World's Largest Solar Power Plant To Supply Enough Energy For 1.1 Million People (computerworld.com)

Lucas123 writes: The world's largest solar power plant is now live and will eventually provide 1.1 million people in Morocco with power and cut carbon emissions by 760,000 tons a year. Phase 1 of the Noor concentrated solar power (CSP) plant went live last week, providing 140 megawatts (MW) of power to Morocco. Phases 2 and 3 will be completed by 2018 when the plant is expected to generate more than 500MW of power. The Noor plant, located in south-central Morocco, will cover 6,178 acres and produce so much energy, that Morocco may eventually start exporting the clean energy to the European market.

Comments

Re:As long as you keep population constant?

[Anonymous Coward]

The solar plant will not produce any more people, so your moronic attempt at first post is moronic.

Excess

[ledow]

"that Morocco may eventually start exporting the clean energy to the European market."

Question:

If Morocco is just across from Spain, why would Spain pay for the energy (i.e. cost of production, plus payoff of initial outlay, plus transportation, plus the company profits) rather than just build their own?

It's not like the two are on hugely different latitudes which greatly affect the amount of solar available, and the transportation losses, especially under 50km of ocean at best, must be quite substantial.

And... they're at the same longitude, so they have the same solar peaks and thus power-demand peaks, so it's not like they can supply power during the night when Spain's solar would be dead, or similar. And Europe is only a couple of timezones wide, so considering Spain is probably the least-cost option when it comes to transportation etc.

Not sure I understand that at all. Maybe they'd exchange a bit of power, for emergencies and peak-demand and backup and switchover and things, but are Morocco really ever going to be able to sell their excess to any country far enough way that they couldn't generate it themselves, or to a nearby country that could just do the same and probably have the same kind of excess power at the same times of day?

Re:Excess

[LWATCDR]

Maybe the price of land. Maybe Morocco gets fewer cloudy days. being that close to one another does not mean they have the same conditions, Maybe the cost of labor to keep the mirrors clean. And just maybe Morocco had the will to build it while Spain did not.
I am very sceptical of the claims of solar but this is interesting. I hope it works out well.

Re:Excess

[Anonymous Coward]

> It's not like the two are on hugely different latitudes which greatly affect the amount of solar available,

Google "Sahara"

Re:Excess

[bluefoxlucid]

It's like, 7 billion people on the planet, 742 million in Europe, 33 million in Morocco, and a 6,178-acre plant supplying 1.1 million people with electricity.

That space of land could feed over 6,000 people if properly arable, or house 2.8 million people. That second figure holds a lot of weight: to go all-solar at this efficiency, 72% of the land must be solar, assuming densely-packed apartments filled with families (New York apartment projects).

To supply power for Europe, you'd need around 4.2 million acres of land, or approximately 5.3 times the land area of Rhode Island. That's bigger than Connecticut; in fact, it's CT and RI put together. It'd be more than half the land area of Belgium, and more than a sixth of Portugal.

You can probably do it in half the space using parabolic dish collectors instead of photovoltaics. Nuclear takes a lot less, about 1/10 the land area.

Re:Excess

[spork invasion]

The solar plant is near Ouarzazate, which I estimate is about 300 miles from the southern tip of Spain. It's on the edge of the Sahara Desert, which should be a good location for more sunshine. Ouarzazate gets a little over 3,400 hours of sunshine per year while Gibraltar gets about 400 hours less. Also, as you go poleward, the sunlight is spread over a wider area, meaning that it's less intense at any given location. Gibraltar is at the southern tip of Spain, so this gets more pronounced if you go farther north. If you go north to Madrid, you can subtract roughly another 200-250 hours of sunlight each year while being nearly ten degrees latitude farther north. There's also a whole lot less seasonal variation in the amount of sunlight at Ouarzazate than at either location in Spain, making it more suitable for a constant supply of electricity that doesn't require being supplemented by something else.

The solar plant is actually at a great location, so it probably makes sense for Spain to by their electricity from Morocco than to build their own solar plant. In cold enough climates, the electricity demand might be high enough during winter that, if it can't be met with solar, it would be necessary to build another type of plant to supplement it or to buy the electricity from another country. It's much more cost-effective to have the plant in Morocco.

By the way, the original plan was to build the plant with European funding and supply the electricity to Europe, but the partners in Europe pulled out requiring the African Development Bank and the government of Morocco to save the project. Obviously the approach made sense to Europe at one point and, now that the plant is being built, might still be lucrative to them.

Re:Excess

[Scottingham]

I was going to say the same thing about nuclear. You are very generous in saying it'd only require 1/10 of the land area. A 7 core (with 1 gigawatt each!) facility in Japan takes up 1100 acres, with the majority of that likely being security buffers and whatnot.

Re:Excess

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, but you can't put nuclear plants on existing rooftops or cover parking lots with them.

It would take an area the size of Connecticut to supply all the energy needs of the United States, including transportation. We currently have an area the size of Georgia covered in parking lots alone. Do the math.

Nuclear is a dumb technology. It's old. It was a bad idea when it was new. It's an even worse idea now.

Re:Excess

[Hadlock]

Morocco is run by a Monarchy. Extremely powerful leaders make megaprojects like this a lot easier to steam roll over environmental studies/protests etc. Makes land aquisition, rezoning, funding etc etc a lot easier with a royal decree.

Re:Excess

[AK Marc]

it takes 6k acres to power 1M people. So it should take 42M acres to power 7B people.

You'd need 1/1000th of land dedicated to power production. The nice thing is, you don't need arible land to make power. Put it in deserts and such. The other thing is, that though you need 1/100th of the land area to power the planet, you could instead use 1/2000th of the water area. That may end up the better solution, as the napkin numbers I gave are based on the power usage from TFA (low for USA level over-consumption) and morocco level power generation (higher than you'd get in Alaska).

Despite your assertion, 5.3*RI sized plant to power Europe would be a good thing, especially if you are using Sahara land to do it. Land not used to grow crops, house people, or do much of anything.

Re:Excess

[LWATCDR]

"That space of land could feed over 6,000 people [farmlandlp.com] if properly arable, or house 2.8 million people. "
But it is not arable and no one lives on it.
I personally am pro nuclear and I am even getting optimistic about fusion thanks to the Lockheed High Beta reactor and the Pollywell.
BTW this is a thermal solar plant and not photovoltaic.

Re:Excess

[turbidostato]

"If Morocco is just across from Spain, why would Spain pay for the energy (i.e. cost of production, plus payoff of initial outlay, plus transportation, plus the company profits) rather than just build their own?"

What makes you think Spain doesn't have their own facilities?

With regards of why paying others instead of doing yourself, you could ask the same basically about everything else. And the answer is, of course, always the same: because of circunstances.

In this case:
* Morocco is at a lower latitude, therefore more sun.
* Morocco is less populated, therefore more land.
* Morocco has lower labor costs, therefore cheaper to build.
* Morocco has already built it so, from now on it's a sunk cost. Given that, about electricity, you basically use it or throw it away paying even a penny per kilowatt hour would rent more than not selling it, so that can undercut local production prices even more.
* And last but not least: basically because with electricity you use it or throw it away, buying and selling over large grids is an everyday no-event. Spain buys and sells from/to France and Portugal to stabilize its own grid. Morocco having the ability to enter that grid not only gives them confidence on their ability to grow in the future but will introduce euros into its economy since it will be probably net exporter in the mid term (being his electricity cheap and on surplus).

You are also wrong about Morocco being "just" 40km of ocean at best. That would put the electricity on Cadiz, at best. Santander, for instance, is another 1000Km to the North.

Re:Excess

[ComputerGeek01]

If Morocco is just across from Spain, why would Spain pay for the energy (i.e. cost of production, plus payoff of initial outlay, plus transportation, plus the company profits) rather than just build their own?

Firstly, Spain does have their own; one of their chief exports is renewable power into Europe. What Spain will probably do is take advantage of it's proximity to Morocco to establish a connection into their power grid for cheap. From there, let's say that Spain sells power to its own people for say 10 cents a KWH (completely made up figures) and it can buy power from Morocco for 8 cents a KWH (even if it's only during peak usage to keep their own equipment running at a higher efficiency) and sell to the rest of Europe for 12 cents a KWH, then it makes sense to buy from Morocco and increase their supply. With roughly 1/10th the per capita GDP of Spain and a similar GINI index rating, Morocco has an economic advantage over Spain in the labor market so it isn't hard to imagine that they can produce the same amount of power cheaper. Also, the only realistic route to sell power to Europe from Morocco will need to go through Spain, so if they wanted to be complete dicks about it Spain could leverage that in negotiations as well. Add into account any existing contracts\treaties that the other European countries have with Spain to buy power and it starts to look like the only outcome that makes any sense.

Re:Excess

[Teun]

Morocco has a total land area of 446,550 km2 (110 344 908 acres).
This plant occupies less than 25 km2 so there is space for a few more.
Remember this is part of the Sahara.

Re:Excess

[Teun]

Europe is more than Spain.
Spain has the available land and sun to build similar, as a matter of fact since 2007 they have their own thermal plant called PS10.
At the moment they have over 50 such stations of about 50MW each.

Re:Excess

[angel'o'sphere]

Erm ... you completely lost us at this: and the transportation losses, especially under 50kmof ocean at best, must be quite substantial.
The transportation loss over 50km is basically: zero

Why there are plenty of reasons to buy energy from Morroco that is cheaper than you can produce it at home is left to you to figure. The keyword is: cheaper.

Regarding neighbours: obviously the neighbours are customers until they have built up their own plants. A no brainer that the first who has such plants wins the business.

or to a nearby country that could just do the same and probably have the same kind of excess power at the same times of day?

Those countries don't exist. Look on a map. South of Morroco are only third world countries. East of Morroco the country already has a 1h - 2h shift in usage. West of Morroco is ... well, educated people call it "The Atlantic Ocean", you may call it: "water".

North of Morroco is Spain.

Selling power is for the customer likely more easy than building up his own plants. It is like you going to a gasoline station. It is cheap and convenient to fill your car there. Refining your own gasoline from crude oil would not be funny to do for your self. In a similar way Tunesia simply might run "some cables" over to Morroco instead of building its own plant (soon).

In the long run obviously most Sahara states will produce solar power and sell it to Europe and Africa.

Re:Excess

[RabidReindeer]

Of course, that's all moot if the land isn't arable without expensive water importation. Or even livable beyond nomadic population densities. Look at the maps and pictures.

You generate the power where people don't/can't live and pump it to where they do. Just like we do in the USA. At least when we're not creating new Superfund sites.

Re:Excess

[angel'o'sphere]

First of all: the world does not suffer from a lack of food. But from greed that prevents that food that is needed at a certain place is available there.

Secondly: That space of land could feed over 6,000 people [farmlandlp.com] if properly arable the plant was built in a damn desert. Hello!!!! Anyone at home? Solar plant? Hu? Mirrors! Hu? Morroco? Any idea where that country with that name is? Hello? Still no one awake or at home? Africa? A continent? Heard about it? Everything of it close to Europe is desert!! Called: Sahara. You can not be so dumb? Or can you?

You can probably do it in half the space using parabolic dish collectors instead of photovoltaics.
Wow!!! That is exactly why they use mirrors and not photovoltaics. It is even written in the /. summary ... (*facepalm*)

Re:Excess

[Bob the Super Hamste]

Sam Kinison put it best:

You live in a fucking desert!! Nothing grows out of here! Nothing’s going to grow out of here!Come here, you see this? Huh? This is sand, yeah it‘s sand. You know what it’s going to be 100 years from now? It’s going to be sand! You live in a fucking desert!

Re:Excess

[bluefoxlucid]

You don't need arable land to build houses. We have transportation infrastructure to move goods to wherever; I get my food from 3,000 miles away.

The question is: do you cut down 8,000 acres of old-growth, virgin forest land to build a new Olympic Stadium, or extinct 237 species of lizard and insect to build a new Solar installation in the desert?

Re:Excess

[angel'o'sphere]

Spain buys and sells from/to France and Portugal to stabilize its own grid.
No "country" in Europe is selling or buying power to "stabilize" its grid. That is an utter misconception. Power trading is basically done for monetary reasons only.
In most cases the deals are "years ahead" or "day ahead".
Power transfers that occur minutes ahead or "at the minute" or "at the second" are extremely rare. Non of the grids in Europe needs external "help" to keep it stable.
It is just a matter of "cost" if France e.g. runs its grid autonomous or buys cheap german wind power to fill up its pumped storages.

Re:Excess

[Alypius]

I'm curious to see the Environmental Impact statement from this project. The Greens in California would be howling over "delicate habitats" if this were tried here. But hey, it's not in one of their playgrounds, so, as Kos says, "screw 'em."

Re:Excess

[bluefoxlucid]

Comparison with arable land and with living space lets you identify how much land 6,000+ acres is. How about I just tell you I can build a more efficient plant on a span of 1,000 plutons?

Building in a desert has its own problems.

For reasons I've never understood, CSP salt towers are usually about 17% efficient; Photovoltaics range from 15% for your standard fare to 19% for top-end panels. By contrast, parabolic reflectors using a dish pointed at a small sterling engine mounted where a radio dish would place its satellite receiver have efficiencies as high as 31%. They're more maintenance (thus more expensive power) than a salt tower, and only generate during the day; salt towers might generate 1/4 or 1/5 as much power, but continue generating that output for twice as long, giving some night-time power and roughly half the total generation.

Re:Excess

[bluefoxlucid]

True, but the Government can declared that land "nature reserve." It's different when you build a gigantic industrial factory over the entire span of land, milling down trees and compacting the soil until there's nothing left.

We already lock up millions of acres of land as protected in the United States; since we see this as an important management action, it makes sense to position nuclear generation facilities in areas where we're semi-confident we'd like to protect that land. That is: treat protected land as non-binary, recognize land that we only barely accept for development (because of its importance as undeveloped land), and then put a nuclear plant there. Then the land is both protected *and* developed: it's left in its natural state, but used as a nuclear buffer zone.

This assumes the risk of a nuclear accident has larger general consequences than the (partial) loss of the protected land surrounding the plant.

Still, a 7,000MW plant takes up 1,100 acres; a 160MW plant takes up 6,100 acres. Every 25 acres around that nuclear plant represents one of those 6,100 acre solar plants; 6100 acres of land consumed by nuclear would represent almost 243 of those solar generation facilities.

So it would require 1/243 of the land area; and we can partially discount most of that area by declaring it nature reserve, with the discount relative to the degree to which we would have considered the land an important nature reserve otherwise.

Re:Excess

[bluefoxlucid]

Everyone's answer is to put it in deserts. Why don't we just cut down rain forests and put it there? The sun's better.

Re:Excess

[turbidostato]

"Spain buys and sells from/to France and Portugal to stabilize its own grid.
No "country" in Europe is selling or buying power to "stabilize" its "grid. That is an utter misconception. Power trading is basically done for monetary reasons only."

You say that as if they were two unrelated things. Hint: they aren't.

Re:Excess

[bluefoxlucid]

Everyone else is arguing that it's a desert and there's nothing there but sand. This thread is potato.

Re:Excess

[Anonymous Coward]

Thing about nuclear is with the subsidies it's already a balance sheet loser. Pretty obvious at this point PV has won out, it's at parity and getting cheaper.

Re:Excess

[Maxo-Texas]

A lot of the sahara desert is stony and not sandy.

Also, creating a huge shaded area should create an interesting micro-climate underneath the power plant.

