Europe's Saharan power plan: miracle or mirage?

[OKIsItJustMe]

http://www.reuters.com/article/GCA-GreenBusiness/idUSTRE57N00920090824

Europe's Saharan power plan: miracle or mirage?

Sun Aug 23, 2009 8:50pm EDT

By Tom Pfeiffer

RABAT (Reuters) - A 400 billion euro ($774 billion) plan to power Europe with Sahara sunlight is gaining momentum, even as critics see high risks in a large corporate project using young technology in north African countries with weak rule of law.

Desertec, as the initiative is called, would be the world's most ambitious solar power project. Fields of mirrors in the desert would gather solar rays to boil water, turning turbines to electrify a new carbon-free network linking Europe, the Middle East and North Africa.

…

Others warn of numerous pitfalls, including Maghreb politics, Saharan sandstorms and the risk to desert populations if their water is diverted to clean dust off solar mirrors.

They say the concentrated solar power (CSP) technology behind Desertec involves greater costs and risks than the fast-growing patchwork of smaller-scale photovoltaic cell installations that generate most of Europe's solar energy today.

…

[XemaSab]

1. I know! I know!

They could use solar thermal to run a desalination plant which could be used to clean the dust off the mirrors, enabling more power to be created, which would in turn be used to generate water to clean the dust off the mirrors!

Closed system! :woohoo:

[OKIsItJustMe]

3. In truth, the need for cleaning the mirrors is over stated

At the same time, newer materials require less cleaning than materials that have been used in the past.

[madokie]

6. A while back I took two mirrors outside

I ran across them in cleaning up our storage shed, both were really dusty, so I take what looked like the dirtiest one and left it the way it was and then cleaned the other one spic and span and went outside and nothing I tried made any difference in the amount of sunlight that they reflected that I could discern. One was dirty enough that I couldn't have shaved with it but it seemed to reflect as much sunlight as the other one. One of the places I shown them was down a well we have on our property and like I said I couldn't tell any difference in the ammount of light reflected. From that I am not convinced that surface dust on the mirrors would make a hill of beans of difference to a reflecting type collector. Try it sometime and see if any of you have any different results.

[OKIsItJustMe]

7. It does make some difference

(like 10%±2%) which wouldn't be that obvious to you.

http://www1.eere.energy.gov/solar/printable_versions/component_systems_rnd.html

…

Advanced Coatings

Remarkable changes have occurred during the last two decades in CSP solar reflectors and receiver tubes, glazings for buildings, photovoltaic modules, flat-plate collectors, and electrochromic windows. These changes have led to improved performance and reduced initial costs. However, major factors in maintenance costs and the long-term performance of these technologies are the performance loss from surface soiling and the cost to clean the surface. For example, reduced reflectivity of a solar mirror due to soiling can lead to an 8%–12% drop in performance between cleanings. The issue of soiling and cleaning must be dealt with before CSP plants are deployed on a massive scale in low-water desert environments.

We are researching advanced hardcoats, barriers, antisoiling coatings, and cleaning characterization and testing. One study involves correlating scratch resistance and water and oxygen permeation rates of advanced hardcoats and barrier coatings with durability of solar mirrors. We are also determining soiling rates for different materials at different sites.

…

[madokie]

10. Not enough for all the bullshit one hears about that though

I guess for those who are looking for something to bitch about it's enough, huh.

[Name removed]

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[bananas]

4. LOL - talk about "crack-pipe dreams" - Europe doesn't use "Pebble Bed" nuclear reactors

If you don't know what you're talking about, you make stuff up!
:rofl:

[OKIsItJustMe]

8. I liked the claim that PV panels need to be replaced after they run out of free electrons

(Where to start?…)

[NNadir]

11. Actually, until shut down by the delusions of dumb fundies, the German PBR provided, in the 1980's

more energy than the solar "could, could, could COULD, COULD, could, could, could," talk has produced in the entire history up until that time.

Even now, with billions and billions and billions of Euros in subsidies, the German renewable industry has no hope of shutting the gas industry or coal industry, which is why so many German anti-nukes are working for Gazprom and other Russian gas companies.

Until shut by ignorance and fantasy, the THTR-300 reactor produced 2,891,000 MWh over a four year period.

When shut, it was replaced by dangerous fossil fuel generated power, which kills continuously in normal operations producing not a peep from the dumb fundie fossil fuel "bait and switch" community.

It is probably not worthwhile to refer to something called "numbers" when talking with fundies, since fundies are by definition people whose opinions are not subject to revision by any amount of information.

For everyone else, I note that 50 years of "could, could, could, could, could, could" talk by the kind of dipshits who think that washing their mirrors in the kitchen sink of the McMansion is a systematic study of Saharan conditions, solar power in this country produced, as of 2008, 0.091 quads from the grand solar poohbah religion that was supposed to save our Tesla cars for subsidized billionaires.

Although zero fundies have ever been able to understand what http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/alternate/page/renew_energy_consump/table1.html">data means, and insist that 0.091 quads > 83.436 quads, having never opened a science book in their ridiculous lives, I nevertheless post the same data over and over and over and over and over again?

Why? Because year after year after year after year after year of big "could" talk from fundies on this website hasn't changed the data by very much, keeping Amory Lovins and his corporate sponsors from Walmart, Conoco Phillips, Royal Dutch Shell...happy as carbon encrusted clams.

How much energy is 0.091 quads 33 years after Uncle "Rio Tinto is green" Amory announced that solar would save us by the year 2000? It translates into 28,000,000 MWh.

This means that the tiny 300 MW German HTBBR reactor, before being shut by ignorance, produced in the area about the size of a Walmart Parking populated with dumb fundies buying out the Windex sale before cruising over to Whole Foods to show how "organic" they are, produced 10% as much energy as the entire solar industry of the United States has produced in the last year.

Have a happy dangerous natural gas greenwashing day, Kiddie, and do stock up on that Windex with Mr. Paper Towel Solar Pool Light.

Lather on that sunscreen too boys. We wouldn't want you to get those fat bellies burned by solar radiation.

[Dirk_H]

5. .

Also see my previous contribution to this topic:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=115&topic_id=201806&mesg_id=201806

[phantom power]

9. I'm more interested in the implications of continuing dependence...

on the Middle East for energy.