[Technology] Should we turn the Sahara Desert into a huge solar farm?

Stat Brother · Jun 29, 2020

Earlier myself and Lil Miss Stat were listening to last weeks Infinite Monkey Cage (Radio 4 science and comedy) about The Sun.

The snail guy casually mentioned:-

'If the Sahara desert was turned into a solar farm we'd have free energy in perpetuity'.

L-M-Stat said, not unreasonably 'so why don't we do that'.
The silence of my answer was deafening.

https://theconversation.com/should-we-turn-the-sahara-desert-into-a-huge-solar-farm-114450

This is again a big number that requires some context: it means that a hypothetical solar farm that covered the entire desert would produce 2,000 times more energy than even the largest power stations in the world, which generate barely 100,000 GWh a year. In fact, its output would be equivalent to more than 36 billion barrels of oil per day – that’s around five barrels per person per day. In this scenario, the Sahara could potentially produce more than 7,000 times the electricity requirements of Europe, with almost no carbon emissions.

Motogull · Jun 29, 2020

Yes.

I'm gonna need a fukken long extension lead mind.

Albion 4ever · Jun 29, 2020

Would you trust the worlds energy supply in the hands of a few corrupt African dictators?!

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Coldeanseagull · Jun 29, 2020

I'm sure if you covered all of the sahara, it would lower the temperature and in fact change the weather for that area. The cost would also be beyond your average oil rich arab country(who would prefer to sell you fossil fuel).
Another hypothetical situation would be hydropower, or wind turbines filling every available square foot of the atlantic....not cost effective. Have all the politicians of the world talk into giant balloons. The hot air most come out with could melt the polar ice caps.
How about sending satellites up to harness the suns power. The amount of copper wire needed could be another thing though.
Basically it all comes down to how much will it cost?

darkwolf666 · Jun 29, 2020

Stat Brother said:
Earlier myself and Lil Miss Stat were listening to last weeks Infinite Monkey Cage (Radio 4 science and comedy) about The Sun.

The snail guy casually mentioned:-

'If the Sahara desert was turned into a solar farm we'd have free energy in perpetuity'.

L-M-Stat said, not unreasonably 'so why don't we do that'.
The silence of my answer was deafening.

https://theconversation.com/should-we-turn-the-sahara-desert-into-a-huge-solar-farm-114450

This is again a big number that requires some context: it means that a hypothetical solar farm that covered the entire desert would produce 2,000 times more energy than even the largest power stations in the world, which generate barely 100,000 GWh a year. In fact, its output would be equivalent to more than 36 billion barrels of oil per day – that’s around five barrels per person per day. In this scenario, the Sahara could potentially produce more than 7,000 times the electricity requirements of Europe, with almost no carbon emissions.

Could the same not have been said of oil, and several countries seem to have stitched up the rest of the world over that commodity!

Invicta · Jun 29, 2020

Sounds a good plan, could be the break Africa needs. Hopefully solar panels last longer than the ones in the lights in my garden.

Saunders · Jun 29, 2020

Sand would be a bit of a ******* keeping them clean/not buried

Stat Brother · Jun 29, 2020

It was so disconcerting the way the fella just dropped it into his conversation and nobody said a word.

Questions · Jun 29, 2020

Saunders said:
Sand would be a bit of a ******* keeping them clean/not buried

You’d have a couple of caretakers or janitors if the Yanks build it.

Questions · Jun 29, 2020

Invicta said:
Sounds a good plan, could be the break Africa needs. Hopefully solar panels last longer than the ones in the lights in my garden.

**** Africa why aren’t us the Belgium’s, French and Portuguese not over there already exploiting them ........ so now we go soft as an empire do we............... we’ll only need trinkets ffs

beorhthelm · Jun 29, 2020

Motogull said:
Yes.

I'm gonna need a fukken long extension lead mind.

you jest, this is a fundemental problem. how do you transport the energy from there to Europe or elsewhere? there were schemes to deploy high voltage DC network some years ago, nothing seems to have some of it.

Acker79 · Jun 29, 2020

https://www.quora.com/Why-dont-cant...my-perhaps-lessening-the-poverty-and-violence

The Sahara is "owned" by Africans in at least 11 countries. Many of those countries are not exactly paragons of political stability (e.g. Sudan, Egypt, Libya, Sudan, Tunisia).

...
Unstable governments make multi-billion-dollar projects terrifying for investors. To make a project interesting enough, it would need to be of some size. To justify the investment in long-distance transmission lines, for example, you will likely want to place millions of panels somewhere. This won't be cheap. Doing this in about half the countries where the Sahara is would be a frightening prospect.

Transmitting power over great distances can be done, but it's not the optimal solution. Building large-scale solar in Africa would be an amazing way for some of these countries to massively improve their economies. But electrical grids in many of those places are not exceptionally good and, if they are, there is typically a reasonable source of power today. So what's the compelling reason to do this? Exporting the power to Europe. To do that will require power lines of 500-2000 miles in some cases, with power losses of up to 10% or more[2]. The math of better African solar resources might look less impressive when it takes a loss on long-distance transmission.

The time scale of these kinds of deals challenges modern institutions like western banks, governments and corporations... In the developing world, it might be a bridge too far. Even within a single country like the U.S., it takes years to build a utility-scale solar plant with modern machinery, world-class roads, access to capital, sometime government loan guarantees, et al. To do a big project in Algeria over a decade that involved sending power to Switzerland is an idea that has the makings of a great James Bond film, but might prove very challenging in practice. From financing it to getting it built to getting the power across the Mediterranean, there are a lot of moving parts. Never mind the chances of shifting political winds in either country creating a delay that could upend the process years into it. Uncertainty is a great challenge.

Stat Brother · Jun 29, 2020

beorhthelm said:
you jest, this is a fundemental problem. how do you transport the energy from there to Europe or elsewhere? there were schemes to deploy high voltage DC network some years ago, nothing seems to have some of it.

Can't they just load it into converted oil tankers? (solar powered ones of course)

Algernon · Jun 29, 2020

One massive directional mirror in the sahara.
One massive "collector" mirror in the UK.
Point the first mirror in the direction of the second.
Problem solved. Just route planes around the "death" ray.
I saw something like it in a James Bond film.

LamieRobertson · Jun 29, 2020

We.?? I’m a bit busy but could spare a Saturday in September...do we need to bring our own screwdriver

FatSuperman · Jun 29, 2020

Algernon said:
One massive directional mirror in the sahara.
One massive "collector" mirror in the UK.
Point the first mirror in the direction of the second.
Problem solved. Just route planes around the "death" ray.
I saw something like it in a James Bond film.

And if we put our mirror on a gimbal, we could melt the French

Stat Brother · Jun 29, 2020

FatSuperman said:
And if we put our mirror on a gimbal, we could melt the French

It would be worth if for the brie.

SuperFurrySeagull · Jun 29, 2020

FatSuperman said:
And if we put our mirror on a gimbal, we could melt the French

Stat Brother said:
It would be worth if for the brie.

Well, I'm sold.

Bozza · Jun 29, 2020

Albion 4ever said:
Would you trust the worlds energy supply in the hands of a few corrupt African dictators?!

Of course not, which is why [MENTION=435]Stat Brother[/MENTION] asked "should we..." and, frankly, some good old-fashioned British imperialism is exactly what the world needs right now.

So let's go and stake a claim for the Sahara - what could possibly go wrong?

SeagullinExile · Jun 29, 2020

Albion 4ever said:
Would you trust the worlds energy supply in the hands of a few corrupt African dictators?!

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