Re:Excess

[Anonymous Coward]

You can probably do it in half the space using parabolic dish collectors instead of photovoltaics. Nuclear takes a lot less, about 1/10 the land area.

To make sure you got the maths right:
In that calculation, have you factored in the acreage made uninhabitable for 10'000s of years to come
by accidents that already happened? For future projections, have you used the accident rate of currently about
1 Maximum Credible Accident every 30 years? Is it still 1/10 then?

Re:Excess

[Anonymous Coward]

Chernobyl demonstrated that nature adapts reasonably well to nuclear contamination in the long run; the exclusion zone has been a boon for the local wildlife due to the drastic reduction in human activity in the area.

However, many power plants are situated near rivers for cooling, so a radioactive leak that gets carried downstream runs a higher risk of eventually running into a populated area or water source.

Re:Excess

[Smidge204]

You could handily generate all of the electricity we in the US need just by putting solar panels on roofs of private residences, and not even ALL of them.

When people like you do these kinds of calculations, they seem to get stuck on the idea that it needs to be homogenous. Saying "5.3 times the land area of Rhode Island" might be technically correct, but it's meaningless: That's *0.2%* of the entire area of the contiguous United States. When you spread it out - as is the optimal arrangement for solar power anyway - it virtually vanishes.
=Smidge=

Re:Excess

[kromozone]

The Desert Sunlight Solar Farm (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desert_Sunlight_Solar_Farm) is in California and produces 550MW. The Topaz Solar Farm (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topaz_Solar_Farm) also in California produces 550MW. CVSR produces 250MW, IVSP produces 99MW, MSS produces 265MW, and the Blythe Solar Power Project will produce 480MW when completed. So in a very small area of California, we have nearly two gigawatts of capacity, far more than this project will reach upon completion, despite the sinister machination of the "Greens of California."

Re:Excess

[bluefoxlucid]

Yes, but there are a *lot* of roof spaces.

The problems with deploying on roof spaces are numerous. Wide-spread management incurs higher total cost. Interference with roof operations (e.g. repair) increases total cost. Up-front costs are placed on consumers, instead of amortized through service from a generation facility (i.e. poor folk can't install solar panels; rich folk can, and *extremely* rich folk can front the money for installation of solar panels to supply poor folk). Up-front costs are higher in total, due to the need to shuffle electricians around. Regulatory compliance makes the ROI for any given individual low, as roof space is smaller. Regulations to minimize roof space exist because solar panels provide a serious hazard when firefighters try to vent heat and toxic gases via a cut on the roof.

The problems with deploying in wide area are large. Land use is inefficient. Transmission to point-of-use incurs more loss. Start-up costs and risks are both large, thus deployment is difficult to back.

When you spread it out - as is the optimal arrangement for solar power anyway - it virtually vanishes.

That's another way of saying, "You close your eyes and pretend it's not there."

When insulating houses with rigid foam paneling, builders frequently use thermally-broken fasteners. That is: there is not a continuous connection between an outside-facing metal surface and an inside-facing metal surface. This is because they use one nail every 6 inches, or 4,800 nails to fasten rigid insulation to wooden sheathing across a 30 foot x 40 foot wall. That provides a six square foot radiator plugged directly into your house by a distributed 0.7 square foot metal rod. It's not much, but it is a six inch metal bridge into your house; you have to blow enough warm air across that to keep that six inches of your wall room-temperature constantly, which means you lose quite a bit of heat (up to 10% with steel, much less with stainless steel) out that hole (for every 0.1kW, it's 72kWh or $10-$15/month of loss; it can near a third or more of a kW in extremely low outdoor temperatures).

Do you want to cut down 5 million acres of forest or 5 million acres of forest? For that matter, do you want to cut down 5 million acres of forest in one spot, or do this in little pockets and cut away another 3 million acres of forest so they don't cast shade on your solar panels?

Re:Excess

[Anonymous Coward]

No "country" in Europe is selling or buying power to "stabilize" its grid.

Right, the grids here are stable. As they should be, in industrialized countries. Stable grids are not hard to pull off. Spain may want cheaper power, Morocco may want to earn some money.

Re:Excess

[Anonymous Coward]

Morocco and Spain are close and yes, do have (to a certain degree) similar climates which why they produce the same crops and compete using similar produce, etc.
The area where the solar plant is built is pretty far south (not close to the Mediterranean) and is just south of the Atlas mountains so it is pretty arid and probably far less cloudy days to deal with. I guess it's like climates of New Mexico, Nevada, Arizona & California...close but have variants (mountains, etc).

Re:Excess

[Firethorn]

Also, creating a huge shaded area should create an interesting micro-climate underneath the power plant.

This. From my admittedly limited ecological studies, there's not a lot of life out in the 'high desert'. Instead, the life there tends to cling(relatively) to sheltered bits.

Increasing the amount of shelter could drastically increase the amount of life in the desert by providing more shelter. Much like how rather then disrupting and killing off wildlife, the trans-alaskan pipeline is often used as a travel lane and shelter by the caribou, moose, and such.

Re:Excess

[Anonymous Coward]

Go Morocco! There's no downside to this story, at all.

- It's an honest-to-goodness solar power plant. At scale. If we are going to start building green power, this is the way to do it. The design, build and operating experience has to come from somewhere;
- Morocco built this plant even after their European backers pulled out. That shows Morocco has some chutzpah. Good on them;
- The general idea of building solar plants in the desert and sending the power to more densely inhabited areas has been proposed before. Now we get a chance to see what that means in the real world;
- Morocco is a Muslim and African country and quite honestly, it's refreshing to see a 'Good News' story from that part of the world. Nice change of pace.

So I say, Go Morocco!

Re:Excess

[Maxo-Texas]

I thought that about carabou but info on it seems to be mixed on an ideological basis.

Here's some links on it.
Government
http://www.adfg.alaska.gov/ind...
Herds have declined a lot.

Hunters
http://www.adn.com/article/201...
Herds have declined a lot.

Liberals
http://mediamatters.org/blog/2...
Disaster! Woe is me! Caribous going extinct!

Conservatives
http://www.mrc.org/news/alaska...
One herd has increased!

Conservatives
http://www.heritage.org/resear...
Mmmm. Pipelines good! Jobs jobs jobs! Pipelines good!

The MRC seems to paint a good picture but then you see it has cherry picked one particular herd, the Central Arctic caribou herd, and ignored a huge decline in other carabou herds!

"In 1977, as the Prudhoe region started delivering oil to America's southern 48 states, the Central Arctic caribou herd numbered 6,000; it has since grown to 27,128. "

It seems to me that the pipeline's benefit to carabou is a conservative fiction. Grrr. I used to be very conservative from 1980 to 1992. It upsets me that so many religious people lie by commission or omission on the conservative side.

Re:Excess

[Jack Griffin]

That space of land could feed over 6,000 people if properly arable, or house 2.8 million people. That second figure holds a lot of weight:

It's in the fucking desert, where you can't grow food nor do people want live there.

To supply power for Europe

No-one stupid enough to suggest that. Until now...

Re:Excess

[Jack Griffin]

True, but the Government can declared that land "nature reserve."

And even better if there's a meltdown, because that will guarantee it stays a reserve for thousands of years (This is joke, I fully support nuclear energy)

Re:Excess

[angel'o'sphere]

A rain forest is called a rain forest because it basically rains there every day at least once.

So to use a small part of a rain forest for a solar plant you have to cut away a considerable big area (and convert it into a desert) around that plant, to prevent the daily rain.

Re:Excess

[Firethorn]

I thought that about carabou but info on it seems to be mixed on an ideological basis.

Except I was talking specifically about the effects of the pipeline. As your links state - there's many more factors than just that.

The pipeline didn't really affect them much at all. Certainly not negatively, on average.

You can't cite herd declines more than 40 years after the installation as the fault of the pipeline. Statistically speaking, pipelines are the least spill inclined of the common transport methods.

Re:Excess

[Maxo-Texas]

I don't think pipeline spills lead to carabou declines.

I do think MRC presented a highly slanted picture tho.

I agree there could be many causes for the overall herd decline.

If the pipeline provided benefits, they were overshadowed by other factors.

Re:Excess

[angel'o'sphere]

Your argumentation makes no sense.
Wide-spread management incurs higher total cost What kind of "wide-spread" and what kind of "management" do you think you need on roofs?
Interference with roof operations (e.g. repair) increases total cost.
Total cost in relation to what? Placing the same installation not on a roof, but on a "thing"?

Up-front costs are placed on consumers, instead of amortized through service from a generation facility (i.e. poor folk can't install solar panels; rich folk can, and *extremely* rich folk can front the money for installation of solar panels to supply poor folk). How is that different from building a coal plant (ignoring the fact, you have already enough coal plants and want to decomission one and replace it with solar power.

Regulations to minimize roof space exist because solar panels provide a serious hazard when firefighters try to vent heat and toxic gases via a cut on the roof.
Never heard about such a fire fighting technique.

Transmission to point-of-use incurs more loss.
No it does not. The line is already there. Or how does the roof, on which you place the plant, got its power so far? And the loss is the same, regardless if you draw power from that transmission line or if you feed in power into that line. Why is one acceptable for you and the other not?

No idea what you want to tell us with your insulation example. Obviously an insulation made that way would never get approval in Germany.

Re:Excess

[angel'o'sphere]

You say that as if they were two unrelated things. Hint: they aren't.
Of course they are.

Learn how grids work and you see ... no idea why you think there is a relation between the need of stabilization and power imports versus costs.

Hint: importet power can not be used to "stabilize" anything. It does not react on supply and demand as it gets fed in into a national grid via transport grids, and not via distribution grids.

Re:Excess

[AK Marc]

The sun is better in the desert, and you can't use the land in the desert for much else, unless you move 10M people there, pump your water in from other states, and make movies there.

Re:Excess

[Firethorn]

If the pipeline provided benefits, they were overshadowed by other factors.

Just remember that all I said was that the pipeline was 'often' used as shelter or movement. You talk about the MRC overstating things - Some environmentalists predicted that the pipeline would drive the caribou to extinction(back when the pipeline was built). Hyperbole much?(not referring to you).

A thing about solar panels is that they cover far more area - the pipeline is basically about as wide as a two-lane highway. It's long, but very narrow. A solar plant would have panels all over providing shade. This might allow more like in the areas.

Re:Excess

[Smidge204]

Wide-spread management incurs higher total cost.

Solar PV has essentially zero maintenance cost once installed.

Plus, with the benefit of the power being produced where it is actually used, you eliminate the cost of building and maintaining the vast majority of infrastructure that would be required for a central plant.

On top of that, the people who install the systems reap direct financial benefits through lower utility bills.

Up-front costs are higher in total, due to the need to shuffle electricians around

I get the impression that you have no idea what you're talking about...

The problems with deploying in wide area are large. Land use is inefficient

Wrong. The land in question is already being used for something else: housing. In essence there is zero additional land use. It doesn't get more efficient than that.

Transmission to point-of-use incurs more loss

You're producing *at* the point of use. There is essentially no transmission required.

That's another way of saying, "You close your eyes and pretend it's not there."

No, that's explaining the difference between pissing in your cornflakes and pissing in the ocean.

Do you want to cut down 5 million acres of forest or 5 million acres of forest?

No, and I just explained why we wouldn't have to. I get the impression that you're either have no actual experience with solar power or you're being deliberately obtuse.
=Smidge=

Re:Excess

[bluefoxlucid]

Arabs don't exist, right. Neither do Egyptians. Myths of a fantasy land where people live in the desert.

Re:Excess

[bluefoxlucid]

The point was the desert is a highly complex and fragile ecological habitat. You don't just pave over it because there's nothing but dust and sand there.

Re:Excess

[dave420]

It's a useless comparison. I think you know that.

Re:Excess

[bluefoxlucid]

What kind of "wide-spread" and what kind of "management" do you think you need on roofs?

Cleaning them when birds shit all over them, cleaning them when there's dust on them, cleaning them when the rain churns the dust and bits of dead leaves into a mud caking, replacing burned-out panels, and so forth. You're supposed to inspect your rooftop solar array a few times a year--not very frequently--and inspecting 10 acres of panels scattered across hundreds of roofs requires one of two things: an outside maintenance man to drive from site to site (transit cost) *or* each homeowner to set aside tools and preparation time to perform the inspection themselves. Having those panels in one installation means your maintenance crew can handle it as one condensed block operation, which incurs less time waste; all things are produced via labor time, so time waste is the basic source of loss of wealth in an economy.

Total cost in relation to what? Placing the same installation not on a roof, but on a "thing"?

In relation to expending the same amount of labor, including all useful labor and all waste incurred, on completing all the maintenance tasks *plus* producing other useful goods and services. Instead of 10,000 hours spent maintaining solar panels, you spend 8,000 hours maintaining solar panels and 2,000 hours making high-tech footware, and in total you expend the same cost while coming out with more useful product.

How is that different from building a coal plant

It's not. If you ran your house off a coal-fueled dynamo in your back yard or a gas-line generator, you'd pay more, even if the generator were as efficient as the main power dynamo feeding your electrical service (minus the loss in transit). That's because you'd have to pay the additional for the shipping of coal (truck) or gas (pipeline) through a more complex, labor-intensive distribution system, incurring more labor time to distribute the commodity and thus requiring the payment of wages to that labor. You'd also have to pay the additional cost involved in many-small-parts manufacture over few-large-parts manufacture, and in maintenance of the system--maintenance which requires transit of the maintenance technician to all these scattered generation plants, and which has to happen in a frequency multiplied across the number of installations.

Never heard about such a fire fighting technique.

It's well-known.

As a common tactic among firefighters to contain incidents is by opening a hole in the roof for ventilation, Willette said, the density of solar panels can make it impossible for firefighters to create that hole.

And if the firefighter is opening up the hole from below and doesn’t know that solar panels are installed on the roof, that creates another shock hazard, he added.

Some municipalities allow covering one side of a gabled roof with no setbacks because the firefighters can cut open the other side of the roof; many municipalities require a three-foot setback from the edge of the roof.

No it does not. The line is already there. Or how does the roof, on which you place the plant, got its power so far?

Transmission of solar power from a roof to a house across a 8 gauge electrical line of a length of 30 feet from the panel to the electrical box does not incur as much loss as transmission of solar power from a solar farm across 400 miles of power line. At 345,000 volts, a line carrying 1GW of power across 100 miles has a loss of 4.5%; losses in the USA average over 6%. 8 gauge wire coming 30 feet down from the roof into your panel will experience a loss of about 2% if carrying the full load of a 6KW array; if it's carrying one phase (three wire: a 240VAC system with a center tap to the neutral bar, +120V connected t

Re:Excess

[bluefoxlucid]

Deserts are fragile, complex habitats.

Re:Excess

[bluefoxlucid]

Solar PV has essentially zero maintenance cost once installed.

"Essentially zero" turns out to be non-zero, and the lag and lead costs of each maintenance event are multiplied by the number of installations. Now "essentially zero" becomes "essentially millions".

Plus, with the benefit of the power being produced where it is actually used, you eliminate the cost of building and maintaining the vast majority of infrastructure that would be required for a central plant.

Except you still need that infrastructure to provide baseband power. If you generate enough solar to power the whole world 24/7, you need power storage, which is *also* cheaper centralized, and so you need a way to get power from all these spread out generation facilities to a storage facility. If you over-generate power, you're losing it and wasting effort building, installing, and maintaining solar panels; to reduce this cost, you need an infrastructure to move that power back and forth between generation cites--rooftops.

