As a Managing Director of the Desertec Foundation, I would like to add some comments: The solar projects back then did NOT secure funding. The mundane, boring reason why the concept is only implemented now is that there was no business case ten years ago. CSP was twice as expensive back then and PV was even more expensive at that point. The focus on sociology is an interesting ange if one considers that the fossil fuel version of a trans-mediterranean energy grid has long been implemented: North Africa provides Europe with 15 % of its gas, mostly from Algeria. Same idea, yet all non-technical concerns played little role: No terrorist attacks on pipelines took place, no disruption of supply (even during the Arab Spring), no massive protests by the local people that the gas should not be sold to Europe. The Desertec Concept would have alleviated the dependency on mostly one country to several countries and of course eliminated the carbon emissions. Yes, still a dependency, but far better to the status quo. Now that CSP has fallen in price to compete with gas power plants, suddenly all political issues were unimportant and our Foundation could finally convince Italy to allow Tunisia to lay an electricity cable to Europe. Egypt followed with 6 GW of electricity cables to Greece and Italy now being permitted. Whether we will achieve a total investment of 400 billion until 2050 remains to be seen :) But massive progress has been made, especially through technological innovation making it much more affordable. Small detail: Al Maktoum IV has overtaken the Al Noor Complex as the biggest CSP power plant, while showing the massive technological advances since then: Air-Cooling-Systems, massive reduction in building costs, longer storage times. The concerns about water are obviously very important to us as a non-profit organization, that being one of the reasons why we are very careful to endorse hydrogen projects, which have an even bigger water consumption. Luckily the issue has been resolved with CSP. Cooling is now done with air-coolers, meaning that water is no longer needed for cooling. @Simon Whistler @megaprojects9649 Feel free to contact us for news about the current projects. Happy to give out information on current progress.
@@chopinmack5418 China has basically implemented the DESERTEC Concept within its borders. Large scale PV, Wind and CSP in the Gobi Desert and several Gigawatt of Transmission Capacity over 3000 km. Obviously a different political situation, but the laws of physics are the same in China. So at least the questions about technical feasibility are answered. The economic viability in the trans mediterranean case is now there, but this has to be implemented.
Only now that we do not have access to cheap Russian Gas and even cheaper Arab Oil and Gas do those people "in power" wake up? Have their felts been washed away already?
@@wolfgangpreier9160 One of several key issues in corporate decision making is the separation of daily business and strategic planning. Depending on the legal form there are differences, but many bigger companies have some kind of management that conducts the daily business decisions. They have lots of expertise about the market they operate in and usually look a bit more ahead. However the broad direction of the company is set by some kind of supervisory body, in case of a publicly traded company the general meeting or some kind of representation of the investors. The investors can have short term interests or specifically invest in companies to influence their strategy. The later is often done with car manufacturers, where Oil Companies invest in those, to slow the adoption of electric cars for example. Therefore only some investors have long term strategies that only have the companies well-being in mind.
They're planning on doing something similar in Australia for Singapore. Australia - Asia Power Link. I think that would be a good follow up video to this one.
@Killdozer667 it's still going ahead. The company that started it went into voluntary administration in Jan 2023 and was brought out by another company in Sept 2023. They're hoping to have it Supplying Darwin by 2030.
@@andrewclark3236except Andrew Twiggy Forrest through Squadron Energy was going to turn Gladstone in to a hydrogen industry hub powering the Aluminium smelter, using tax payer money to subsidise the solar array, buy the land that the power lines would need and build the hydrogen generator. Then sell the excess stored hydrogen for anyone who needed it for electricity or steel making. There is so much wrong with this I don’t know where to start. In any case the champion Dr Steven Miles got the a$$ when Qld voted in David Crisafuli. No Queensland hydrogen hub means no solar field. No solar field means Darwin gets zero, stuff all. Nothing. They have no money and all Twiggy cares about is getting tax payer money. Saving the planet would be a happy coincidence
1:10 - Mid roll ads 2:45 - Chapter 1 - Early concepts 5:40 - Chapter 2 - The brains behind the operation 10:05 - Chapter 3 - A place in the sun 14:45 - Chapter 4 - A composite failure
You know it's ironic, people deemed the Desertec project too risky in terms of holding European electricity to ransom. And yet, that is exactly what happened with those Gulf Stream pipelines, when Russia thought they could leverage oil exports to prevent European support for Ukraine. Where was the commentary that over dependence on Russia could be "problematic"???
