DESERTEC - major transcontinental renewable energy plan

[Crispy]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/nov/02/morocco-solar-farm-renewables

Construction of the first $2bn 500MW solar thermal power station in the Desertec network will commence in Morroco next year. That's around 5x the price of a gas power station of similar capacity, so let's hope they can get the price down in the future.

 

[xenon]

Heh, I just came to post this. Another link. Same story.
http://spectrum.ieee.org/energywise...o-for-first-piece-of-sahara-solar-development

Glad to see something will actually start being built.

e2a fixed link

 

[kabbes]

Awesome sauce.

 

[free spirit]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/nov/02/morocco-solar-farm-renewables

Construction of the first $2bn 500MW solar thermal power station in the Desertec network will commence in Morroco next year. That's around 5x the price of a gas power station of similar capacity, so let's hope they can get the price down in the future.

running costs ought to hopefully be lower though being as it's not got a fuel source to pay for. Do have to wonder how much cleaning the mirrored dishes etc.s going to cost though.

 

[spacemonkey]

running costs ought to hopefully be lower though being as it's not got a fuel source to pay for. Do have to wonder how much cleaning the mirrored dishes etc.s going to cost though.

And the water requirements. 12sq km of glass in the desert.

 

[Falcon]

Hilarious. These technology white elephants get bigger and bigger. Global energy consumption is about 600 Exajoules. Assuming 8.5 billion people by 2050 consuming the mean value of today's industrial society energy consumption, consumption will rise to about 2100 EJ/y. Divide by the net energy of these projects (which is far lower than the published figure because of ignored infrastructure embodied energies), and you quickly realise there just isn't enough desert on this planet. Or people to keep the dishes dust free, as free spirit points out.

Naturally, no one wants to do the back of the envelope calculation because it ruins Christmas.

 

[elbows]

But as discussed on other threads in the past, you seem to take the position that any solution that only provides a small fraction of our energy needs is not worth bothering with. Well I'd rather have 1% of our energy needs met than 0%.

 

[free spirit]

Naturally, no one wants to do the back of the envelope calculation because it ruins Christmas.

been there, done it, don't agree with you.

 

[ferrelhadley]

500MW solar farm scheduled to start next year.

The 12 square kilometre

The global total is 1.504×10^13 W so one of these plants is about 5*10^8W. It would take 30 000 of these plants to make up current global consumption That is to say 3.6*10^5km^2 or about 1/30th of the Sahara, hardly the worlds only desert.

Sorry I seem to have missed the bit of the envelope where 'not enough deserts in the world' thing happens.

 

[Falcon]

It would take 30 000 of these plants to make up current global consumption ...
Sorry I seem to have missed the bit of the envelope where 'not enough deserts in the world' thing happens.

The bit of the envelope you missed is that these 30,000 plants do not emerge fully formed from nowhere, and not one of the 30,000 plants of that scale has never been observed functioning to understand the non-linear parasitic energy consumption sinks.

Add up the quantity of desert you need to power the manufacturing capability for the factories that built the vehicles that mined the material from which the arrays and subassemblies were fabricated, the desert you need to power the construction and operation of those vehicles, the desert you need to power the manufacturing process of the arrays, subassemblies and transmission systems, the desert you need to build the infrastructure with which roads systems the size of continental US necessary to access and maintain the arrays are built, and the desert required to power all of the other parts of the global, industrialised manufacturing process without which such plants cannot be constructed, and 90% of which you cannot even comprehend such is the extent to which it is so deeply embedded in the current structure of the economy, and the desert necessary to power the process by which you decommission the existing hydrocarbon energy system and expand its electricity based replacement.

That is the *incremental* desert resource necessary to manufacture and utilise your 30 000 plants.

Now you need the incremental desert resource necessary to manufacture the resource necessary to manufacture your 30 000 plants. Then you need the incremental resource necessary to manufacture *that* incremental resource.

Say that took you 30 years. Double whatever quantity you came up with above, because demand has doubled in that period. Double it again for the next 30 year period, because that is what 2% per annum growth rate global energy demand increase actually means.

As you boggle at that recursive, geometric problem, expand your sunny land resource requirement through the dimensions of capital, material and labour.

More succinctly, the bit you are missing is the absurdity of imagining you can replicate the attributes of a dense, instantly available source of energy using a diffuse, intermittent one mediated by a technology which itself is extraordinarily power, material and capital hungry.

 

[Dr Jon]

Also see:

Answer not blowing in the wind

The problem is that catching its rays in a practical way requires high-tech devices, and these depend on transition elements and rare-earth minerals. They are well named indeed - most being much scarcer than oil.