It turns out we already have that infrastructure, so the point on building it is moot. You still have to account for maintenance: is maintaining infrastructure cheaper or more expensive than installing and maintaining incrementally more overgeneration and storage facilities at every single individual home (because you absolutely need that infrastructure if even one home doesn't generate their own power)?

The land in question is already being used for something else: housing

Doesn't look like it to me.

Maybe you should try applying reading comprehension above the level of a brain-damaged retard. I suggest you learn to read white space; this may help when someone compares and contrasts two separate options by putting one in one paragraph and one in another paragraph. If that fails, you can always go back and use the grouped information to identify boundaries from their context."

You've done neither of these, but instead read a discussion comparing two different things in two different paragraphs each starting with a different name for the thing being described as if the attributes of each thing applied to one thing. For example:

Ducks are fowl. They like to fly, they eat fish, and they can swim in water.

Pigs are swine. They wallow in mud and eat god damn anything. Oddly enough, they can also swim.

Your response: "God dammit! Ducks don't wallow in mud; they swim on lakes!"

Go back to first grade and ask them to teach you to read. Really read. I understand they may need to bring in an army of special education professionals, but reading will change your life.

You're producing *at* the point of use.

This wide-area installation is not producing at the point of use, unless they need a huge amount of power.

No, that's explaining the difference between pissing in your cornflakes and pissing in the ocean.

When the statement, "When you spread it out", was made, you were describing pissing in little droplets all over the ocean, instead of pissing in one place.

Re:Excess

[bluefoxlucid]

It's a comparison to make scale. It's like when you compare radiation to the radiation output of a banana, since nobody has an understanding of radiation levels.

How much land is 6,000 acres? It sounds like a lot. Depending on how you think about it, it is or it isn't. It's a lot of housing space; it's not really a lot of farm land--it's enough to feed 6,000 people for a year. Honeybees can forrage 80,000 acres if they travel 5 miles from the hive.

That's a bit different when you scale out: powering Europe in this way requires land space the size of two U.S. states. In terms of arable farm land, it'd be enough to feed only about 4-5 million people (a small U.S. state like Maryland); in terms of housing, you could stick apartments for nearly 2 billion people in that space, although that's impractical (you aren't going to have one giant apartment complex the size of Connecticut and Rhode Island with no super markets or workplaces in sight). Of course we'd scatter these things all across the continent in little pieces.

It's a huge waste of land. I think you know that.

Re:Excess

[angel'o'sphere]

Depends on the desert what is there. Besides that, the Sahara is pretty big (IOW: no one cares)
And rest assured, no one paved the area where the solar plant was build, that would not make any sense.

Re:Excess

[AK Marc]

The Mojave? Yes. The Sahara? Less so. The studies done so far indicate that the shade these bring improve the habitat for the desert, not detract from it, as they would in a more plant-rich desert, like in the US Southwest.

Re:Excess

[Smidge204]

Okay, you seem to have a few problems going on here.

For one, I'm talking about Photovoltaics and you seem to be alternating between PV and solar-thermal. This should have been evident because the very first thing I typed was "Solar PV..."

I don't think I'm the one with a reading comprehension problem here. I suppose it's also possible that you simply don't know anything and can't tell the difference.
=Smidge=

Re:Excess

[bluefoxlucid]

Most of what I said is platform-agnostic. We happen to not put solar thermal dishes on roofs, but they still take up a lot of space and are still comparable to rooftop solar: rooftop solar still capitalizes on already-used land, and so doesn't have to be as efficient. It's the other drawbacks that come into play, which are the same if you're doing PV panels, burning coal, or running a nuclear ABWR; each technology and each particular mode of deployment has its own strengths and weaknesses in terms of start-up cost, fueling costs, land area usage, waste, and maintenance.

You said power generation at point of use frees us from infrastructure needs. Whether that's solar PV, solar-thermal, geothermal, gas line, or nuclear, the counter-argument I gave applies. Granted, you can get a lot more power out of a nuclear generator strapped to your roof; but then you need a whole nuclear generation management facility on your roof, and on the next roof, and the next, and they all waste nuclear fuel because they have to overgenerate some of the time AND HAVE NO INFRASTRUCTURE TO SHARE POWER.

Transit of any electricity--nuclear, solar, faerie labor--incurs the same losses. That doesn't change either.

All in all, you just responded to a concrete argument of "you're making shit up and arguing against that" with "Uh. Well. Your mom."

Re:Excess

[bluefoxlucid]

Building a solar facility isn't a no-op. It's not like you can say, "We built a house there and put sheds and structures all over the place, and tromp all over it with machines and boots; but nobody paved it, so we didn't destroy the ecological habitat." You definitely do not want ecological habitat thriving among your solar panels and concentrating reflectors.

Re:Excess

[Smidge204]

Most of what I said is platform-agnostic.

And that's why nearly everything you said is wrong.

You said power generation at point of use frees us from infrastructure needs.

No, I didn't. This is where adult-level reading comprehension really comes into play. What I said was: "you eliminate the cost of building and maintaining the vast majority of infrastructure that would be required for a central plant."

That does not mean you would not need infrastructure. If you build a central power plant you will need to connect it to the grid, and possibly augment the grid to deliver that power.

On the other hand, solar PV installed at the point of use piggybacks on existing infrastructure, and actually reduces the peak loads which reduces maintenance costs.

I hope you can appreciate the distinction.
=Smidge=

Re:Excess

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah, they will START building more plants soon, DONT THEY? Or US for that matter. I know the Economic Arguments, these sort of projects do cover all objections, don't they?

Re:Excess

[Jack Griffin]

Arabs don't exist, right. Neither do Egyptians. Myths of a fantasy land where people live in the desert.

Having just come back from the Middle East and can assure you that most of the people live in towns and cities.
And if you took the time to RTFA, this site is not built anywhere where people are living nor can grow food. So stop being so ignorant.

Re:Excess

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe the price of land. Maybe Morocco gets fewer cloudy days. being that close to one another does not mean they have the same conditions, Maybe the cost of labor to keep the mirrors clean. And just maybe Morocco had the will to build it while Spain did not.
I am very sceptical of the claims of solar but this is interesting. I hope it works out well.

So do I, but what happens at night?

Re:Excess

[Anonymous Coward]

That is: treat protected land as non-binary, recognize land that we only barely accept for development (because of its importance as undeveloped land), and then put a nuclear plant there. Then the land is both protected *and* developed: it's left in its natural state, but used as a nuclear buffer zone.

That is by far the most stupid shit I have heard in years. Its undeveloped for a reason and protected to be in its natural state. A nuke plant sitting in the middle is NOT! A NATURAL STATE!

You know you don't have to develop every square inch of land.
White people I will never understand them.

Re:Excess

[HornWumpus]

The things that power traders don't know about operations could fill a book. A big book.

There is nothing preventing a link from being marginal. You see it in price data (when the price of two areas is exactly the same, plus or minus the link losses).

Re:Excess

[RockDoctor]

A rain forest is called a rain forest because it basically rains there every day at least once.

No it's not. Some rainforest areas have considerable dry seasons. And considerable wet seasons too. The terminology is (loosely) based on annual rainfall.

Re:Excess

[bluefoxlucid]

Yet I made a comparison illustrating the breadth and scope of providing power for ALL OF EUROPE, showing that we'd need a land area of ALL OF CONNECTICUT AND RHODE ISLAND.

The original discussion wasn't about this cute little toy to light up 0.0002% of the world, but the viability of lighting up 0.01% of the world.

Re:Excess

[angel'o'sphere]

For starters: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Vague and misleading as always but you can work up your way from there.

Re:Excess

[angel'o'sphere]

The things that power traders don't know about operations could fill a book. A big book.

Depends on the country I guess. Or "what kind of power trader" you are. Power traders working for power companies know lots about how power distribution works. Simple Desk workers who really only buy and sell power, don't need to know anything. That is the reason or the result, depending on your viewpoint, for the decoupeling of grids, production and trade.

Re:Excess

[angel'o'sphere]

Well regarding management, I would assume that most solar panels don't need cleaning etc.
The next question would be "about what are we talking" if we say "roof top solar". In Germany that would be in 95% single installations owned by the house owner. So, there is no central management or cleaing to organize.
If you mean "big installations owned by power companies" spreading "several" roofs, I would assume: that is their problem. Who cares?
I don't find anything valid in your argument about "work" that is useless versus "better productivity". In my country we have 10% unemployment ... ridiculously somehow trick calculated down to 5% or less. Who cares if those unemployed work on roofs or "produce nothing"?
For a large scale installation I would not expect management overhead but either a strict schedule which roof to clean at which dates or an automated system comparing expected output of a small installation with its actual output. So teams get the tickets in the morning or a few days ahead and simply work down them like a software developer would work on tickets in an issue tracker.

Insulation on the outside is not nailed on the house. How should that work on houses made from stone? It is cemented or glued.

Your explanation regarding losses makes no sense. At least it is not clear what you want to say with it.

There is no difference in transmission losses if I have a coal plant 100km away to your house or a solar plant.

There is also no difference if I have a farm 50km away from the next town and either draw power from "where ever" or send solar power to "where ever"

Perhaps you want to argue: we could cover a whole city with solar panels and mainly use that power inside of the city and then we had low transmission losses. True. But not very relevant. Who cares about 5% versus 1% loss when the cost in infrastructure is twice as high and this schema only works for PV anyway when the plant in question is a thermal plant?

Re:Excess

[angel'o'sphere]

The part of desert we are talking about has no plant life.
of course you would not want to have plants growing over your panels/mirrors ... but: how dod we come to this topic :D ?

Re:Excess

[HornWumpus]

Never heard of two grids. There is local distribution and 'the Grid'. Are you sure you aren't talking about the hour ahead markets simplified understanding vs what actually happens and the whole reconciliation process between those?

Power is always in instantaneous balance. So traded power is always being produced and used at the same 'instant'.

Re:Excess

[angel'o'sphere]

Power is always in instantaneous balance. So traded power is always being produced and used at the same 'instant'. Obviously.

However I have the impression we somehow lost the topic. I for my part have no idea what you are talking about.

Regarding grids, we distinguish between transport grids, high voltage - long distance and distribution grids, relatively low voltage - short distance/regional.

'Balance' on distribution grids and transport grids works completely different.

Re:Excess

[HornWumpus]

I'll try not to lapse into EE on you.

I was just not understanding 'trade' grids as you seem to believe they exist. Traders set schedules and operations makes best efforts to follow. Operations balances the power on a link in real time, just as they have systems to do automatic generation control. The math is hairy, everybody knows that at the detail level, the grid is a chaotic system. Much as it looks scheduled at the hourly level.

There are times, when links are marginal that units are regulating the next region or three over. There is no reason that you can't. Traders just like to think all link flows are scheduled, tagged etc etc. What do you think happens when a big unit 'falls over'? All plans are in the crapper as the operations guys keep the lights on.

There are also units that physically exist in one region but are exclusively tied to the next region over. Usually this is the result of utilities gaming environmental regulations. (e.g. the both is and isn't a remaining coal fired plant in CA, depending on if you are talking about CA the state or CA the control area.)

Reality is also a little fuzzy on the distinction between generation/trading and distribution. Local cogen or small hydro for example was often small enough to generate at voltages you'd call distribution. To say nothing of rooftop PV (which is fair, they are so small, they just have to take the local utilities offer).

There is always a reconciliation process. Where 'as scheduled' is compared to 'as played out'. It's usually fairly friendly as the schedule is 99% accurate 99% of the time. Everybody involved has FERC (don't recall the Brit equivalent) rules hanging over them (e.g. 'take no actions that would compromise system stability').

Re:Excess

[Jack Griffin]

Yet I made a comparison illustrating the breadth and scope of providing power for ALL OF EUROPE, showing that we'd need a land area of ALL OF CONNECTICUT AND RHODE ISLAND.

No, you tried do do was knock the whole idea because the land should be used for housing or farming instead, even though it is unsuitable for both. And no-one ever claimed this as a solution for all of Europe, you just felt the need to be negative for some reason.

The original discussion wasn't about this cute little toy to light up 0.0002% of the world, but the viability of lighting up 0.01% of the world.

This discussion has nothing to do with that. Go back and read it again.

Re:Excess

[bluefoxlucid]

Insulation on the outside is not nailed on the house. How should that work on houses made from stone? It is cemented or glued.

On concrete, brick, and concrete block walls, tapcon masonry screws are inserted into the substrate to hold on wooden firing, between which we insert rigid foam insulation. The foam is friction-fit (wedged in), and a finish siding such as aluminum or vinyl is attached by horizontal cross bar attached to the wooden firing, which braces the insulation in place without penetrating mechanical fastening. In such installations, the loss occurs through the masonry fasteners drilled through the wood and concrete.

In my country we have 10% unemployment ... ridiculously somehow trick calculated down to 5% or less. Who cares if those unemployed work on roofs or "produce nothing"?

You have money which you spend on goods and services. To produce those goods and services, you must employ labor. Your money pays the wages of that labor. If you place labor carrying out other tasks, you must also pay that labor; but without an increase in the basic productivity, there won't be buying power--that is, money with purchasing power--to offset those wages. Thus, to create these new jobs, you must eliminate other jobs.

You can't create employment by snapping your fingers and saying "MORE JOBS!" If you could, someone would have hired these unemployed people so they could get the money you're not yet spending.

Re:Excess

[bluefoxlucid]

Death stalkers and scarabs live in places with no plant life.

Re:Excess

[bluefoxlucid]

I gave those figures for comparison of scale, you dumb donkey fucker. I've said that four times, and you're still trying to create a strawman by creating an argument I never made and presenting it as my argument.

Are you saying I'm as loony as those people who think we can power nuclear reactors using bananas instead of uranium?

Re:Excess

[Jack Griffin]

I gave those figures for comparison of scale, you dumb donkey fucker.

No you tried to use it as an excuse to knock the concept of CSP by drumming up some imaginary scenario that doesn't exist (known as a strawman).
Then when presented with the fact that it doesn't, you tried to convince us that people are actually living and/or farming on the desolate sand that this plant was built on, even though this is clearly not true.
Then to try and support your irrelevant statement, you tried to claim that this discussion is about "the viability of lighting up 0.01% of the world." which is again false (it has just been proven viable, that's what TFA is all about. You tried to turn that into a discussion about "ALL OF EUROPE" (10%), which this discussion is not about)
Now you've resorted to ad hominem, you should just quit now.

I've said that four times, and you're still trying to create a strawman by creating an argument I never made and presenting it as my argument.

I don't think you know what the word strawman means. You made those argument, it's there in black and white.
"That space of land could feed over 6,000 people if properly arable, or house 2.8 million people. That second figure holds a lot of weight: to go all-solar...".
This is your argument that you wrote. You made up a scenario that doesn't exist, then argued against that scenario, that is what a strawman is.

Are you saying I'm as loony as those people who think we can power nuclear reactors using bananas instead of uranium?

No. But this is yet another attempt at a strawman. Perhaps you should look that word up so you know what it means for next time.

Re:Excess

[bluefoxlucid]

To supply power for Europe, you'd need around 4.2 million acres of land, or approximately 5.3 times the land area of Rhode Island. That's bigger than Connecticut; in fact, it's CT and RI put together. It'd be more than half the land area of Belgium, and more than a sixth of Portugal.

SO, for every X people on earth, you need cX acres of land. For every cX acres of land, you can install solar generation to support aX people. Is (a) less than 1? If so, you'll ultimately devote more land to panels than to people.