@@Komainu959 Lets not credit Trump with a momentary spark of sensibility that he later turned out to be right on. Fact is, building the Gulf Stream pipelines makes a great deal of sense, and the construction of which had absolutely nothing to do with Trump. At least the first Gulf Stream pipeline was in place well before 2016. Plus it's hard to tell what motivated Trump's comments considering how he was definitely driving America to be increasingly isolationist, and further thereafter, Trump seemed to develop personal (and arguably compromising ties) to Putin.
It was very debated in Europe and to some extend it was partly a way to reach out to Russia and try to build a bridge so we could finally leave the cold war behind us. As we all now know, that did not work out and I fear there will decades before Europe will try that again with Russia.
You probably refer to the North Stream pipelines, which are for natural gas? Oil mostly came through the Druzhba and other pipelines. Several European countries deliberately forfeited access to their domestic oil and gas resources via moratoria or outright bans on shale gas and shale oil development, because that would have involved fracking and doing the "dirty business" right on the doorstep of people who started antagonising fossil fuels.
ignoring the technical challenges, the whole thing would be looted and stripped bare almost immediately due to the systemic poverty and instability of the region
@@manoz6194 - truth. Libya was stable, controlled, and the muslim brotherhood were heavily suppressed. But Gadafi wanted to trade oil with gold not the US$. And so his oil had to be "liberated". Similar (but different) to what Obama did to Syria. That was a oil pipeline that Assad said NO to.
The main problem is energy transmission. These lines, like from Morocco to Spain, cost enormous money an we need like 70 of them. Turns out, despite the fact that solar panel in Germany is about 3 times less effective, than in northern Africa, it's cheaper than all the things related to transmission of this energy from Africa.
This is key! Shipping power by transmission line is super expensive. It is surprising to many but a pipeline moves energy at a fraction of the cost of powerlines. The economics of green hydrogen or even better, green ammonia are different than green power because power is in tanks and pipelines.
Yeah this was a dumb idea. Technology has caught up. Building solar panels in North Africa? Trusting those people? Letting Muslim countries have leverage and literal power over Europe? Come on. How blind can you be. Youd need to have an army made from a coalition protecting it. Or lest it be destroyed due to radical Islam just looking to damage everything. How stupid can Germany be. First trusting Russia, and then after that backfires with LNG. They switch to Muslim countries with Solar! Just make nuclear already FFS. That way the west can cut ties with the Middle East for oil as well.
The main problem is that the main problem is the main problem. And being the main problem the main problem is that the main problem is really the main problem. Turns out, youtube commentors are full of it 99.99% of the time.
@@Greenammonianews Yeah, maybe not in the shape of pipelines as these would also be very disruptable, but definitely an interesting alternative. He mentions in the video how blackmailing and withholding was a big problem with oil which would be transferred to hydrogen etc. But in that case we're just assuming that everyone would become a silly billy as soon as they get a taste of exports. I guess it's likely but you'd hope that someday we'd learn. I think the key is to not rely too heavily on this source, like we unfortunately do with oil, and only use it while we develop solar cell tech further. Or even set up whatever energy intensive factories they're planning to use all that power for in close proximity to the solar farms. We have 20/20 hindsight vision with oil, but we can turn that into foresight with new endeavors. In any case, I think it's meaningful to allow the countries along the equator get a chance to develop for many reasons.
On the Noor I to III combined output: I had to relisten a few times since you misspoke, but 1470 GWh (not gigawatts per hour, mind you) for $9 billion is actually very expensive. A typical 1 GWe nuclear power plant costs about the same and produces six times more electricity.
Hincley Point C is expected to cost around 50 billion GBP by the time it's completed. With a nameplate capacity of 3.2GWe. That's definitely not "about the same" as 9 billion for 1.47GW for 9 billion USD.
@@jur4x Yes, and here we get into the weeds, as we're citing different numbers. I was referring to overnight costs as a metric, which I used as I have no idea how the Noor stations were financed. You refer to the total cost, which consists of 65% of financing costs. Yes, you read that right: if we fixed paying high interest, we could build HPC for 16 billion Pounds. This is a huge wildcard.
