Solar Collectors Covering 0.3 Percent of the Sahara Could Power All of Europe

Empirical claims of .3 percent look great on paper. The reality of line loss (I squared R) prevents outsourcing our energy production. Nuclear is the answer. To bad the U.S. sold it's ability to build reactors to the French (Areva) and the Japanese (Toshiba and Mitsubishi).

If you think we're not building nuclear in America because we sold the technologies then you don't know much about American politics.

Anyway, this does sound like another pipe dream.

Power transmission losses are a deal breaker as "nonsquid" suggests. Also, considering the Sahara covers approximately 3.5 million square miles, "only" 0.3% of it translates to over 10,000 square miles of collectors! I'm sure that environmentalists will welcome this intrusion into the sensitive ecosystem. Not.

NonSquid,

Super Conducting Cables which function losslessly, require 150x less copper to manufacture, and can be run underground, could transmit all of the power generated no problem. The article did refer to these as a part of the plan it seemed to me when the word "High Voltage Underwater Cables" were used. Either way, Super Conducting Cables are being rolled out in test segments in Japan, and elsewhere.

How To send electricity across the continent, virtually For Free
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www.maybememe.com/post/112339134/how-to- send-electricity-across-the-continent-virtually

In addition - 400% of Today’s Global Power will come from Solar by 2050

Cost per 1W of solar panels
1970 $100.00
1980 $28.50
1990 $8.50
2000 $3.00
2010 $1.00 (equivalent to CONG retail electricity)
2020 $0.30 (cheaper than CONG wholesale electricity; these version 2.0 technologies are already visible)
2030 $0.10
2040 $0.03
2050 $0.01

Looking at that price cheapening trajectory, it is quite obvious that solar power replaces every other energy source on the planet, and enables every single human on the planet by 2050 (10B – 12B) to be affordably energized to the same level as today’s Americans.
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www.maybememe.com/post/91127514/could-renewables-supply-40-percent-of-global-power-by

Link broke: Please find it patched up below.

How To send electricity across the continent, virtually For Free
-
www.maybememe.com/post/112339134/how-to-send-electricity-across-the-continent-virtually

neat idea.

I just hope that those high voltage lines are secure enough so crisis doesn't cause them to cook huge parts of the meditaranean.

I wonder how the Europeans would feel about being dependent on power lines that cross national borders of African countries. As an American, I would be less than enthused about relying on a power line running hundreds of miles into Mexico despite our fairly cooperative relationship with the country. The EU should be concerned of what a political shift in a Saharan country could do to their energy security.

I just guess that developing the more efficient solar pannel is a key for the future's renewable source.
The efficiency that solar panner is able to generate power is quite low at the moment.

To maybememe,

Projected future solar cell costs look great on paper. The reality of inverter switching losses, and battery storage/power density kills solar. As far as super conductors, the cooling cost for "high" temp super conductors and all the silver metal used as sheathing kills super conductors.

Nuclear is the way.

Nuclear is ONE way, but the simple fact is that moving from one non-renewable resource to another is just forestalling another crisis down the road. Still a push on recycling nuclear materials and getting more energy out of untapped ones could buy us time to get a better system in place. The simple fact is that we will have to start producing all of these "cleaner" technologies (solar, wind, tidal, nuclear) and we really needed to start doing it yesterday. There is a year long wait for solar panels in most parts of the United States. It isn't that the demand isn't there, it is that the infrastructure isn't.

So for me the biggest pipe dream in this article isn't the disruption of the environment (I have been to the sahara, and disrupting 1% might actually improve things), it isn't distribution (whether it is superconducting lines or electrolysis to break water down into hydrogen to ship along pipelines, there are solutions in the works, besides we have oil lines traversing countries run by warlords, we have dealt with these issues before), it is that fact that I doubt by 2050 10,000 square miles of solar panels WILL be built, and by then the climate will have already shifted the magic four degrees anyway.

Spain is already moving in this direction. Learning from the design flaw in the first solar reflector power station made in the US, one Spanish city has built a solar reflector system that stores heat to generate power even on cloudy days. That Spanish city is already generating 10% of their daytime electric needs from a solar reflector. A second improved solar reflector power plant is being built. The second solar reflector power station will store enough solar heat to generate electric power at night. Ten such plants would generate all the electric power that this city needs.