We already devote more land to food than people. Population expansion will eventually create land scarcity not *first* in the form of places to live, but in the form of resource generation area. Power will compete with food, and population growth will temporarily halt; then we'll rip out all these solar plants and install something that takes 1/100 of the space, and population will begin swelling again. That's how scarcity controls population.

Of course that's unlikely to happen quite as such, since we'll first run out of land that's useful for food *or* solar, and expanding production of either into that land will take more *labor* per unit of either electricity or food generated, creating scarcity (the cost of those goods will increase due to the increased wages paid per unit good, and the amount of labor devoted to other goods will reduce due to needing to divert said labor to energy or food). The contention described will happen, just not across the whole surface of the earth; and the solution will be to plop down a nuclear plant somewhere not useful for food or solar panels anyway, thus giving us access to even more land area.

I don't think you know what the word strawman means

A strawman is when you make an argument different from the one at hand, attack it, then use that to claim the original argument was bad.

For example: I showed that the size of a solar installation is big. I did this by comparing it to both the land space used to generate food per person--which makes it easy to grasp what 6,000 acres *means*, instead of seeing it as an arbitrary number--*and* to the population supported on a land area. The latter was my direct argument:

That second figure holds a lot of weight: to go all-solar at this efficiency, 72% of the land must be solar, assuming densely-packed apartments filled with families (New York apartment projects).

The arguments against "you will need a *lot* of land to support a high density population with solar" were in the form of "LOL YOU TALKING ABOUT GENERATING FOOD! HAHAHAHA WE R NOT 2 GENERATE SOLARZ ON TEH FEWD LANDZ!!!" That is: I argued that city populations would need solar installations geographically *larger* than the city, and everyone else came back with the STRAWMAN ARGUMENT that solar isn't consuming our food production.

Re:Excess

[Jack Griffin]

SO, for every X people on earth, you need cX acres of land. For every cX acres of land, you can install solar generation to support aX people...

Here you go again. This whole argument makes no sense since no-one anywhere is proposing one single mode of energy generation globally. Who are you arguing with here?
TFA is reporting that Morocco built a CSP plant precisely because they have a lot of sun and a lot of unusable land, so it works for them. The city of London or New York is unlikely to use the same method since they have different circumstances. Where I live we have lots of coal so we use coal. The last place I lived had lots of rivers so we had lots of hydro. Do you get that?

I showed that the size of a solar installation is big. I did this by comparing it to both the land space used to generate food per person--which makes it easy to grasp what 6,000 acres *means*, instead of seeing it as an arbitrary number--*and* to the population supported on a land area. The latter was my direct argument:

No, you tried to assume that this wouldn't be practical for an "ALL OF EUROPE" scale (the quotes are your exact words). You argued against a point that no-one made. No one claimed this was a solution for all of Europe, yet this was your argument.
You argued that the land could be better for habitation and food production, when a quick read of TFA would show the land could not be used for such. You are trying to make points against an imaginary argument.

The arguments against "you will need a *lot* of land to support a high density population with solar" were in the form of "LOL YOU TALKING ABOUT GENERATING FOOD! HAHAHAHA"

Ok first when you use quote marks it means you are quoting. This is not a quote so is false.
Second, you made that argument. (watch how I use quote marks correctly and learn something) "That space of land could feed over 6,000 people [farmlandlp.com] if properly arable, or house 2.8 million people. That second figure holds a lot of weight:"
See the words in the quotes are your exact words, not something made up

That is: I argued that city populations would need solar installations geographically *larger* than the city, and everyone else came back with the STRAWMAN ARGUMENT that solar isn't consuming our food production.

No-one claimed this solution was for large city populations, nor "ALL OF EUROPE", nor the world, or anything other than the use case it has been deployed in. So you made up an argument that didn't exist and argued against that.
You made the claim that solar would use up our food producing land (see the quotes of your own words above), and this was the claim that was argued against (ie it's not using food producing land, as shown in the TFA). Do you understand now?

Re:Excess

[bluefoxlucid]

Ok first when you use quote marks it means you are quoting. This is not a quote so is false.

Right, because it's not like quotation marks are routinely used that way in millions of books, papers, news articles, and other English language materials. Look, kid, maybe when you start reading, you'll learn about indirect quotation and its use in modern English.

No one claimed this was a solution for all of Europe, yet this was your argument.

Well at the scale given, it's not useful for exporting power to Europe--which seems to be the plan. Any significant supply of European power is going to need a large land area.

You argued that the land could be better for habitation and food production,

No, I didn't. We've covered this, Timmy. I issued comparisons for scale and also described the scale of land usage when trying to provide power via solar. For a block of land including living space and solar power generation, 72% of the land goes to solar power and 28% is living space. See the below:

to go all-solar at this efficiency, 72% of the land must be solar, assuming densely-packed apartments filled with families (New York apartment projects).

I also said this:

That space of land could feed over 6,000 people [farmlandlp.com] if properly arable

You see, 6,000 acres of land is... what? It's uh. Some feet. And square feet. ... how big is that in bananas? What *is* 6,000 acres of land? Is it bigger than a square cubit?

Answer: 6,000 acres of land is the same size as an area of arable farm land which feeds 6,000 people for one year.

Let's examine another quote, one that will benefit you greatly since you dropped out of school before second grade:

An analogy is a comparison in which an idea or a thing is compared to another thing that is quite different from it. It aims at explaining that idea or thing by comparing it to something that is familiar.

So to answer your question:

You made the claim that solar would use up our food producing land (see the quotes of your own words above), and this was the claim that was argued against (ie it's not using food producing land, as shown in the TFA). Do you understand now?

No, I didn't make the claim that solar would use up our food producing land. I made analogies, and drew scale between living space and the solar power production space needed to produce electricity for that space. By the way, THREE FUCKING TIMES AS MUCH LAND AREA devoted to solar to supply power. For the land needed to house 400 people, you need to install solar panels across the land needed to house 1,200 people in order to give them solar-based electricity. That's also analogical; remember that *analogies* are inherently *comparisons*, so you should be able to do this magical thing that intelligent people do called *visualization* and get a direct grasp of scale of solar installation.

Or you could continue being a deceptive worm and try to get people to juggle numbers without reference in their heads, hoping they don't understand what those numbers mean in real-world terms.

Re:Excess

[Jack Griffin]

Or you could continue being a deceptive worm and try to get people to juggle numbers without reference in their heads, hoping they don't understand what those numbers mean in real-world terms.

Dude, this is a nerd forum, I think we all know what an acre is since it has been a standard unit of measure for land for nearly a thousand years...

Context

[buchner.johannes]

>> provide 1.1 million people in Morocco with power and cut carbon emissions by 760,000 tons a year

The carbon emission of Marocco is 1.600,000 tons, btw, so this is half!

>As long as you keep population constant?

You just need to increase the number of solar panels at a similar rate.

Re:Context

[AmiMoJo]

Actually, it's a solar thermal plant. So it works in the dark too. Morocco doesn't need a lot of heating, but in some parts of the world it can provide carbon free heat too.

Re:Context

[MightyMartian]

Well then, that's the problem. God only wants us to produce energy via fossil fuels. The use of non-CO2 emitting fuels is evil Communist plotting. WE should immediately execute anyone who wants to use any source of energy other than oil, they are subhuman fiends. We should pass a law allowing the good citizens of this God-fearing country to anally rape anyone who dares even think about solar panels. Solar panels are Satan's work, and only the righteous use of oil and coal forever can keep the forces of wickedness at bay.

Oh, and we need to kill every single Climatologist, except Roy Spencer, who should be given a quadrillion dollars and fifty hookers ever day. He is practically Jesus Christ.

Re:Context

[Anonymous Coward]

5 in 9 people believe you.

Re:Context

[fustakrakich]

Why was this modded down? It's true

"The wicked and lazy master was the one who buried his talent in the ground and didn’t do anything to multiply it... That’s essentially what those who say we need to stop using oil, coal and natural gas are telling us to do. Just leave those resources buried in the ground, rather than pulling them out and multiplying their value for human benefit."

Re:Context

[Anonymous Coward]

Fun fact, allegory sucks.

I could argue that NOT doing solar etc. and leaving behind childish things is equivalent to burying the talent as per the quotation.

Re:Context

[Anonymous Coward]

Well then, that's the problem. God only wants us to produce energy via fossil fuels. The use of non-CO2 emitting fuels is evil Communist plotting. WE should immediately execute anyone who wants to use any source of energy other than oil, they are subhuman fiends. We should pass a law allowing the good citizens of this God-fearing country to anally rape anyone who dares even think about solar panels. Solar panels are Satan's work, and only the righteous use of oil and coal forever can keep the forces of wickedness at bay.

Oh, and we need to kill every single Climatologist, except Roy Spencer, who should be given a quadrillion dollars and fifty hookers ever day. He is practically Jesus Christ.

We should immediately invade them and give them some of our oil-based FREEDOMS!

Re:Context

[allcoolnameswheretak]

You do realize that God's real plan is to cover up the whole dinosaur thing by making us burn all the evidence?
You're such a pawn.

Re:Context

[Dragonslicer]

Well, yeah, isn't that obvious? Why else do you think God buried all those dinosaur fossils 6,000 years ago?

Re: Context

[rickb928]

And you misquoted that passage significantly. Idiot.

The misunderstanding of the parable is understandable.

Re:Context

[GLMDesigns]

Where do you see free market people saying that solar power is evil or communist (huh!!!???) Thanks for trolling.

And where have you seen social conservatives come out against renewables qua renewables?

Re: Context

[Anonymous Coward]

And you misquoted that passage significantly. Idiot.

The misunderstanding of the parable is understandable.

All conservatives are idiots.

Re: Context

[fustakrakich]

Came out of the link, which you would have known if you read it, or if you can read. You are forgiven..

Re:Context

[MightyMartian]

Free market people believe in the Invisible Hand, and the Invisible Hand is just another god, and that god also loves oil and hates, indeed wants to kill anyone who dares question making profits off of glorious, clean fossil fuels. The Invisible Hand also demands climatologists be expunged and destroyed as the evil monsters they are, and wants to blot the sun, that evil thing, with clouds of healthy wonderful smog. God bless the Invisible Hand, and let us join together to take every climatologist and throw them off a cliff for their evil of questioning the righteous use of beautiful clean fossil fuels.

Re:Context

[Mike Van Pelt]

For any colossally stupid and completely insane position, somewhere, you'll find someone who really believes it. This is, perhaps, the General Theory of Rule 36. ("There's porn about it" being the Special Theory....)

Re: Context

[rickb928]

Offered by you, yours to validate. As if you wrote it yourself.

I know the initial analysis was intended to belittle scripture, not to illuminate it. The more the pity, when the only retort is to misquote and mislead.

Re: Context

[rickb928]

"or if you can read."

Logic is not part of your repertoire.?

Re: Context

[fustakrakich]

Oh please! Just stop...

Re:Context

[Anonymous Cow Ward]

Don't be a fool - heat generated through nuclear radiation is far superior to dirty oil! RTGs in every home! /s

Re:Context

[Anonymous Coward]

I was in Ouazazarte during winter. I can get rather cold at night. The people there do use stoves and fireplaces to heat living rooms, but in bedrooms there is no heating at all.

Re:Context

[KGIII]

No slight intended, and certainly none directed towards you, but Slashdot is a fine example of your post being largely correct. If there's an insanity or illogical position to hold, and to hold firmly, someone here has that conviction. I truly mean no slight, it's one of the things that make Slashdot what Slashdot is.

Re:Context

[GLMDesigns]

The invisible hand refers to many things including the "law of unintended consequences." There is nothing magical about that.

Secondly, in case it matters, the concept of the invisible hand came up in the 18th C and, I suppose, one could say that some 18th C people equated or conjoined the concepts. However Menger, von Mises, Hayek, Friedman did not, in any way conflate the two concepts.

Re:Context

[fustakrakich]

For any colossally stupid and completely insane position, somewhere, you'll find someone who really believes it.

Yes, and what's funny is that apparently some people think I do by misreading my post. I guess sarcasm doesn't always get across too well.

Re: Context

[fustakrakich]

What, facetiousness not part of yours? Learn to take easy, man...

Re: Context

[rickb928]

Wrong venue. You need remedial emojis to employ facetiousness.

Re: Context

[fustakrakich]

Sorry, I'm not from AOL

Re:Context

[Mike Van Pelt]

Oh, I didn't think for a moment that you were agreeing with that idiot you posted the link to.

Re:Context

[fustakrakich]

Not you, the other guy.. Got all serious and shit.

Re: Context

[rickb928]

Try pretending this is irc.

But when ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Solar typically supplies slightly less often than wind, at least in Europe, and functions about 20% of the time. So those 1,1 millions people still need another means of getting energy 80% of the time. What's even worse is that the peak energy consumption in Europe is around 7pm, when people get home, turn the heater on and start cooking, and at least 50% of the year at 7pm its dark and those solar panel aren't producing.

So these types are systems are interesting in the long run only if the energy storage question is answered, permitting a shift between the time the solar panels are producing and the when the energy is consumed. So to me the big "Green" energy question is not Wind or Solar or whatever your favorite renewable is, but how to store large amount (We're talking GWh at least on the scale of a country) energy and release it when needed

D.

Re:But when ?

[Viol8]

"Solar typically supplies slightly less often than wind, at least in Europe,"

Err, Morocco is in north Africa you halfwit.

Re:But when ?

[OzPeter]

So these types are systems are interesting in the long run only if the energy storage question is answered, permitting a shift between the time the solar panels are producing and the when the energy is consumed. So to me the big "Green" energy question is not Wind or Solar or whatever your favorite renewable is, but how to store large amount (We're talking GWh at least on the scale of a country) energy and release it when needed

D.

If you read TFA* you would see that this is a solar/thermal and not solar/voltaic power station and that there is energy storage via thermal mass already built into the system.

*You did read TFA didn't you?

Re:But when ?

[110010001000]

In his defense, Europe is starting to look like North Africa these days.

Re:But when ?

[tnk1]

To his defense, I'd point out that Europe is the most likely customer for North African power, and Spain is quite close to Morocco, plenty close enough for power transmission, assuming that it was worth it to do so.

Re:But when ?

[Viol8]

Yes, but morocco is on the border of the Sahara desert. I don't think there'll be many problems with sunlight during the day so his comparison with overall european effectiveness of solar power is idiotic.

Re:But when ?

[XxtraLarGe]

*You did read TFA didn't you?

Your UID is lower than mine, but I'm going to throw out the obligatory "You must be new here." anyway.

Re:But when ?

[laurencetux]

heck depending on the config of these things they could get pocket money by renting the ground below for parking (just have one end for car parking and the other end for camel parking)

Scale Invariance

[Anonymous Coward]

If quoting MW / GW doesn't sound impressive enough, quote number of homes.
If that is insufficiently impressive quote number of people.
If that also fails then switch to Kwh / year.

Meanwhile we're closing down GW coal plants and replacing them with a few MW of Wind (along with fields of containerized 1MW diesel / gas plants to take up the huge amount of slack at greatly increased cost)

Environmental concerns

[Anonymous Coward]

Solar power: 6,178 Acres to generate 500MW and will cost nearly $10 billion dollars and has a lifetime of approx. 15 years.

Nuclear power: 500MW is considered a "small/compact" nuclear plant, costing about $1.5 billion with a footprint of a few acres with a lifetime of approx. 40 years.

Why the hell are people investing in solar? The economics make absolutely no sense whatsoever.

Re:Environmental concerns

[AmiMoJo]

You are comparing a developing technology with a very mature (and still highly subsidised) one. Much of the investment in this plant will be paid back by exporting the experience, knowledge and technology developed for it.