 

[Crispy]

The vehicles that mine the materials for the factories already exist, even if they do run on oil. Can the new not be built while the old diminishes? Even if it requires a bigger and bigger slice of the remaining energy, it's still economic activity, right? I'm under no illusion that the economic game cannot continue for ever, but is there really not enough energy in our current system to build the replacement?

 

[ferrelhadley]

The bit of the envelope you missed is that these 30,000 plants do not emerge fully formed from nowhere, and not one of the 30,000 plants of that scale has never been observed functioning to understand the non-linear parasitic energy consumption sinks.

So your 'not enough desert' quip was pulled out of your arse. Now you are fantisizing as to how to make it work, here by claiming it would take 30 times as much energy to produce a solar thermal plant as to operate it.

you cannot even comprehend such is the extent to which it is so deeply embedded in the current structure of the economy,

Yes I can.

Say that took you 30 years. Double whatever quantity you came up with above, because demand has doubled in that period. Double it again for the next 30 year period,

Yeah right. So we have gone from not enough desert to trying to make wild predictions about energy in 60 years time.

More succinctly, the bit you are missing is the absurdity of imagining you can replicate the attributes of a dense, instantly available source of energy using a diffuse, intermittent one

Other than transport, denisty is of little matter. As for intermitancy, you should check out nuclear. We have relied on intermittant energy for years. For many types of factories you simply set the shift pattern to meet the energy availability. Heavy electric users simply have their shifts to fit when the sun is shining in Africa. Not as cost effective as today, but Mad Max it aint.

 

[Crispy]

Besides, with solar thermal, you can build up sufficient heat in your working fluid (anyone know which this new plant is using?) to continue generating after sunset.

 

[ferrelhadley]

Also see:

Answer not blowing in the wind

Rare earths are pretty common. Its that China manufactures them cheaply not that they are rare.

Rare earth cerium is actually the 25th most abundant element in the Earth's crust, having 68 parts per million (about as common as copper). Only the highly unstable and radioactive promethium "rare earth" is quite scarce.
The rare earth elements are often found together. The longest-lived isotope of promethium has a half life of 17.7 years, so the element only exists in nature in negligible amounts (approximately 572 g in the entire Earth's crust).[7] Promethium is one of the two elements that do not have stable (non-radioactive) isotopes and are followed by (i.e. with higher atomic number) stable elements.

China now produces over 97% of the world's rare earth supply, mostly in Inner Mongolia,[10][11] even though it has only 37% of proven reserves.[12] All of the world's heavy rare earths (such as dysprosium) come from Chinese rare earth sources such as the polymetallic Bayan Obo deposit.[11][13] In 2010, the USGS released a study which found that the United States had 13 million metric tons of rare earth elements.[14]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rare_earth_element#Geological_distribution

 

[Falcon]

So your 'not enough desert' quip was pulled out of your arse.

?? Err no. It was "pulled out" of whatever place you store the engineering observation that, in a zero or negative EROIE process, there isn't enough desert.

Now you are fantisizing as to how to make it work

I don't follow. In what way is articulating the necessary operations fantasising, and in what way is imagining your goal can be achieved without those operations *not* fantasising? Are you claiming that, as the product of a global technical industrial manufacturing process, solar at that scale does *not* require those component steps?

So we have gone from not enough desert to trying to make wild predictions about energy in 60 years time.

Help me understand how taking the UN's global population forecast, and combining it with the straightforward assumption that the rest of the world will aspire to the per-capita energy consumption that enables our standard of living, a "wild prediction"? Do you consider it to be wild because it is huge ? Which is wilder - making that estimate, or investing what little surplus energy we have left in an enterprise without working out to a couple of orders of magnitude how big it needs to be ? Or imagining that brown-skinned poor people in far away place will put up with the idea that only they need to live low energy life styles?

Other than transport, denisty is of little matter.

Oh dear. You appear to be a stranger to thermodynamics.

 

[Dr Jon]

Rare earths are pretty common. Its that China manufactures them cheaply not that they are rare.

