European Companies Plan $550 Billion Solar Project in Sahara Desert

[amor de cosmos]

awesome! northern africa must be a goldmine for solar energy. i'm sure the middle east is too. just like this old(ish) Der Spiegel story says:
http://www.spiegel.de/international/...550544,00.html

European Companies Plan $550 Billion Solar Project in Sahara Desert
Researched by Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas)

A consortium of approximately 20 companies, including RWE AG (Essen, Germany), reinsurance company Munich Re Group (Munich, Germany), Siemens AG (Munich) and Deutsche Bank (Frankfurt am Main, Germany), have announced plans for a pioneering 400 billion euro ($550 billion) project to build solar farms in the Sahara desert that will help power European households. The hugely ambitious plan is the most expensive green-energy project ever proposed and would extend out to 2050, when the group envisions solar plants stretching across 130 square kilometers of the North African desert. According to its backers, the project, known as Desertec, could yield up to 15 percent of all of Europe's power needs by 2050. Desertec was formed by the Trans-Mediterranean Renewable Energy Cooperation, which itself is made up of Club of Rome, the Hamburg Climate Protection Foundation and the National Energy Research Center of Jordan.

Siemens is expected to provide the project with steam turbines for solar thermal plants, similar to those supplied to the Invapah Solar Complex in Mojave, California, the first commercial solar thermal power plant in the United States to feature a power tower. The power generated in the Desertec Sahara project will be transported through a Euro-Mediterranean high-voltage transmission grid with low transmission losses. About $481 billion of the proposed funding will go toward building the solar plants, while $69 billion will be used for the transmission lines.

"We consider Desertec to be by far the most important concept available at present for getting to grips with the pressing problem of climate change in the energy-supply sector," said Max Schön for the Club of Rome. "The earth's deserts receive as much energy in six hours as mankind consumes in a whole year. What makes Desertec so attractive is that the concept makes a vital contribution, firstly to protecting our climate, and secondly to ensuring the security of energy and water supplies for Europe, North Africa and the Middle East."

The group believes that the technology they will use is already available, although they expect ongoing improvements to allow them to scale things up considerably. Professor Hans Muller-Steinhagen from the German Aerospace Center said, "The technologies needed to produce electricity from concentrated solar radiation basically exist. Solar thermal power plants with a total capacity of 500 MW are already in operation, and additional plants with a capacity of 1 GW are under construction, and more than 10 1-GW power plants are at an advanced planning stage."

Muller-Steinhagen says the project will aim to reduce electricity-acquisition costs by pursuing two parallel approaches as laid out in the EcoStar study. Mass production and experience will lower the costs substantially while the group intends to work to make parabolic trough power plants and solar tower power plants more efficient.

"The next step," he added, "will be to develop solar-powered gas-turbine plants that operate without cooling water. The German Aerospace Center assumes that, in 10 to 15 years from now, the electricity generated by solar power plants will be able to compete with the medium-load electricity from fossil power plants."

The project is undoubtedly ambitious, and there are a huge number of obstacles to overcome. Alongside the huge upfront costs, there will be political wrangling, cross-border issues during transmission and the political instability in North Africa to deal with. The group accepts that the set-up costs are high.

Hans Muller-Steinhagen said, "All concerned must be aware that a new technology is always very much more expensive in the initial phase than power plant concepts which have been established for decades. The investment costs for solar thermal power plants are generally very high. The 50-MW power plants with heat storage for eight hours of full-load operation, which are currently being built in Spain, cost around 300-350 million euros at present. The financing for such projects is consequently the first hurdle to clear." Munich Re will host a meeting of interested parties and country representatives in Munich on July 13 to discuss the project.

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