Plus, Morocco can't just decide to build a nuclear plant. It has to rely on foreign assistance for the designs, the knowledge, the fuel, handling the spent fuel and the clean up. Moroccans see how much money they have to export to get the nuclear they do have and figure they could develop their own clean energy source and start having people send them money instead.

Re:Environmental concerns

[OzPeter]

Nuclear power: 500MW is considered a "small/compact" nuclear plant, costing about $1.5 billion with a footprint of a few acres with a lifetime of approx. 40 years.

So where did you get your costs from? My quick google pops up the current cost of a nuke plant as up to $9B nowadays.

Re:Environmental concerns

[nbritton]

Nuclear power: 500MW is considered a "small/compact" nuclear plant, costing about $1.5 billion with a footprint of a few acres with a lifetime of approx. 40 years.

So where did you get your costs from? My quick google pops up the current cost of a nuke plant as up to $9B nowadays.

Regardless of the actual cost, a typical nuclear plant can output 20,000 GWh a year.

Re:Environmental concerns

[Anonymous Coward]

I love it when people only 'quote' information that is relevant to their case and leave out all the rest:
- complexity
- risk
- expand-ability
- labor cost
- cost of resources needed
- security
et cetera

Sometimes things don't make sense ^^ but it is not solar power.

Re:Environmental concerns

[Anonymous Coward]

You get a million years of waste from nuclear too.

Chernobyl and Fukushima used up a lot more land than all the solar panels in the world, and they're just the beginning. We've got a million years worth of this party to rock all over the world. Statistically, it's guaranteed that there will be many more such accidents.

Only complete morons advocate for nuclear.

Re:Environmental concerns

[Anonymous Coward]

It's exactly the economics that is driving this.

10 billion > 1.5 billion, and it's 10 billion for 15 years, so it's actually almost 30 billion for 40 years.

30 billion is a huge boost to the GDP, and that's what you want.

Having said that, if what you want instead is an efficient energy system, there's no question that we should instead be researching/building 4th generation LFTR reactors using thorium to get us off carbon, and then once we're off carbon, getting us from thorium to fusion should be a relatively simple leap.

But, for most countries around the world, we're dealing with very short election cycles combined with us vs. them politics, which hurts long term planning significantly.

Re:Environmental concerns

[Anonymous Coward]

> Why the hell are people investing in solar? The economics make absolutely no sense whatsoever.

Nuclear power may be cheaper but it is far more dangerous.

If you disagree then please talk to someone from Chernobyl or Fukishima.

Re:Environmental concerns

[geekmux]

Solar power: 6,178 Acres to generate 500MW and will cost nearly $10 billion dollars and has a lifetime of approx. 15 years.

Nuclear power: 500MW is considered a "small/compact" nuclear plant, costing about $1.5 billion with a footprint of a few acres with a lifetime of approx. 40 years.

Why the hell are people investing in solar? The economics make absolutely no sense whatsoever.

So tell me, how are solar sales going in the town of Chernobyl? Oh, that's right, I almost forgot. The ground is still fucking glowing there.

Oh and speaking of economics, let's not forget about the Chernobyl Shelter Fund, which drove over three dozen countries to become members or contribute over a billion fucking dollars just to try and build a new cover for the damaged site.

In case you needed a rather obvious reminder as to the benefits of solar. We don't have to talk in measurements of half-lives or billions of dollars when humans fuck up, which is only a matter of time.

Re:Environmental concerns

[wvmarle]

You're forgetting about politics, and the other human factors that are involved here. It's more than about pure economics.

Re:Environmental concerns

[turbidostato]

"Why the hell are people investing in solar? The economics make absolutely no sense whatsoever."

For the one that lacks the knowledge, maybe.

Does Morocco have land to spare? By spades.
Does Morocco have sun to use? By spades.
Does Morocco have Uranium to use? Not at all.

Well, in fact Morocco *does* have plenty or Uranium reserves but being Sun renewable it makes all strategic sense to rely on solar and sell Uranium to other countries or even sit on top of it waiting for oil to be on shortage (but if too long, it risks the mythical 50 years of fusion to pass by and lose their oportunity).

Re:Environmental concerns

[Anonymous Coward]

When your solar plant fails you can still live there for the next 10,000 years. Whether the same applies to Nuclear depends on the failure, but is definitely not guaranteed.

Re:Environmental concerns

[LWATCDR]

Trotting out Chernobyl as a reason for not building modern nuclear plants is as dumb as using the Hindenburg as a reason to not build 787s.

Re:Environmental concerns

[angel'o'sphere]

Plus, Morocco can't just decide to build a nuclear plant.
Morocco is an arabic country.
If they build an atomic plant they probably get bombed by Israel just like Iran was.

And: to run such a plant you need engineers, no corruption, lots of relatively high skilled workers etc. p.p.

Re:Environmental concerns

[Anonymous Coward]

hahahahaha! 1000-MW reactor projects in the U.S. are running into the tens of billions of dollars. Criticize the cost-benefit of solar if you like, but don't pretend that anything but already-paid-for nuclear is cost-competitive.

Re:Environmental concerns

[angel'o'sphere]

Regardless of the actual cost, a typical nuclear plant can output 20,000 GWh a year.
And what would a country like Morocco do with so much power?

Re:Environmental concerns

[Anonymous Coward]

No. Trotting out Chernobyl as a reason for not building modern nuclear plants is as smart as using the Hindenburg as a reason not to build modern hydrogen filled blimps to carry passengers.

Re:Environmental concerns

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's a reason. JAPAN.

Human beings make mistakes.

Until humans can purge liars (ie conservatives) from their genome, then safety standards WILL be fudged.

If you can't even get CLIMATE CHANGE right, then you certainly can't do something like nuclear power.

Re:Environmental concerns

[Anonymous Coward]

If anything, Chernobyl is the reason to push new reactor designs. This is coming from someone heavily influenced by what happened there.

Re:Environmental concerns

[Khashishi]

Does the $1.5 billion cost of nuclear include fuel cost, decommissioning, and storage? And does it include the cost of graft?

Re:Environmental concerns

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm so sick of that bullshit.

No insurer will accept liability insurance for nuclear. Have you ever asked yourself why this is so?

Is it sooo difficult to do just a very rough back-of-the-envelope calculation of the cost of the nuclear
accidents that already happened?? Like, just a rough order of magnitude. I'm not even discussing
probabilities of future accidents (they're not zero!). Hint: It's *millions* of workers and the 'cleanup' will last for 10s of thousands
of years *minimum*! I'm not citing the locations of the past accidents, you know them. Why do you ignore this
info which is widely and publicly available?

Re:Environmental concerns

[AmiMoJo]

Actually, they have a 2GW plant running and another one planned. It's just that they can't easily build them, and the more they have the more reliant on other countries they are.

Re:Environmental concerns

[kromozone]

The Topaz Solar Farm in California was completed in 2014 at a cost of $2.5 billion with capacity of 550MW with an operational lifetime of 30 years. So your cost is 4 times too high for technology that is several years old and your lifetime is half what it should be. You can't rely on 10-15 year old data for technology that is plummeting in price every year.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Re:Environmental concerns

[Squirmy McPhee]

This is not a particularly good example of the economics of solar. For starters, it's a concentrated solar thermal plant, which is significantly more expensive than a photovoltaic plant. There's a reason most everybody has given up on solar thermal. So sure, this plant cost $9 billion, but two years ago SunPower sold a 579 MW photovoltaic power plant to Warren Buffet's Mid-American energy company for $2-2.5 billion -- and aside from being two years ago, that's with solar panels guaranteed for 25 years from a company widely regarded as one of the most expensive in the business. Based on similar deals and using solar modules from a cheaper supplier, that same plant now would likely cost more like $600-700 million to build and sell for something like $800-900 million.

And when you're talking about the footprint of nuclear, don't forget to count the land dedicated to mining uranium, much of which comes from land-hungry strip mines, and processing waste (both from the plant and the mining operations). Those plots of land are just as useless as the ones the plant itself sits on. Also, don't forget that nuclear uses an enormous amount of water, rendering it rather impractical in many desert regions.

Re:Environmental concerns

[Anonymous Coward]

> And: to run such a plant you need engineers, no corruption, lots of relatively high skilled workers etc. p.p.

How's that different between solar thermal and nuke? Green magic dust maybe?

> If they build an atomic plant they probably get bombed by Israel just like Iran was.

That was the Osiraq reactor, in Iraq, and part of the Iraqi nuclear weapons program. Commercial power reactors aren't designed to produce plutonium, and, as Morocco is a signatory of the NPT, their reactor operations (they have a research reactor) are observed by IAEA. Additionally, they plan to build a Russian reactor with groundbreaking sometime next year.

Re:Environmental concerns

[Anonymous Coward]

Israel did bomb Iran??? When?

Re:Environmental concerns

[Anonymous Coward]

The Germans have already decided to drop the nuclear option...I think this was triggered with the incident in Japan.

Re:Environmental concerns

[Anonymous Coward]

Nuclear plants, as has been already mentioned, are also a juicy military target. A country located near Gibraltar might seriously consider the military consequences of nuclear power, unlike such countries as, say, - just for example - the United States, which has such a universally admired foreign policy that nobody would ever think of possibly attacking it in any way, so it's totally safe for the USA to ignore the military vulnerabilities of nuclear power and build lots of them on watersheds conveniently close to major population centers.

Re:Environmental concerns

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry but there is no such thing as renewable energy since that would technically imply that the equipment used to capture the energy to also be renewable which it is not. In fact, it's incredibly wasteful and generates 60 times more waste, mainly from manufacturing, than nuclear.

Re:Environmental concerns

[Jack Griffin]

The economics make absolutely no sense whatsoever.

Only if you don't understand all of them.

Re:Environmental concerns

[Jack Griffin]

A modern reactor shares very little in design with Chernobyl, so no.

Re:Environmental concerns

[LWATCDR]

The Hindenburg was not a blimp and the Hydrogen was not the problem. it was the Nitrate Dope and Aluminum powder they used on the fabric covering...
Which is shows that your input can be ignored.

Re:Environmental concerns

[geekmux]

Trotting out Chernobyl as a reason for not building modern nuclear plants is as dumb as using the Hindenburg as a reason to not build 787s.

And totting out cost as the reason to avoid solar is also dumb. Not weighing in all the risks, and you can add ignorant and short-sighted to that list too.

There is no amount of money that can make the lasting effects of Chernobyl or any other fallout site dissipate any faster. That should tell you something when trying to use cost as a leveraging tool in this discussion.

Let's also not forget human nature. Shit Happens. We humans invented that concept. Murphy patented it. Discussions about "modern" nuclear designs almost become a moot point because of this.

Re:Environmental concerns

[delt0r]

So tell me, how are solar sales going in the town of Chernobyl? Oh, that's right, I almost forgot. The ground is still fucking glowing there.

No its not you dipshit. You can even go on guided tours around the plant and people still live there.

6178 acres?

[110010001000]

Wow, you need to disturb a lot of habitat to make that happen. Even in the desert. You can see it here though on Google Maps: https://www.google.com/maps/pl...

Re:6178 acres?

[Anonymous Coward]

A lot? Have you seen how much space there is still left in that area? They could probably expand 8 times in that area alone. And that is only a very tiny area compared to the surface of the earth.

Re:6178 acres?

[110010001000]

You are right. There is always so much more space! We should cover it all up, right? We will never run out!

Re:6178 acres?

[drinkypoo]

Wow, you need to disturb a lot of habitat to make that happen. Even in the desert.

The sand fleas will be crushed. No, literally, they will be crushed. Seriously, desert is notable for hosting minimal quantities of biomass. Sure, we could wipe out some inconsequential species. That would even be sad. But I think most of us would trade some obscure lizards and bugs for clean power... which has serious positive ramifications for protecting habitat for many more species.

Ideally we'd mandate if not PV installs then at least proper solar siting for all new construction worldwide, which would lend itself to more distributed solar projects. It's only maybe 15% of the roofs even in California for example which are suitable sites for solar panels because of all the various factors involved. Then there would be less demand for centralized solar. We need more distributed generation anyway.

Re:6178 acres?

[Thagg]

This is in California, where the land is probably 10x as valuable. Also about 10 square miles of space, maybe 5 square miles of solar cells. Another three of four square miles of solar cells 5 miles ESE of this spot.

https://www.google.com/maps/@3...

This is desert. Deserts will be covered on solar cells within 20 years.

Re:6178 acres?

[Teun]

We only need a couple of 100 km2 to cover all energy needs of Europe, that's a speck in the Sahara that runs some 5,500 km east-west and 2000 km north-south.

Cool in theory, but numbers may be too optimistic

[evolutionary]

In my experience, many projects look great on paper but when the benchmarks of a what is in essence an experiment, they usually fall short. It's a worthwhile project for sure, but I'd bet more on 700k rather than 1.1 million. Solar Cells are not that efficient yet (we're getting there), and there is power delivery;How much power will we lose in transport over a physical medium with electrical resistance. (even with super conductors there is SOME loss, just less). This would be awesome in deserts where in theory there is minimal impact on the environment, but then again..do we really know the impact on the natural balance of things by putting in a few thousands solar panels for generating electric power. I know we've done smaller scale projects like this in China, for example and probably other places. But I kind of doubt energy proeuced will be enough to export much power to outsiders like Europe if any at all. Still, if it cuts emissions, that's cool. so why aren't we doing that in, say, Arizona or Nevada?

Re:As long as you keep population constant?

[Anonymous Coward]

I just read his prior posts and believe it or not this first post is slightly less moronic than his normal posts.

Re:Cool in theory, but numbers may be too optimist

[evolutionary]

In my experience, many projects look great on paper but when the benchmarks of a what is in essence an experiment, they usually fall short. It's a worthwhile project for sure, but I'd bet more on 700k rather than 1.1 million. Solar Cells are not that efficient yet (we're getting there), and there is power delivery;How much power will we lose in transport over a physical medium with electrical resistance. (even with super conductors there is SOME loss, just less). This would be awesome in deserts where in theory there is minimal impact on the environment, but then again..do we really know the impact on the natural balance of things by putting in a few thousands solar panels for generating electric power. I know we've done smaller scale projects like this in China, for example and probably other places. But I kind of doubt energy proeuced will be enough to export much power to outsiders like Europe if any at all. Still, if it cuts emissions, that's cool. so why aren't we doing that in, say, Arizona or Nevada?

Sorry, my bad. Solar Cells are really part of this equation as it's using heat to produce steam. So it's a better approach than conventional solar power plants I knew about. I still think the numbers may be a bit less than they are marketing, but less is still better. Just wouldn't bet the farm on those numbers.

That's about 9.5 square miles

[Trailer Trash]

To put it into perspective, it's nearly 10 square miles. Pretty big, but in context it's a tiny part of the country.

This is apparently it, although it looks like this is older photography from before construction:

https://www.google.com/maps/@3...

But wait!

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought the future was space-based solar power! There's this deal with PG&E and Solaren that's suppoed to be online in 2016!

Um, it's 2016!

So while the Space Nutters cling to fantasies, the rest of the world moves on...

Re:green?

[danbob999]

pretty sure it's in the desert, 0 vegetation there.

export energy?

[danbob999]

500 MW is pretty small. Morocco needs much more than that. How can they think about exporting?

Re:export energy?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's easy, Europeans have a lot more money than Africans, so selling the electricity to people who can pay for it is a no-brainer.

Re:export energy?