The study Critical Metals in Strategic Energy Technologies reveals that five metals commonly used in these technologies – neodymium, dysprosium, indium, tellurium and gallium – show a high risk of shortage. Europe depends on imports for many of these, for which there is rapidly increasing global demand and limited supply, often concentrated in a few countries with associated political risks. Furthermore, they are not easily recyclable or substitutable.
A large-scale deployment of solar energy technologies, for example, will require half the current world supply of tellurium and 25% of the supply of indium. At the same time, the envisaged deployment of wind energy technology in Europe will require large amounts of neodymium and dysprosium, (about 4% of the current global supply each) for permanent magnet generators, which could only be eased if the supply of such metals in the future is increased, which may not be simple. Virtually the whole European supply of these metals comes from China.

link

 

[rich!]

minor throwin points:
cleaning solar panels in Europe costs 1800Eur per megawatt. It produces an immediate yield improvement of 5% maximum, which obviously decays over time again.
In China, they went from zero to several gigawatts of solar PV in about 2-3 years, by the old "first, build lots of factories, then the cost of the output tends to zero".
The more interesting questions come in areas like - will the cost per GW of installed plant keep decreasing as fast as it has? when will we get a decent global grid? when will the first bauxite smelter move to a desert?

 

[ferrelhadley]

It was "pulled out" of whatever place you store the engineering observation that, in a zero or negative EROIE process, there isn't enough desert.

Which is your arse. Negative EROI?

Help me understand how taking the UN's global population forecast, and combining it with the straightforward assumption that the rest of the world will aspire to the per-capita energy consumption that enables our standard of living

Yeah exactly.

Oh dear. You appear to be a stranger to thermodynamics.

The floors yours.

 

[ferrelhadley]

link

God you are pussy whipped.

So you have found a report saying supplies need to be increased and diversified.

The main mining areas are in China, the United States, Brazil, India, Sri Lanka, and Australia. The reserves of neodymium are estimated at about eight million tonnes. Although it belongs to the rare earth metals, neodymium is not rare at all. Its abundance in the Earth crust is about 38 mg/kg, which is the second highest among rare-earth elements, following cerium. The world's production of neodymium was about 7,000 tonnes per year in 2004.[7] The bulk of current production is from China, whose government has recently imposed strategic materials controls on the element, raising some concerns in consuming countries.[8]

link

 

[two sheds]

The idea for Desertec was solar thermal and steam turbines, wasn't it? Rare earth is photovoltaic?

 

[Dr Jon]

The idea for Desertec was solar thermal and steam turbines, wasn't it? Rare earth is photovoltaic?

Yeah. Sorry for the diversion.

 

[Falcon]

The vehicles that mine the materials for the factories already exist, even if they do run on oil. Can the new not be built while the old diminishes?

I guess it could. But my sense of the problem is that we have a "budget" - a fixed remaining quantity of surplus energy available to us. Our task is to invest that energy in an economic and social arrangement which provides for the highest standard of living for the greatest number of people before our economy reverts to the largest size that can be sustained by an area based, real time, low conversion efficiency energy system.

Even if we could build a technical system with the hydrocarbon-built infrastructure we have in place, it will have to be maintained, expanded and, ultimately, replaced. We know now we could not maintain or replace such a system using the power output of the system. So what would be the logic (or, from the perspective of our children, the morality) of squandering that budget in this way, when to do so is to preclude the option of building a far more durable one, albeit at the expense of a considerable amount of discomfort and transition stress in our own time?

 

[Falcon]

Which is your arse. Negative EROI?

OK. You have nothing of interest to contribute, no curiosity about the possible limits of your knowledge, and no capacity for civility. Ciao.

 

[Bob_the_lost]

OK. You have nothing of interest to contribute, no curiosity about the possible limits of your knowledge, and no capacity for civility. Ciao.

Your negative EROEI was debunked in another thread.

It's becoming clear you're just a one trick pony version of Jazzz. Able to recite numbers and occasionally make them up to fit your theory but not open minded enough to be able to engage in anything more than preaching.

 

[two sheds]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/nov/02/morocco-solar-farm-renewables

Construction of the first $2bn 500MW solar thermal power station in the Desertec network will commence in Morroco next year. That's around 5x the price of a gas power station of similar capacity, so let's hope they can get the price down in the future.

Even if gas prices stay as they are now, and assuming gas for a £500 MW power station would cost over £150,000 a year (figure given in Private Eye this week) that gives something like a 10-year repayment time? That seems bloody good to me for the first system.

 

[two sheds]

tut 500 MW not £500 MW - have I mentioned that I can't edit posts any more?

 

[Crispy]

That's weird, you should be able to edit recent posts. Let me see if there's anything wrong with your account.

 

[two sheds]

Sorry for the derail (and hassle) - I'd have sent you a PM but i can't actually send PMs either. As with when I press edit, I just get the grey box with small flashing black/white rectangles to let me know that it's doing something. I thought it might be a Firefox thing so I tried in Internet Explorer but I couldn't Log in to my account using that. Ah well.

 

[Crispy]

Very weird. Doesn't appear to be anything wrong AFAICS.
I will escalate this to the llama