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Morocco's Solar Power Mega-Project (theguardian.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Morocco, located along the northwestern African coast, is in prime position to take advantage of solar technology, and they've committed to one of the biggest such projects in the world. The city of Ouarzazate will host "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." It will be the largest concentrated solar power plant in the world. "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." The first phase of the project, called Noor 1, comprises 500,000 solar mirrors that track the sun throughout the day, with a maximum capacity of 160MW. When the full project finishes, it will be able to generate up to 580MW. "Each parabolic mirror is 12 meters high and focused on a steel pipeline carrying a 'heat transfer solution' (HTF) that is warmed to 393C as it snakes along the trough before coiling into a heat engine. There, it is mixed with water to create steam that turns energy-generating turbines."
AC a "medium-sized natural gas power plant." needs gas. Most nations like to export their own "natural gas" like products for value added hard currency rather than just burning it up locally.
Nations are finally waking up to the decades of petrodollar loans and exchange rates. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Long term domestic math on projects might reflect past issues with huge loans, crushing hard currency interest payments and needed support for a "medium-sized natural gas power plant".
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
The http://www.theguardian.com/env... has a link to
"Morocco: Works on World’s Largest Solar Plant Financed by AfDB Go Underway"
http://www.afdb.org/en/news-an...
breaking down the different phase funding AC.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
It has the advantage of not having to worry about where to store radioactive waste. Not to mention no meltdowns or radioactive leaks. So it's only half a Nuke plants output? Build two.
It by "natural", you mean bombs and grenades, yeah, it can get kinda rough.
It is being built in Morocco, not Syria.
Re 'tried and true solar panels" work during the day. The idea is to try and work around that night time traditional big battery storage issue with a 'heat tank containing molten sands that can store heat energy for three hours, allowing the plant to power homes into the night."
The main issues seems to be to try and get away from the "We import 94% of our energy as fossil fuels from abroad and that has big consequences for our state budget".
The cost of another fossil fuel project, the related imports and hard currency exchange should be interesting to see over the project.
The cost of batteries might have to still be reduced to become viable for big grid storage in different parts of the world. Another option is "demand response" and discounted tariffs to try and ensure people use energy during the day vs traditional demand peaks.
ie reshape midday power prices.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
I'm not exactly sure if you're being ironic or not so I'll proceed by assuming you're serious.
A battery or ultra-capacitor is simply a device that stores energy. A heat tank is also a device that stores energy. They're basically both batteries. The real question is which method is the most efficient. Likely, as they are using the sun to generate heat, it's more efficient to store that energy as heat before they need it.
Not that they wouldn't have thought about it, but wouldn't it have been better in that case to make it 50:50 PV:Solar Thermal or so?
The PV provides the electricity for the day time use, while Solar Thermal just stores the energy in molten salt. In the night, electricity is taken from the molten salt.
Isn't the price difference per watt is so high that it makes sense to have PV along with it?
rajmohan_h@yahoo.com
What's the ecological damage of mining nuclear fuel and building huge reactors and cooling towers? I don't oppose nuclear power but don't pretend it doesn't have problems. I don't understand why every time somebody builds a solar power system people crawl out from under rocks everywhere to attack it. Sure, solar power isn't a panacea but then nothing really is. All energy production comes at a cost both economical and ecological.
I'm guessing you meant 2011 instead of 2001. There have been bombings in 2003, 2007 and 2011. So yes they do have a terrorism problem but it is less that what has occurred in the US or the UK for example.
As for your friend, my condolences.
Not really. Heat can be useful on it's own. For example a co-generation plant in Australia uses low levels of heat to warm water for an aquaculture project.
Storing as heat gives you plenty of options of what to do with it, as well as potentially providing large scale storage for far more capacity than could be gained for the same cost with batteries or capacitors even if it is far more lossy than either.
Another example is offshore windmills producing compressed air stored in underwater balloons (or in salt mines on land). The storage cost is potentially dirt cheap which outweighs the very lossy conversion to electricity.
You probably know all this, but equating all of the above to batteries just dumbs the entire discussion down to "why not use batteries", which is not something for this time when batteries still suck (just a lot less than they used to).
Morocco: north west coast of africa. Dominant wind direction: west.
How often is there a sand storm anyway? Sandstorms are more a concern because they darken the sky then because of potential damage.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Pretty damn small, :D :D
So is a solar pant in Morroc, considering it is built in the desert
given that one nuclear reactor can substitute for hundreds of coal
It can perhaps Substitute *one* coal plant, not hundrets.
or solar power plants As the sizes of plants vary this is not a safe bet either
and one unit of nuclear energy requires thousands of times less mining than one unit of fossil or solar (for the panels) energy.
So you never actually informed yourself about how uranium is mined?
But you dare to give your uneducated opinion?
(*facepalm*)
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
When you're talking volume of nuclear waste, it's best to measure it in four dimensions.
I haven't run the numbers, but I'd imagine that solar thermal does pretty well in regards to waste and ecological damage.
Like most other energy plants, it's mostly concrete and steel. The HTF is some kind of synthetic oil that gets reused. If they reclaim the water from the steam turbine, the plant will use very little resources once it's finished. So right there, it's already beating coal, oil, and gas.
Mirrors would need repolished, but considering that could probably be done onsite, it would be using clean energy. Motors would have to be rebuilt occasionally. Electronics would have to be replaced from time to time. Any energy plant would require maintenance of some sort anyway, so it's not really much different than wind in that regard.
It shades areas of the desert, but not completely. I'd be willing to bet it has less effect on desert life in that area than a hydro plant would have.
It doesn't require rare earth metals like a photovoltaic setup would. There's no mining involved other than the steel and concrete (which any power plant would have plenty of anyway - wind probably more steel and less concrete). Glass isn't bad, environmentally speaking - heat, sand, and some common minerals. So there really shouldn't be much in the way of toxic waste, unless they're using a particularly nasty paint (those can vary widely in eco-friendliness).
I'd say this is about as eco-friendly as you can get for a power plant. Feel free to point out anything I missed, I just woke up.
Those who can't do, teach. Those who can't teach either, do tech support.