[alvinrod]

Assuming the output of the plant is relatively fixed throughout the year and the power use isn't (there's some variance in a lot of places depending on the season) there may be times when there's excess capacity that can be sold. It's also possible for them to expand and add additional power plants to the existing grid. I'm assuming they've got some of the better land for solar in terms of efficiency, so it makes more sense to put the production there if the transmission losses aren't excessive. In that case it makes sense to start developing the market and infrastructure now so that when they do build additional plants, the ability to export already exists.

Also, even if they could use all of the power internally, comparative advantage might dictate that it's better to sell some of it in order to import goods that would be even more costly for Morocco to make locally.

Re:export energy?

[danbob999]

I understand, but Morocco consume on average 2.5 GW of electricity, and that will probably only raise as the country gets richer, and with population growth. An extra 500 MW by 2018 won't change much in the net export/import balance of the country.

Re:export energy?

[Teun]

That's why this is the first such plant in Morocco (and the rest of North Africa).
Give them some time.

Re:export energy?

[HornWumpus]

Hopefully they are planning on using the money earned from this one to pay for the next. That way their will be no next.

Re:As long as you keep population constant?

[Qzukk]

What does it matter if population changes?

The only things that would invalidate the numbers are if the same number of people started using more or less electricity, or competing electricity production methods started producing less carbon.

If these things did not change and Morocco's population doubled this year, the plant would still provide 1.1 million people power and cut carbon emissions by 760,000 tons/yr compared to whatever production method was being compared here.

This will piss off the Republicans

[Anonymous Coward]

Their kind hates free energy.

Re:This will piss off the Republicans

[jklovanc]

Nine billion dollars and ongoing maintenance costs is free energy, lol.

Re:This will piss off the Republicans

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a 9 billion USD installation. Doesn't sound too free to me, skippy.

Re:This will piss off the Republicans

[Anonymous Coward]

There's a ton of gimps out there who have no concept of how anything works. These are the same kind of rubes who think that Wardenclyffe actually worked but was stopped from producing because of the government by order of JP Morgan.

Re:green?

[thinkwaitfast]

Deserts in the US are rather rich biomes.

Night time?

[ilsaloving]

I'm guessing that it's never dark in Morocco for more than 8 hours? I would hope the engineers who designed this thing allowed for a generous margin. It would suck to wake up in the morning and not have any power cause the salt went cold.

Re:Night time?

[Ravaldy]

I'm assuming it's not the only source of energy. Solar is not here to replace all forms of energy but if it can sustain a large portion of daily activities (which accounts for more of the power use in North American) then you have a win-win solution. The next step for solar power is storage.

It's also important to note that the technology and materials used are not done improving so panels will get better and the yield per square foot will increase while the cost continues to decrease. This wiki about solar cells tells a lot: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Re:Night time?

[Socguy]

This is not the only power plant in the country. The article states that their goal is to generate 42% of their energy from renewables. Considering that these plants run throughout the day and 3 hours after the sun sets (the peak time for power consumption), they will still be relying on traditional plants for the off-peak hour production. Of course a deduction like that would mean that you would actually have to have read the article and not simply jump to the comments to troll.

Re:Night time?

[BlackPignouf]

The next step for solar power is storage? Good new from TFA :

The plant will be able to store solar energy in the form of heated molten salt, which allows for the production of electricity even at night.

Re:Night time?

[Ravaldy]

Yes, for these types of plants yes. The future of solar energy is to avoid having plants all together and harnessing local energy (e.g. your home). This is achieve with solar cells WHICH cannot be stored in the same way.

Re:Night time?

[ilsaloving]

So apparently asking for clarification on the details counts as trolling in your book? You must be a Republican.

I had planned on thanking you for your response and asking a follow up question, but since you prefer to be a douche, I won't bother.

Re:As long as you keep population constant?

[Chas]

What does it matter if population changes?

If you have 1.1 million people using 500MW of power, life is good.

If you have 1.7 million people and they need 700MW of power and you're still only producing 500MW of power, you have a problem.

That straightforward enough for you?

Re:green?

[OzPeter]

So they're destroying 6,178 acres of vegetation and covering it with solar panels and/or other collectors, which are made from caustic chemicals and other non-biodegradeable materials, in order to generate power.... How is that "green"?

Until you compare that 6000 acres with the equivalent area effected by a coal mine or a uranium mine or a bunch or natural gas wells, plus all the area needed for the ancillary equipment to process and supply those fuels to their respective power station types, then your complaint of this solar plant not being green is meaningless.

Care to try for round 2?

Re:green?

[russotto]

Deserts in the US are rather rich biomes.

Only to environmentalists. To the rest of us, at best they're illustrations that life can hang on in pretty tough conditions.... but 500MW is more useful than 10 square miles of desert crust any day of the week.
 

Re:As long as you keep population constant?

[fluffernutter]

Your tone irritated me so I found myself reading TFA to see where they indicated they would be completely shutting down their current more conventional methods of producing electricity so that they would not be available to augment the production of this new plant. Because either Morocco is dumb or you are. The article contains no indication that Morocco is dumb.

Re:As long as you keep population constant?

[Qzukk]

Obviously if 1.7 million people all try to get electricity from this solar plant, all the light will be sucked out of the sun and the sun will become a black hole killing all life on earth.

Orrrrrrrrr! The other .6 million people will get power from gas or coal or nuclear or whatever, Instead of using coal to produce 700MW of power and 1064000 tons of carbon, the end result will be using coal to produce 200MW of power and 304000 tons of carbon, a reduction of 760000.

Re:As long as you keep population constant?

[Anonymous Coward]

Computers got better therefore everything will. *That* straightforward enough for you?

Math

[jklovanc]

If the eventual 500 Mw plant will provide power for 1.1 million people that means that the average person uses 455 watts. That is not a lot of power.

Re:Math

[Anonymous Coward]

Depends on the time frame.

Is it 456 Watts per second? That's a lot of power.

Chances are, it's more like 456WH/ month which is more than we use in our house, per person.

Re:Math

[RghtHndSd]

If the eventual 500 Mw plant will provide power for 1.1 million people that means that the average person uses 455 watts. That is not a lot of power.

455 watts is 76.44 kwh per week. I use approximately 100-120kwh per week for my one bedroom apartment.

Re: Math

[Anonymous Coward]

Meh, during the temperate times of the year that's roughly the average draw of my house. At least it was before I got an electric car. Unfortunately my heat pumps can increase it to up to an average of 2kW in the winter.

Re:Math

[wvmarle]

Translates to about 330 kWh/month per person.

That's much more than my household is using now (about 350-400 kWh/month for the past two months; it's a cold winter). Yearly average is more like 300 kWh/month. That's like 100 kWh per person per month. Another 200 kWh/month left for use elsewhere: trains, restaurants used, office, school, etc.

Developed country; lights; TV; computers; washing machine; fridge; heating, water heater for shower; aircon - all electric.

Re:Math

[dj245]

If the eventual 500 Mw plant will provide power for 1.1 million people that means that the average person uses 455 watts. That is not a lot of power.

I would say it is probably in the ballpark for a country where central heating/cooling isn't common, and many people may not even have refridgerators. The rule of thumb I use in the US is 1,000 to 1500W depending which part of the country we're talking about.

Re:Math

[AmiMoJo]

455W/person is quite reasonable for a country in northern Africa. Obviously they don't have a lot of heating requirements in winter, and in summer their homes are built to require less cooling than those in other developed nations further north. Also keep in mind that it is per person, so if a family is living in a house their pooled usage isn't likely to be 4x as much as a single person living on their own.

Re:Math

[Anonymous Coward]

I use an average of 200W. Once upon a time 200W didn't go very far. Light a room, and maybe watch a small TV and that's you done.

But today all the room lighting, in my entire home, adds up to 40W and all the displays add up to less than 100W. Even the refrigerator is significantly more efficient than the one I owned ten years ago.

In the US with cheap energy prices and a powerful lobby against efficiency you're obviously going to see a lot of people chewing a kilowatt each, but there's no need for that it's purely wasteful consumerism, you're not getting anything for it.

Re:Math

[Mars Saxman]

It's not a lot of power by American standards but it seems totally reasonable for Morocco. When I visited a decade ago, electricity was used primarily for lighting, and virtually all bulbs were compact-fluorescent. Space heaters generally used propane or kerosene, not electricity. Power-hungry appliances like clothes dryers and dishwashers were not at all common, and their cuisine depends far less on refrigeration than ours does.

Re:Math

[Teun]

With that type of energy abuse you must be living in the USofA.

I live in a tree story, four bedroom house and my total electricity consumption is about 1000kWh per year, that's on average less than 3kWh per day.
A couple of years ago I had two guests stay 6 months and it almost reached 1500 kWh.

Re:Math

[Solandri]

It's worse than that. If you RTFA, you find the 500 MW is capacity, not actual production. So it's a CSP (concentrated solar power) plant with a peak generating capacity of 500 MW.

Morocco is at about the same latitude as Southern California, and CSP there has a capacity factor of about 33%. So average power generation for the year should be about 500 MW * 33% = 167 MW. Which for 1.1 million people works out to an average consumption of 152 Watts. That's 1332 kWh/yr.

U.S. average is about 13,000 kWh/yr
UK average is about 9450 kWh/yr
Germany averages about 7200 kWh/yr
Frace averages about 7300 kWh/yr
Japan averages about 7800 kWh/yr
S. Korea averages about 10,200 kWh/yr
Morocco's average seems to be about 850 kWh/yr, which suggests their expected capacity factor is substantially lower than 33%. Using the above numbers I get a 21% capacity factor.

Re:Math

[Jack Griffin]

455 watts is 76.44 kwh per week. I use approximately 100-120kwh per week for my one bedroom apartment.

Go USA!!!

I use 90-100kwh per week in my 4 bedroom house with 4 people and a dog.

Re:Math

[angel'o'sphere]

Na, the problem is that "per person calculations" are meaningless.

A household would make more sense (or lets say: it is less meaningless). A typical household would be perhaps 2 parents, plus 3 or 4 children and plus 1 or 2 grand parents. So something in the range of 5 to 8. So we have a usage of 2500W to 4000W which is quite a lot for a single household.

Rest assured: nearly everyone who lives in a house (and not in a tent), has a fridge, and a TV, and most an AC and/or water plays, electric light ... stoves are usually gas, but plenty use electricity. Oh, and in case you wonder: they in fact have internet in Morocco.

Re:Math

[angel'o'sphere]

Morocco's average seems to be about 850 kWh/yr, which suggests their expected capacity factor is substantially lower than 33%.
No, it suggests that you stop using metrics you don't grasp.
What has the average solar input of 850 kWh/yr for a whole country to do with the spot at which the plant is built? Obviously: nothing.
I for my part find the list of numbers you gave completely meaningless. Who cares how much kWh/yr the US gets? What exactly is that supposed to mean? The important information: "per square meter" or "square feet" is missing.

The plant will be running with about 520MW peak production from roughly 10:00 in the morning till roughly 16:00 in the evening. It will ramp up from sunrise till 10:00 a little bit faster than linear (sinus curve), it will ramp down from 16:00 to sunset to roughly 50% of its production, more or less linear. It will run from sunset till more or less 4:00 in the morning from the heat stored in the salt at somewhere between 30% and 50%. In other words: the plant produces power more or less in synch with the daily demand curve.

Now lets replace that plant with a coal plant: powering up around sunset, slowly going to peak till 10:00 and holding peak till 16:00 and slowly going down over 50% down to 30% / 40% at deep night till the morning sunrise: surprisingly this coal plant has the exact same CF than the solar plant above.

CFs are meaningless for planning and observing the performance of a power plant if you don't know what it actually means!!! And you obviously don't.

What is the difference in CF between a 200 HP car running twice a day for 2h to work and back? And a 100 HP car used by a cap driver running 18h a day by 3 drivers and idle-ing 6h a day for the same drivers? Oh, you would not know how to calculate a CF from that? Me neither ... So one comes up and tells us the first car has a CF of 5% and the second one of 45% ... why would anyone buy the first car? What could we calculate from this CF? The only thing we in fact could vaguely calculate is the fuel consumed per day for each car. And even that would be much easier to estimate with some intelligent guesses then via a CF.

Back to the solar plant: on average over the year you have 8h of sun, per day. Varying from roughly 6.1h in January to 9.8 in July and going down to 5.9 in December.

Oh, and the pros use a simple to look up number: total hours of sunshine per year, which is in the better parts of the sahara 4300h/yr. At the plant location likely a bit less, lets say 4200h/yr. Considering a non leap year has 8760 hours, we have sunshine nearly 50% of the year.

So regardless what bullshit you tried to do with the CF calculation, the CF is far above 50% (because the plant stores up to 8h of production time as heat) ;D why don't you wait till 2018 and lets see how much power the plant actually is producing over a course of a year? Because that will be the base for planning new plants, not a meaningless CF.

Re:Math

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course if you live in a tree your energy consumption is low. You expend most of it climbing up every day.

Economics

[sjbe]

If Morocco is just across from Spain, why would Spain pay for the energy (i.e. cost of production, plus payoff of initial outlay, plus transportation, plus the company profits) rather than just build their own?

A good question and the answers are mostly fairly straightforward. In no particular order here is a non-exhaustive list of reasons why they might decide not to build their own. Not all of these might be the case here but all are possible.
1) If they build there own it might result in overcapacity which would make the economics not work
2) Spain isn't in great financial shape so the financing might be a problem
3) Exchange rate risk. Currently the Euro is relatively strong versus the Morrocan Dirham. This means that 1 Euro can buy relatively more KWh.
4) Cost of land might be significantly higher in Spain. Spain has about 5/7 the land area with about 4/3 the population.
5) Politics (need I say more?)
6) NIMBY

Re:Economics

[Anonymous Coward]

4) Cost of land might be significantly higher in Spain. Spain has about 5/7 the land area with about 4/3 the population.

A little bit of Googling reveals that Spain has 113% of the land area (not 71% of the land area), with about 4/3 the population. So, still a significant difference, but not as significant as you say.

Solar energy Spills

[goombah99]

Nuclear waste and Accidents remain a problem, perhaps even an increasing one in the days of terrorists and unstable gov't. Sure maybe in the US this is a lower problem, not negligible, but where does a small country park its waste?

When there's a huge solar energy spill it's called "a good day."

Re:Solar energy Spills

[Khashishi]

Let's be a little more honest about what a solar energy spill is. I can imagine the pipes or tower corroding and leaking molten salt on the ground. I'm not sure what kind of salt it is, but I'm pretty confident it isn't good for the soil. It sounds a couple orders of magnitude less bad than a nuclear meltdown, but I don't think it's "'a good day'".

Another Shining Example;

[Mr D from 63]

Wow, $3.9 Billion for a plant that can produce only up to 160MW, and less than that for a good part of the day. It seems they would have saved money going with solar panels and batteries.

An interesting tidbit. Despite its desert location, this plant needs 1.7 million m3 of water per year to keep the reflectors clean.

This CSP plant appears to be even more expensive than Ivanpah, which is still not running to its promised capacity, and requires the burning of natural gas keep operating. Has Ivanpah even reached much more than 50% of its promised output yet?

Re:Another Shining Example;

[Mr D from 63]

^FYI, the above refers to the completed NOOR1 phase, in case that was not clear.

Re:Another Shining Example;

[Anonymous Coward]

The water requirements are a huge advantage for non concentrating PV. Reflector performance requires a pristine surface, you can use a rotating brush to clean a PV panel and it won't really care much about a the glass getting scratched up a bit.