@14:05 While this design might have used standard steam turbines, but they don’t need to. Brayton cycle turbines are dry, and you can run the bottoming distillation plant on a dry cooling tower. The main use of water would be for cleaning, and that could be supplied by the distillation plant.
We have a CSP plant in Israel. It works but apparently it produces less energy than they had expected and the thing is so bright that you literally can't look at it if you are closer than a couple of kilometers. Honestly, it's brightness is the biggest problem.
" it produces less energy than they had expected" Yes. That is the problem of all CSPs. They do not take into account that the efficiency is measured in real world not defined on paper. And it is always much worse than imagined. Just like building a house. You need 50% for "extras". At least!
Briefly shown in the video is a truck with a mechanical brush that cleans the reflectors. Since the reflectors are simple polished metal, they are resistant to wear damage from sand and can simply be brushed off to clear accumulated sand.
@@miles8385 Nay Bray. The reflectors are made out of a type of reflective velcro and coated with a thick gelatinous goo to fully capture the sun's rays for the pocketing. It's never work because of these obvious facts. Brugh you need to do some research before you go shooting out of your mouth. Maybe take some shots to the mouth yourself before you start goin' hog wild?
Few details were left out here, I was working back in the day with a startup in Orange county which was involved in the project, first of all the Germans at the end tried to make the north African countries invest themselves then buy the electricity from em which was weird for such projects, also Tunisia pulled out, then Libya became a non option because of the war raging there at the time, and then Algeria have strict laws on how foreign countries use their natural resources and soil but also if I remember they required the solar panels and stuff must be produced locally, then came Morocco but here again there was a problem, the suggested location was in the disputed Western Sahara territory and that means the saharaui people must consent first if any European company plans implementing there, again dead-end, thats most of the things I remember, the sad part is Europe will only try to exploit Africa in the cheapest way possible.
what you just described was an attempt to buy power from all those countries if they put in the investment to build the generation capacity. These countries could make a ton of money but they are so paranoid of eurpoean exploitation that they just rot in poverty. If I were a billionaire I'd be willing to lend them the money on basically no interest just to get them started.
Plus there's the whole "When China wants to cover Africa in trash and force them to pay for it for generations to come" truth. Some might even call it slavery.... Safe Base Load Energy density is the most important thing in order for a people to grow and excel. The more dense and consistent power is the more easily they can improve their world.
Thanks for recognizing it. Western exploitation of Africa is so normalized that I even saw a comment complaining about poor people stripping the panels for money.
Honestly surprised that no one has thought of using CSP not to melt salt but to power a giant SPIL (solar-pumped iodine laser) that would in turn serve as an ICF ignition source. All you'd need to do at that point is rapidly add some deuterium, tritium, and/or helium-3 to the already-ignited fusion reaction once it gets going (most conveniently this would be by forming a FRC around the ICF pellet) and you'd have a perfect solution to the intermittency problem.
All they had to do was design the project in stages, start smaller like the Morocco plant focussed on a single grid connection, and then build out additional plants and interconnects gradually over time, focussing on the most viable areas first.
Security would be constant consideration. I have seen random theft of solar panels from small rural electrification projects in Sub-Saharan Africa ruin government projects.
@@qazhr You obviously didn't watch the video? Desertec was about solar thermal power plants, with heat storage for continuous operation, without batteries.
layered mixture of technologies, to suppliment the needs of the facility and the questions of immediate storage to long term use of, use right now what you can, store what you can, take advantage of the multiple sources not just the singular and have a good day
Despite all problems, this is still a viable addition to have in a European/North-African power grid. Instead, we decided to go all in by making us depend on cheap Russian gas. Worked great 🙄
Kind of hard when they have invaded neighbors 3 times in 16 years and protected a dictator (Assad) who used chemical weapons like nerve agents on his own citizens. Doesn't sound like any friend I would want personally
boah the amount of bots is insane! but apart from that, the issue with turning afrika into a true "power house" is mainly storing & transfering the energy to whre its needed! would need a HUGE infrastructure project, investment & political will, to really invest into africa..... but historically, no1 wants that, for some reason
@@entropybear5847 on this particular topic, deserts are good places for solar panels. Cue in the Sahara, near to the equator and the closest large desert to Europe
The technical issue is one of water. On the PV side of solar, there is an efficiency and lifespan issue if panels get too hot. In hot climates you can get more power with upright bifacial East-West aligned panels than traditional panels facing the sun that overheat and run into issues. On the CSP side it is about heat regulation. The mirrors heat the pipe, which heats the salts, which can be stored. If the salts ever get too cold and freeze, then you have issues. But once your heat storage is full, you need to bleed heat off, which generally means high water use. The big CSP disaster in SoCal ran into heat and water use issues, and had to go through multiple retrofits to fix it. It can be done... But it means over-building the plant vs extra water use. Both options are expensive. And of course there is the issue of dust, sand, and wind. Water is needed to keep cleaning the panels, but putting glass in a sand blaster is generally not great if you need invisible glass in PV, or highly reflective material in CSP... Either way, more water and constant polishing. You would think that solar would be amazing for the deserts... But it turns out not to be true.
