in Saudi Arabia.
You could wipe out millions of gallons/day of production with a well-placed strike, affecting the entire global market, while solar farms are much bigger (a hit will wipe out a smaller percentage) and the effects are more localized.
https://www.tarpsplus.com/blue-poly-tarp-sold-individually.h...
"3.5 oz. Per Square Yrd."
You have: 3 mi 4 mi 3.5 oz/yd^2
You want: kg
* 3688250.3
(Also, this plastic doesn't have enough tensile strength to support its own weight when lifted from the corners.)
I guess they could break the job down: use one team of 4 drones to lift multiple 1 square yard tarps.
Let's see, 12 square miles is roughly 37 million square yards. Multiplying by four they would only need about 150 million drones. Quite affordable for today's well-funded terrorist with an Amazon Prime account (as long as they choose 3-5 business day shipping instead of overnight).
https://cyberarms.wordpress.com/2010/04/28/the-weapon-that-d...
(Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joppenbergh_Mountain)