Re:Another Shining Example;

[prof alan]

Firstly, the aerial photographs show mirrors fairly widely spread leaving a large proportion of the land open, so if grazing is possible on this land (and it does look pretty bare) that is not going to be greatly harmed. Secondly, if such large quantities of water do need to be used for cleaning, the run-off will irrigate the land. Win-win by the look of things.

Re:Another Shining Example;

[bluegutang]

Meanwhile, India is planning to build a single nuclear facility that will produce 62 times as much power, for less than three times the cost.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Re:Another Shining Example;

[Sabriel]

"An interesting tidbit. Despite its desert location, this plant needs 1.7 million m3 of water per year to keep the reflectors clean."

That is not interesting. That is meaningless. 1.7 million m3 of water per year compared to... what, exactly? How much water does a coal/nuclear plant use? How much to mine, refine and transport the coal/uranium? What's that calculated in litres per megawatt hour? What's the tradeoff in terms of emissions and waste?

Also, I found $3.9 billion per 160 MW peak is just for stage one; the total project is projected at $9 billion for 580 MW peak (and NOOR uses molten salt storage - so unlike Ivanpah, the NOOR plants will continue generating power at night). That rather alters the ratio, doesn't it.

As it happens, the amount of water usage is apparently about twice that of a wet-cooled coal plant, though (1) only NOOR's first stage is wet-cooled, (2) the post-process water quality is also important and (3) really, a proper study would examine the complete life cycle of solar vs coal vs nuclear power generation including all ongoing costs (e.g. fuel, emissions, cleanup, etc).

This is supposed to be news for nerds, stuff that matters. I am unimpressed when people offhandedly mention a big-sounding number and then go on to make vague derogatory apples-and-oranges comparisons.

Re:Another Shining Example;

[Mr D from 63]

So, everyone knew this information already? I did not say it was good or bad, just an "interesting tidbit", meaning trivia. Your super defensive response strikes me as being more out of place than my mention of a fact that some might not know.

And as far as projections, NOOR1 was projected to complete for much less than $3.9.

And you must know that even with molten-salt storage, the plant does not produce at its peak all day. In fact, it produces at peak only for a few hours a day, and ramps down in the evening. On a winter day it may not even reach peak, and of course cloudy days as well. So an optimistic $9B for 580MW peak does not sound so good at all to me.

Re:Another Shining Example;

[Bengie]

that Morocco may eventually start exporting the clean energy to the European market

Not only $4bil for fluctuating power, but if anything like Germany, they'll have to start paying to export the excess energy. No one wants just power, they want stable power.

Economics of solar vs nuclear

[sjbe]

Nuclear power: 500MW is considered a "small/compact" nuclear plant, costing about $1.5 billion with a footprint of a few acres with a lifetime of approx. 40 years.

A nuke plant will cost far more than what you are claiming. Costs currently are running between $5000-8000/KW. And that is just to build it - you didn't consider operating costs at all which are far more substantial for a nuke plant than a solar one. The waste disposal alone is a huge cost that doesn't exist with solar.

Why the hell are people investing in solar? The economics make absolutely no sense whatsoever.

Really? You can't figure this out? Solar has no failure modes that can render a location uninhabitable. Solar has no serious fuel waste disposal problem. Solar has no weapon proliferation risk. Solar is insurable by private companies rather than nation states. Solar doesn't require getting fuel from elsewhere. Frankly solar has quite a lot to recommend it over nuclear in many (though not all) cases. Nuclear has its advantages but let's not pretend that it doesn't have some very substantial drawbacks.

Re:Economics of solar vs nuclear

[Anonymous Coward]

>Solar has no failure modes that can render a location uninhabitable

Your right, it's rendering 6000 acres uninhabitable while it's operational. No need for failures

Re:Economics of solar vs nuclear

[Anonymous Coward]

The paper you cite simply divides $'s by MW, then equates to KWatts, never considering time in units of KiloWatt hours(KWh) .....you also forget when they build a 1100MegaWatt plant, it'll output 1100MegaWatts every hour of every 100% capacity day.

But here's why they invest in nuclear....Running that nuke plant for 40 years(350,640hours), even at a 20% capacity (220MegaWatts), will yield ~77,140,800,000KWh (Kilowatt hours).

Even IF that 20% capacity nuclear plant cost $9billion ($9,000,000,000) it would only cost ~$0.1167/KWh to run.

$9,000,000,000 / 77,140,800,000KWh = ~$0.1167/KWh

At 80% capacity even for $12billion dollars, a 1100MWatt nuke plant, running for 40 years, would output roughly ~308,563,200,000KWh, costing ~$0.0389/KWh to run.

I would love to pay that little per kilowatt hour!!!

Re:Economics of solar vs nuclear

[riverat1]

How so? If you mount the mirrors high enough there's no problem putting dwellings under them. Most of the area of this solar plant could be inhabitable as long as you don't need direct sunlight.

Re:Economics of solar vs nuclear

[Anonymous Coward]

What load of rubbish.

1. The manufacturing of solar panels produces an insane amount of waste much of which is unregulated.
2. The lifespan of a solar panel is only 15-30 years depending on the environment.

http://solarindustrymag.com/online/issues/SI1309/FEAT_05_Hazardous_Materials_Used_In_Silicon_PV_Cell_Production_A_Primer.html

Overall, deploying solar at a large scale is insanely wasteful and destructive to the environment as opposed to nuclear.

Re:green?

[AK Marc]

Parts of them. The sandy deserts are less so (read as, not as all, unless you consider scattered bacteria a "biome").

Re:green?

[Anonymous Coward]

So they're destroying 6,178 acres of vegetation and covering it with solar panels and/or other collectors, which are made from caustic chemicals and other non-biodegradeable materials, in order to generate power.... How is that "green"?

Until you compare that 6000 acres with the equivalent area effected by a coal mine or a uranium mine or a bunch or natural gas wells, plus all the area needed for the ancillary equipment to process and supply those fuels to their respective power station types, then your complaint of this solar plant not being green is meaningless.

Care to try for round 2?

Sure, that's easy... I did not say that traditional energy sources had a zero footprint, they do have a footprint. But things like coal, oil, natural gas come from underground. Most of the refineries, processing facilities and power plants are already in place. Mining more coal or extracting more oil to generate power will not consume much more surface area of the planet (zero in the case of existing mines and wells). Any expansion of solar will consume more surface area and destroy vegetation (even in a desert), unless we get smarter and utilize the roofs of existing structures....

Anyway, I have nothing against solar, but it's not as "green" as everyone seems to pretend it is. Any source of energy has a "cost" associated with it. Even if you covered every square inch of the planet in solar panels, you still couldn't generate enough power to meet demand. Solar is great, but it's not the end-all be-all solution for energy. We need to responsibly use multiple sources. Coal, oil, and gas are natural products, btw. Wind is nice too, unfortunately the big turbine blades are killing a lot of birds.

Re:As long as you keep population constant?

[jellomizer]

Offering a local environment of cleaner Air, and possible cheaper reliable energy, may attract additional people in the area. As well these people may be healthier thus have a better reproduction rate.

Total Carbon?

[jellomizer]

I would like to know what the Total Carbon footprint is.
How much carbon does it take to make a solar panel, ship it, set it up.
How many trees will need to be knocked down to build the solar farm. Does the energy produced from the solar panel over its expected life actually offset the cost of implementing it, and long term maintenance.

I am not saying it is bad for the envrionment on the whole. But I would like to see the true costs.

Re:Total Carbon?

[Teun]

I would like to know How many trees will need to be knocked down to build the solar farm.

Read the story, it's in Morocco, a place renowned for it's abundant forests.

Re:Total Carbon?

[angel'o'sphere]

First: you are an idiot. for your enlightment: this plant does not use solar panel
Second: who cares about the carbon foot print of a technology that does not release any carbon? if the "power plant" was produced in france the carbon foot print would be close to zero. As most stuff likely comes from Europe and China and is made from metal (hint refined iron ore), I guess the "carbon footprint" is quite high.
Third: How many trees will need to be knocked down to build the solar farm Did I mention, you are an idiot? There are no trees in deserts .... hence the name: "desert"
Forth: Does the energy produced from the solar panel over its expected life actually offset the cost of implementing it, and long term maintenance. Most math we use in our days was invented or refined by arabs. So trust me: yes, it will make more money than it costs. (*facepalm*)
Ah, you mean: if it is energy positive, not money positive? (*facepalm*) again ... wake up ... we have 2016, not 10,000BC.

I am not saying it is bad for the envrionment on the whole. But I would like to see the true costs.
That is very easy: just click on the link in the /. story. It links to an news article of "computerworld.com" and if you are not to scared you can google for "solar plant Morocco" and get information like who the investors are and how much they invested ;D

No idea why you bother us /.-ers with your annoying ignorance and angst. Hint: it is not your tax money, so relax.

Re:Total Carbon?

[RabidReindeer]

Trees???? A major part of Morocco is in the Sahara Desert!

Or are we building power plants out of wood these days?

How much carbon does it take to make a fossil-fuel boiler, ship it, set it up?

We're actually not talking much difference, anyway - this is not a photovoltaic solar farm, it's a heat-converting facility. Same as coal or oil based generating systems, but without shipping in coal or oil to keep it going. You can do an awful lot of maintenance if you don't have to budget for fuel or fuel-shipping costs.

And being as it's in a high-sunlight region, you could even do a fair amount of metallurgy using concentrated solar energy if you were really obsessed with setup energy costs. A simple Fresnel lens out of an old flat-screen TV can smelt metal and there are YouTube videos to prove it.

Re:Total Carbon?

[Anonymous Coward]

And its abundant extra apostrophes. Those I don't mind seeing knocked down. It's means it is.

Re:Total Carbon?

[saigon_from_europe]

How much carbon does it take to make a solar panel, ship it, set it up.

I don't have any idea, but if it is comparable to coal plant, I'm ok.

Re:Total Carbon?

[Anonymous Cow Ward]

Forth: Does the energy produced from the solar panel over its expected life actually offset the cost of implementing it, and long term maintenance. Most math we use in our days was invented or refined by arabs. So trust me: yes, it will make more money than it costs. (*facepalm*)

So you're saying that because some Arabs in the past were good at math, everything they do now will make more money than it costs? That's... really not a good argument.

To be clear, I think this is a neat plant, and fully expect it to produce net money (and power too, of course). Just don't use stupid arguments to justify it.

Re:Total Carbon?

[Teun]

Your right :)

Re:Total Carbon?

[angel'o'sphere]

The "stupid argument" is simply put to show the GP how stupid his question was.
This is my kind of combined sarcasm and irony, sorry if that was not obvious.

I mean: someone is spending 4billion dollars ... and is to stupid to calculate before hand if that makes sense? Really?

Re:Total Carbon?

[Anonymous Cow Ward]

Fair enough - sarcasm often doesn't convey well through text. Consider my criticisms retracted then.

How about solar panels on every roof?

[Anonymous Coward]

I suspect it would cost a lot less...

Re:green?

[dcw3]

Not trying to troll, but how much acreage does it take to get the equivalent output for a coal, nuke, or natural gas plant/wells? My knee-jerk guess is that it's a lot less, but I don't know.

Nighttime

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not supporting solar until they make it work at night. Sorry, but extra inefficient coal plants are not as good as all day efficient ones. And batteries and panels together are more expensive than nuclear.

Re:Nighttime

[Gavagai80]

You're supporting solar now then, because solar thermal works at night.

Re:Cool in theory, but numbers may be too optimist

[HornWumpus]

Based on their own numbers, they would have been better off putting PV panels on already existing buildings. 1/10 the cost (assume $1/watt for panel and $1/watt for installation).

This is $20/watt with generous rounding.

I'm betting this was a typical humanitarian project in Africa. Every government official had to be bribed and every high official's nephew put on salary, in order for the project to go forward.

Re:green?

[Catmeat]

Deserts in the US are rather rich biomes.

Whose to say this won't make it richer? The shaded areas under the collectors might provide micro-climates well suited to some, shade-preferring desert species that don't generally do well on account of the general lack of shade.

Gas

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, it's a solar thermal plant. So it works in the dark too. Morocco doesn't need a lot of heating, but in some parts of the world it can provide carbon free heat too.

I remember reading that solar thermal and gas can be cheaply combined for extra redundancy and emergencies.

Bonus!

[Anonymous Coward]

Since solar costs more than nuclear, a limitless number of people can receive the benefits of increased taxation.

Re:green?

[drinkypoo]

But things like coal, oil, natural gas come from underground.

Most mining is now strip mining, so anything that has to be mined automatically loses. All three of these are also sequestered carbon; when we produce them, and then burn them, we cause ourselves problems related to CO2 release. Natural Gas production is now predicated upon fracking (we otherwise have already hit peak natgas, in terms of just getting it out of the ground as opposed to making it) which has its own severe problems, not least being based on injecting refinery wastes into the ground instead of disposing of them properly. Oil spills are an ongoing rather than regular occurrence; there is basically no time that there is not a serious oil spill going on somewhere in the world. Burning coal puts nuclear material into the atmosphere, including tons of fissile uranium per year.

The environmental cost of solar, especially non-PV systems or modern PV systems which use ever-vanishing quantities of rare earths or even organic materials, is minuscule compared to any fossil fuel.

Export, not electricity

[DriveDog]

Sell excess energy to foreignors, sure, but not as electricity across the Mediterranean. Since this plant operates at very high temperatures, use a bit of that high-temp heat to produce/reduce something, in effect shifting the energy content to Morocco. Keep Matthew McConnaughey there, we already have too many Lincolns.

Re:green?

[OzPeter]

Sure, that's easy... I did not say that traditional energy sources had a zero footprint, they do have a footprint. But things like coal, oil, natural gas come from underground. Most of the refineries, processing facilities and power plants are already in place. Mining more coal or extracting more oil to generate power will not consume much more surface area of the planet (zero in the case of existing mines and wells). Any expansion of solar will consume more surface area and destroy vegetation (even in a desert), unless we get smarter and utilize the roofs of existing structures....

By ignoring existing infrastructure you are already starting off with a false equivalence. You have to count everything in order to have a far comparison. And that also includes the byproducts of those power stations.

Anyway, I have nothing against solar, but it's not as "green" as everyone seems to pretend it is. Any source of energy has a "cost" associated with it. Even if you covered every square inch of the planet in solar panels, you still couldn't generate enough power to meet demand. Solar is great, but it's not the end-all be-all solution for energy. We need to responsibly use multiple sources. Coal, oil, and gas are natural products, btw. Wind is nice too, unfortunately the big turbine blades are killing a lot of birds.

You say you have nothing against solar, but you used "green" as a pejorative and as an absolute. And this comment about "Even if you covered every square inch of the planet in solar panels" is totally wrong. These calculations are easily done and the total area needed is less than 0.5% of the earth for 100% solar power to meet all requirements.

And as for birds and wind turbines .. yes they killed, but how is that compared to the number of birds killed by flying into buildings? Does it represent a larger or smaller amount? So again, you can't just trot out an absolute and make a proclamation about it.

Re:As long as you keep population constant?

[ale2011]

"Enough for 1.1M people" is a practical unit of measurement. They used to mention joules, but that unit is difficult for readers, especially Americans, who are better used to yards and pounds than meters and kilograms.

Furthermore, "enough for 1.1M people" suggests but does not hold that there are so many customers. One may wonder why Moroccan customers would buy energy from that plant, which implies paying not only production, but also payoff of initial outlay, plus transportation, plus the company profits rather than just build their own (see "Spain" below). That really doesn't matter, Sun is open source, and whenever solar energy replaces fossil, bad emissions are reduced —fossil energy entails contempt of dead body.