Yeah, sufficient water use is a major issue that a lot of people don't think about. A family member worked on a large PV plant in the US Southwest and it used a whole lot of water each month keeping the panels clean in an area where water use was an issue.
What is Daniel Egbe even talking about? Europeans make promises then they go? The project was supposed to provide power to the MENA region and even sub-Saharan Africa. Is he implying that the Europeans would just take the electricity and none would go anywhere else? He's part of the African Network for solar energy, where does he think Africa would get solar equipment from, China? You can't just shout "colonialism" at any project that invests in Africa to create doubt.
That’s part of Africas problem. The Europe can’t make investments or projects like this without Africa shouting colonialism. If he’s apart of Africa’s network for solar energy and says they can’t do it cuz of colonialism then why can’t they do it themselves ? Someone already made all of the plans and studies for them….
@@JeffBilkins diversifying our enery is a good thing, but the thing i really love about renwables is, that they are sort of a grassroot thing. It puts the "power" into the hands of people instead of states, companys or warlords.
@mvphasser2 😂😂😂😂😂😂 who do you think builds massive renewable plants? Yep old Barker got the family 500mw solar plant up and runnin, just needed a couple tools from ol rusty's hardware
Nice idea, but it was overtaken by the political and technical questions. Maybe if they started with a more modest scale and ensured local access. We may have seen something happen.
"Maybe if they started with a more modest scale and ensured local access" No, Qute the contrary. They thought too small. All of them. They should have dimensioned it to the future primary energy consumption of whole of Europe of around 3-4 PWh.
excellent video, thank you! but FYI there's something weird with the sound; there's high-pitched screeches or something, maybe when you're saying Ses. e.g. listen for 10 seconds around 16:58. maybe just EQ down the high frequencies?
0:52 im gonna guess its too expensive to maintain with all the sandy winds. I guess the thumbnail was just random solar panels, i thought we would be covering pv solar plants, not csp's.
There is an idea that the energy from the sun can be used to turn rust into iron and the iron can be shipped to an industrial country and be returned as rust after giving off heat during oxidation.
There are already cables between North Africa and Europe and North Africa (at leas in part) is already part of UCTE synchronous grid. But the problem seems to be that EU can't persuade (or force) it's members to do something about missing connection in the Mediterranean region, for example HVDC between Spain, southeast France and Italy (and possibly their islands). This would, most likely significantly help with energy transition, but for some reason, those countries are not planning or willing to build those interconnection, that would even out prices and allow for co-operation between hydro power plants in Alps and solar and Wind power plants in Iberia. Those lines are also completely feasible as longer lines already exist between British isles and Norway.
In addition to the points raised in other comments: what about focusing on solar power for local markets? Build the infrastructure to serve African consumers first. Then expand and consider exporting to Europe after.
The instability of the region was the main issue. The idea to lower the dependency on oil due to instability there was one driver, the klima was less of an issue then.
We may realize that Desertec's ideals are being implemented, not in a multilateral form, but in a bilateral one. Maybe Moore's law will beat Murphy's law over time, and the feasibility of this wonderful project.
The U.S. has already invested vast resources to develop and operate a molten salt power plant, Crescent Dunes, in the desert outside Las Vegas, NV. Having the benefit of very short transmission lines to a major customer, this project still went bankrupt. With a $200M loss in value paid by taxpayers, the project subsequently was restarted, providing power mainly at night from the stored heat. It seems a challenge to overcome the current issues with this technology, along with the long-range transmission issues. Not to say this technology is not attainable, just that taxpayers should be wary. I would keep an eye on Crescent Dunes to see if this technology succeeds.