One USAF base already has enough solar panels to generate 10% of base needs. The US government is planning upon expanding number of solar panels until the base has enough solar panels to generate 100% of the base electric needs.

Another solar reflector power plant is being built in the US south west that will store solar heat to power the electric power plant both day and night.

Right now France exports 90% of the electric generated by French nuclear power plants to other parts of Europe. In time Spain could build enough solar power plants to power all of Spain and have electric power to export.

Germany has already designed a test solar powered hydrogen plant, being built with petrodollars, to prove that any Arab countries can produce hydrogen, store liquid hydrogen, and then ship the hydrogen (as a replacement for liquidized natural gas) to power Europe.

A cost effective solar powered desalination plant has already been built in a Arab country. A second such plant, 10 times the size of the first solar powered desalination plant, is being built by a Arab country. The desalination plant will be the large enough to provide enough drinking water for a city of 100,000 people.

Ellen

NonSquid,

Inverters only matter if you are switching from DC to AC. Plenty of appliances now use DC.

Inverter efficiencies are radically improving through the newer approaches of having inverters in parallel, ie for each panel, instead of in series.

The lithium-air batteries will be at least 10X as dense as current batteries.

And there are myriad ways of storing solar aside from batteries, ranging from pumping hydro back up a hill and then running it down when needed in standard hydro mode, to flywheels to molten salts.

Do you want to discuss the fact that nuclear power plants produce waste regardless of the efficiency of fuel usage? Or the impracticality of nuclear for the rural Global South whom require major grid infrastructure for any type of centralized power generation?

Solar is perfect for incremental rollout in small town/village micro-utilities where at least half of the world still lives.

In addition, given that the nuclear club is quite limited in membership, it won't go anywhere in the Global South.

Superconducting cables are not yet economical, but the trends in understanding how it works are quite powerful.
The recent developments with new materials is quite promising for both understanding HTSC as well as engineering materials with the desired properties.

This is absolute nonsense and quite insulting. where is the sahara desert? from my little geography it is in Africa. Where do we have energy problems? I guess it is not in Europe. Energy is under developed in Africa and most developing and so called third world countries.
If you can fore-see the energy potential of the Sahara desert which does not belong to Europe why should it be used to the benefit of Europe. Why cant the idea be sold to Africa to solve its energy crisis and we may benefit from it as well.
This is amazing. Assuming some one comes up with an idea to use abandoned land in Europe(if there is any) to power the whole of Africa and pay Europe $10^20, that would be unacceptable.
I can understand the idea of the project, I admire it and I think it would be a great achievement, but I also think it is just too selfish.

Unless there is a MAJOR breakthrough in technology, solar power is NOT the answer. Nuclear FUSION IS the answer. How much are we spending to develop this technology? Jack Squat.

We are spending 100 fold on global warming nonsense than we are on actually solving the worlds energy needs. There will be 9 billion people by 2050. Today, we can't produce enough food to feed 6 billion. How much more land will be "eaten" by urban sprawl into farm land over the next 40 years?

Reads like a warm fuzzy novel. Reminds me of the flying cars parked in every households driveway. Back in the 1950's they were pictured in Pop-Sci mags. History has a real firm hand in slapping the world back to reality. Like is mentioned, the USA is turning it's PC back, away from the Nuke option.

Hiroshima has endlessly been thrown in the face of the USA's gullible masses. BTW anyone seen the latest City of Hiroshima? Seems like the decimated forever, barren earth polluted by radioactivity for hundreds of years, was slightly in error. Like many 'Consensus'.. past and present.

Come to think about it, the nukes could have a similar effect on many cities today...improving them... after the cleansing.

As an average, middle class homeowner, I have been using and experimenting with common market available, Solar panels since the 1970's (as financial reality permits). Much ballyhooed, advertised outputs are theoretically possible...... In outer space, closer to the sun, if held in perfect orientation.

I can afford Nuclear, Hydro, and fossil fuels every time, unless of course, 'The Great Provider of Massive World Government', taxes the Rich to give me free or low cost energy.

P.Eng/nosquid,

Green is the way. Put that in your traditional heads.