Re:As long as you keep population constant?

[Jeremi]

If you have 1.7 million people and they need 700MW of power and you're still only producing 500MW of power, you have a problem.

It's not a big problem, though. Just add 200MW more power generation, if you feel the need to do so.

Ouch

[Anonymous Coward]

Given the "up to" numbers it is a bit hard to tell but this seems excessively expensive compared to other options. If my napkin calcs are correct its about $24k per kw of capacity. Residential solar installs (at least in the US) are usually about $6k per kw of capacity and commercial installs are usually less than that (around $4k per kw) and those have virtually no maintenance where these plants sound like they have to be watched like a hawk. For the life of me I can't understand where they're spending all of the money, they are plumbing with some mirrors.

Re:As long as you keep population constant?

[Teun]

Indeed, this plant generates electricity into the night and thus the lights will stay on longer while most kids are made in the dark.
Rather obvious, right?

Re:As long as you keep population constant?

[Anonymous Coward]

Offering a local environment of cleaner Air, and possible cheaper reliable energy, may attract additional people in the area. As well these people may be healthier thus have a better reproduction rate.

Or all that solar radiation might sterilize them!

Re:Terrorists

[Stephan Schulz]

Citation needed. Not that it's impossible. With terrorism such a small risk compared to, say, driving, smoking, or unhealthy diet, it might be a statistical fluke, like 5 out of 6 or so....

Re:As long as you keep population constant?

[angel'o'sphere]

If you have 1.7 million people and they need 700MW of power and you're still only producing 500MW of power, you have a problem.

No you have not. The power plants producing power for the actual living 1.1 millions do not magically disappear and are still capable of producing the power for the suddenly popping up 0.6 million ...

Also it is not unheared of that you can upgrade a plant to produce more power or add a second plant.

Finally: what would you do in a situation where the solar plant does not exist and you have "suddenly" demand for power for 600,000 more people?

I don't see why the fact that this plant is a solar plant does in any way have any impact on population development.

Re:As long as you keep population constant?

[Copid]

Breaking news: Power Plant Output not Affected by Population. Engineers Flabbergasted. More at 11.

one last step

[frovingslosh]

What wonderful news. Now the only remaining problem is getting the world population down to 1.1 million.

Re:As long as you keep population constant?

[mrvan]

You might think that the unit "(mega)people" is standardized, but in fact there's still quite a difference between an American person and an African person [a bit like swallows, I guess.] Concretely, an American uses 12,954 kWh per year[1], while an average Moroccon uses 875 kWh. Thus, the electricity used by 1.1M Moroccons equals the electricity used by 70 thousand Americans. So, while the unit might sound like everyone can relate to it, it's pretty horribly inaccurate.

The Computerworld article doesn't even give total expected production, only MW capacity, which is probably peak capacity, ie only achieved during the day. Wiki [2] gives a production of 370 GWh per year, which is enough to provide energy to just over 400 thousand Moroccans, consistent with providing juice for 1.1M is capacity is roughly tripled. However, if Moroccans start getting up to first-world levels of energy use, the number of people served will swiftly drop by an order of magnitude, even if they don't go all the way to American energy use (e.g. Holland has about half the US energy use, probably due to less need for airco and higher electricity costs)

The water use sounds very problematic, according to wiki it uses 1.7 million m3 per year or 4.6 liters per kWh . To compare, desalination requires 3 kWh/m3, i.e. it would cost about 5GWh to desalinize the amount of water used annually, compared to 370GWh of electrticity produced. So, even if the water draw is compensated by desalinizing water elsewhere, it still comes out ahead.

[1] http://data.worldbank.org/indi.... Note that kWh per year is a pretty stupid unit, too...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Re: As long as you keep population constant?

[rickb928]

/., where slightly more moronic is normal.

Re:green?

[Teun]

Even if you covered every square inch of the planet in solar panels, you still couldn't generate enough power to meet demand.

Last year solar energy passed the 1% of Global energy demand and when I look around me we have more than 99% of area remaining.

Have a look at this article, it explains world-wide demand is met by a surface area comparable to Spain:

http://www.techinsider.io/map-...

Costs and lifetime.

[Anonymous Coward]

Solar power: 6,178 Acres to generate 500MW and will cost nearly $10 billion dollars and has a lifetime of approx. 15 years.

I am not sure where you pulled 15 years out of. It is hard to believe solar cells last longer than a mirror. From what I know about thermal solar, damn thing should last indefinitely given proper maintenance. There is no reason to scrap entire solar power plant. There is no radiation or toxicity. Heliostats can be replaced continuously. Towers can be replaced one at a time god knows in how many decades. Ivanpah solar plant in California was designed for 3 towers for example. You shouldn't even need to shut down power plant to rebuild it.

The $10 billion cost is also completely blown out of proportions probably due to cost of terrain and politics. It should be around 4 times lower considering already existing prototype price tags at the time of construction (lower now). There is also consideration of maintenance, logistics and fuel costs. Later happens to be 0. Tech involved in nukes is complex and expensive unlike heliostat manufacturing. Also pretty much anyone with half a brain and no education to speak of can perform maintenance on a heliostat. Nukes? Not so much.

The only downside is area, which is why you build damn things in the middle of nowhere, where sun does shine and there are no fucking turtles.

Re:Cool in theory, but numbers may be too optimist

[Teun]

PV only works when the sun is out, this thermal plant continues for hours after sunset on it's reserves of molten salt.
And it would be fairly simple tech to increase the reserves to cover the whole night.

most of cost of solar installs is labor

[WillAffleckUW]

I think you're trying to use US costs for Morocco. Labor is way cheaper, there's a lot more sun (the flux), and it's a net benefit there. The panels even provide shade for grazing animals.

(yes, I've been to Morocco)

Re:As long as you keep population constant?

[Chas]

So you're basing utilities planning on hope that everything's going to get more energy efficient.

Sorry bub.

Real utilities don't plan that way.

Re:Cool in theory, but numbers may be too optimist

[HornWumpus]

The plant is a sunk cost. But it would be insane to spend any more money on this thing.

All costs are opportunity costs. Even a crazy hard green could get more for their money than this plant. With 10x the generation worth of PVs for one.

discrepancy in photos

[Khashishi]

The first and third photos show parabolic reflectors used to focus light on pipes running the length of the mirrors. The second photo shows a bunch of flat reflectors all focusing light on giant towers. Maybe there are also PV panels on the left side of the image--it's hard to tell.
Which is it? Or are there multiple parts of Noor, using different technologies?

Re:discrepancy in photos

[Anonymous Coward]

I was confused by that too. From what I can find, Noor is using parabolic troughs.

According to what I found on wikipedia, the second photo is a completely different station.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_solar_thermal_power_stations -- scroll down to the bottom of "Operational" plants
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PS10_solar_power_plant -- this seems to be what the second picture is of

Numbers don't add up

[stabiesoft]

So if 1.1m people divvy up 500MW of power, doesn't that mean on average each user gets 500W. Sounds low given it is a desert and I imagine people crank the A/C. My panels can put out 3.6KW and that is just enough to run the A/C when sun is full on.

Re:Numbers don't add up

[Jack Griffin]

So if 1.1m people divvy up 500MW of power, doesn't that mean on average each user gets 500W.

Yes

Sounds low...

Only if all 1.1 million people are all home at exactly the same time.

Re:Numbers don't add up

[stabiesoft]

I'll run the numbers another way, 500W/hr x 24 x 30 = 360KWH/mo. Check your bill.

Re:Numbers don't add up

[Jack Griffin]

My household average is 350kwh-450kwh per month, for FOUR people. So yeah, 360kwh/month per person is more than enough anyone not living in the USA.

Re:Cool in theory, but numbers may be too optimist

[Teun]

Considering the alternatives this is a great investment.
Or do you want to put a nuclear plant in this part of the world?

Why was 9gag faster than /.?

[Pezbian]

Yesterday...

Re:Cool in theory, but numbers may be too optimist

[Anonymous Coward]

You're using western costs that have built in western government subsidies and Chinese dumping built into the price of the panel. That's a lot less than the wholesale cost in Morocco.

Solar cannot match our Energy Appetite

[Rollgunner]

New York City and it's boroughs used 60 million MWH of power last year.
That means it would require 120,000 plants like the one mentioned to power NYC.
Seeing as the plant itself takes up 6,178 acres, and 640 acres equals a square mile...
120,000 x 6178 / 640 = Yup, we need a little over a million square miles of facility for NYC.
That's a little less than *one fourth* of the total surface area of the United States... for ONE city.

Re:Solar cannot match our Energy Appetite

[Jack Griffin]

If maths is not your strong point, then google can help. http://www.techinsider.io/map-...

People keep ignoring the energy storage problem

[GoodnaGuy]

In order for solar power to be really useful you must be able to store the energy for use when there is no sun. As far as I can tell the only effective way of doing this at the moment is by reverse pumping the water in hydro electric plants. I don't think Morocco has much of this. Therefore they will have to backup this power station with gas powered stations or something like that. The statement in the description "will eventually provide 1.1 million people in Morocco with power" is misleading and should really be "will eventually provide 1.1 million people in Morocco with some power". or more accuratly "will eventually provide some people in Morocco with some power" as I suspect this power will be going to a grid and thus distributed over the whole country.

Your numbers are wrong

[Yergle143]

Show your work...

NYC uses 60 GWh per year.
This is a unit of energy per year.
This is 2.16X10^17 J/year
This works out to 6.84X10^9 J/s
A J/s is known as a Watt which is a unit of power.
This solar thermal plant is a 140 MW plant.
It is well known that the sun does not always shine...
This is 140X10^6 W.
Were this a constant level of power one would need...
# plants = (6.84X10^9 W)/(140X10^6 W / plant) = 48 plants.

Your main error is failing to recognize a ridiculous number
(120,000 plants) when you took the time to post your opinion
on this forum.
You get an F.

Re:Your numbers are wrong

[Rollgunner]

I think my main error is not knowing there is a difference between GW and GWh.

But I am nonetheless completely wrong. I stand rebuked :-p

Re:Your numbers are wrong

[angel'o'sphere]

The difference is easy explained, with a valve and a pipe of water.
GW (or W or MW): the amount you have opened the valve. Open the valve just a little bit, low "watt" (gallons/liters) production/consumption, open the valve more: high production.

GWh: At the end of the day (or after an hour) you look how many gallons/litters you have in the tub.

The "consumption" of current (electric power) is measured in GWh ... the production capacity (hence: how think is the pipe of water and how far can you open the valve) is measured in GW, just like your cars peak production is measured in HP.

Re:As long as you keep population constant?

[KGIII]

If they're not shutting them down and they're still producing power then are they really reducing their carbon output? If it's just additional capacity then I'm not sure there's actually a reduction going on.

Re:green?

[Jack Griffin]

So they're destroying 6,178 acres of vegetation...

No. No they aren't. It's in the desert dummy.

Even if you covered every square inch of the planet in solar panels, you still couldn't generate enough power to meet demand.

You're not very good at this are you: http://www.techinsider.io/map-...

fantasies

[prof_robinson]

More fantasy green energy. The average gas turbine plant produces *at least* 600 megawatts, and it does it around the clock, for 1/10th the cost. I also wonder how many of you will check back in a few years and see how the plant is doing...because the estimates at production are always optimisitic - there isn't a major solar plant in the world that has hit 50% of it's projected output.

Re:green?

[angel'o'sphere]

Burning coal puts nuclear material into the atmosphere, including tons of fissile uranium per year.
One: no it does not, the uranium/thorium is in the ashes.
Two: no it does not in general. Only coal that is mined from mines that have that particular "contamination" obviously can set free uranium/thorium. Or were the trees from which the coal formed made from uranium? I don't think so.

The environmental cost of solar, especially non-PV systems or modern PV systems which use ever-vanishing quantities of rare earths or even organic materials, is minuscule compared to any fossil fuel.
One: wrong, because PV systems don't use rare earths.
Two: wrong still, as rare earths are not "vanishing". They are very abundant on the planet, they are misnamed because of some issues when they got "discovered".
Three: wrong, organic materials are a non issue if you use them for PV or other electronics.

Bottom line the "environmental costs" depend on your legislation, not on the fact that you create PV cells.

Re:As long as you keep population constant?

[ale2011]

Note that kWh per year is a pretty stupid unit, too...

Yes indeed. For example, we're troubling with watt-equivalent measures while phasing out incandescent bulbs. Would it be better had we always used lumen?

Ref [1] has a nice map too, but they don't tell what are those kWh being used for. Since establishing who supplies energy to whom is a political question, (mega)people still has some merits as a unit of measurement.

Re:green?

[drinkypoo]

Burning coal puts nuclear material into the atmosphere, including tons of fissile uranium per year.

One: no it does not, the uranium/thorium is in the ashes.

Yes, most of which goes right out the fucking stack. We can find out-of-compliance power plants in this country literally as fast as we can pay people to climb the stacks and probe them.

Two: no it does not in general. Only coal that is mined from mines that have that particular "contamination" obviously can set free uranium/thorium. Or were the trees from which the coal formed made from uranium? I don't think so.

Wrong again, dildo

The environmental cost of solar, especially non-PV systems or modern PV systems which use ever-vanishing quantities of rare earths or even organic materials, is minuscule compared to any fossil fuel.

One: wrong, because PV systems don't use rare earths.

Who told you that? They lied to you, and now you're being a stupid fuck.

Two: wrong still, as rare earths are not "vanishing". They are very abundant on the planet, they are misnamed because of some issues when they got "discovered".

What I meant was that the panels use less and less rare earths. Sorry I confused you. Apparently that's quite easy, so I'm not very sorry.

Three: wrong, organic materials are a non issue if you use them for PV or other electronics.

My post was pro-solar, stupid. Try reading it again.

Re:Cool in theory, but numbers may be too optimist

[HornWumpus]

What? You ether can't read or are just a moron.

Even a dumb as a rock hard green would prefer 10x the generation worth of PV panels.

Not an industrialized country

[Voice of satan]

In the industrialized countries, it's the industry that weighs in the costs of electricity and they are very touchy about it. So even a small increase in costs for the sake of renewables is out of the question. Last i heard The Spanish industry whined a lot that the choice of solar thermal had made their electricity bills so high they had become uncompetitive.

Private consumers are a different animal. They often can afford more or less reluctantly the prices hikes due to renewables.

So since Morocco doesn't have much in terms of heavy industry it may work there.

But i wouldn't want any European country dependent of another country which refuses to take back its deported criminals. Morocco is basically using Europe as a dump for its undesirables.

Re:green?

[angel'o'sphere]

Perhaps you should read the links you post, or read more than one single link?
The majourity of coal ash is not radioactive as it does not contain anything that is radioactive.

For the rest of your post, write more clearly ... no idea why you disguise as you claim an pro solar power post into an anti solar power post.

And I don't really care about what you are pro or cons when simple stuff like radioactive emissions in the air, or ashes: are wrong.

One: wrong, because PV systems don't use rare earths.
Who told you that? They lied to you, and now you're being a stupid fuck.

Care to point out one PV cell that does, and explain why? Good luck ...

PV cells work exactly like transistors in a computer. Made from the same stuff. No rare earths in them. And even if there where, who cares: THEY ARE NOT RARE!

Re:Cool in theory, but numbers may be too optimist

[HornWumpus]

So buy them in Germany and export them.

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