Desertec Plans Concentrated Solar Power For Africa
Solar Power has come of age. A consortium of 20 Germans firms are forming a African-European solar project going by the name Desertec.
Desertec`s plan is to transform the North African Sahara rim in to a massive solar generating hub, covering 6,500 square miles of sand . The Cost of this, like the scale of the development, is a huge $500 billion. In return the project could create nealy one quarter of a million new jobs in Germany with a similar number worldwide and generate nearly $3 billion dollars world of electricity by 2050. The firms in the consortium include heavyweights like Deutsche Bank ,the insurance giant Munich Re, German engineering leader Siemens, energy companies RWE and E.on.
Concentrated solar Power has been proved and is successful, the worlds first large scale CSP station was build in the 1980s in the Mojave Desert, California. This technology involved directing and array of solar mirrors to reflect the sun to a central point where the heat is used to eventually generate steam which drives a conventional electrical turbine. Clean, producing no waste materials to harm the environment and the source of the power are the plentiful rays of the sun.
Desertec claims that if just 0.3 percent of the light falling on the deserts of the Sahara and Middle East were harnessed, it would generate enough power to supply the whole of Europe. Deserts are a very productive source of energy needing only six hours of sunshine over all the deserts in the world would produce enough power that we use in a whole year.
Concentrated solar power
But Europe is separated from North Africa by the Mediterranean sea and this produces another challenge , transporting the cleanly produced electricity to Europe. Here too the technology is catching up with the development of High voltage direct current transmitting lines along with decreasing costs are making this more viable. DC converter stations are more expensive than stations employing Alternating currents, the benefit here is that for long distance transmitting HVDC cables have a far better energy conservation factor over long distances. The time scale of this, according to Desertec, are concrete plans in two years and energy flowing in 10 years time. Eventually this large clean power initiatives could provide 15 percent of Europe’s energy needs.
Opponents remark on the cost and the wisdom of relying on areas of the world that may be politically unstable to supply Europe. Its a massive and costly project and as always the money could be spent in other areas, but as the cost of other unclean forms of energy rise, concentrated solar power just looks more enticing and if realized on this scale it can only open the door for other projects in areas suitably similar around the world.
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