Oof, you're outdoing yourself Simon 😉 Regarding electricity disruption, this is a concern with all centralized power generation. This plan is more decentralized than say nuclear power, where you would only need to hit targets in one country. If you wanted to take out the entire system you would have to start a war with a host of countries. In any case, I don't think we would grow completely dependent on this source of power since it would be located in a region of social unrest. I see it as supplemental power, perhaps forcing us to more seriously consider power storage options. I think this would be a good intermittent source of power until we reach higher efficiency of solar cells. When we approach the higher end of the projected possibilities, we would be able to generate plenty of power even on overcast winter days in Europe. Also, thanks for introducing me to the Club of Rome - very interesting organization!
here's a better idea, cover the oceans with semisubmersible solar panel pods, cools the oceans slightly and it utilizes MASSIVE amounts of area, cheaper and easier using recycled plastic, you can also use a floating platform to launch things into space much much safer, you can make massive electromagnetic mass accelerators for cargo only vessels, can be used as a base of operations for the US military being very easily protected the benefits are literally endless. you can also attach small or large (depending on platform size) collapsible wind turbines for double the power potential, you don't have to worry about people messing with the plants etc. etc. land based solar plants are niche at best oceanic plants would be better suitable for power generation
A big problem with wind and solar is that once the stuff starts to break its toxic waste to some degree especially with wind mills honestly a single nuclear reactor would make more power than covering entire countries in solar panels most likely
California has mass solar farms, and they tried something like this in Nevada but couldn't make it yeild decent levels and most of the time it was off line due to maintenance issues etc. look up Crescent Dune's Solar Thermal power plant and two bit divinci has a video
Also why hasnt anyone used this idea use the sun to heat the water like a giant magnifyin glass heating the water to create the steam same principle but it wouldnt involve mirror bit tabk of pressurized water with basically giant glass fefractors over to heat the water
@@thomasandriessen1046 And it's of course not 700 terawatts, but 700 terawatt hours per year. Kilowatts per squaremeter could be correct for a maximum or average irradiation, but with "2635", it has to be kilowatt hours per squaremeter and year (2635 kWh/m²a). Which would equate to an average irradiation of 0.3 kW/m².
I was wondering for many years what happened to that great idea. Maybe it was too early? Anyway nowadays we would have lots of use for that amount of energy production
@10:58 700TW/yr is an enormous rate of construction, though I wonder why you would need to build so fast when the worldwide total consumption is only like 10TW.
No. Germany uses ~500Twh per year. Global consumption is ~27,000Twh per year. And that does NOT count fuel used for heating and transport - just electricity.
A solar instalment in a region with a notoriously instable and volatile political structure that's yearning to be given a global trump card... an enormous cluster of mirrors at a location that is notoriously dusty with frequent sandstroms... what could go wrong?
You must be off by a factor of 1000 on the solar output. The total solar energy at Earth's orbital radius is only 3kW/m^2. You said the solar plant was getting over 2000 kW/m^2.
It's so frustrating when the physics seems so achievable. Surely there must be some mega project possible without moving parts or machinery that mimics how rainclouds form, seawater evaporative desalination trenches, perhaps taking advantage of the day night temperature swing and the Atlantic tides. Surely it needs nothing more than glass and dug trenches. Both expensive but the payback period is decades or centuries. There's energy for all the water for agriculture or solar that could ever be needed.
Exporting green power from regions with cheap empty land and great capacity factors may still happen but look a little different. Australia for example could make and ship enormous quantities of green ammonia (like hydrogen but more energy dense). Easily enough to fuel Asia.
Leave our beautiful desert alone, they're already trashing it with giant solar project, cutting down 300 year old Joshua trees in the name of saving the environment 👎
Do you really want to depend on intermittent energy from a country whose inhabitants largely hate Europe? Fed by undersea cables of enormous costs and totally vulnerable to an 'accidental' anchor drag?
No country would "depend" on one source of anything for power. Keep a lid on it jr.. From now on you can read comments but your commenting privileges beyond that have been revoked until further notice.
I can only imagine the maintenance requirements for a facility like this with the ever diminishing efficiency levels of those panels being sandblasted every time the wind picks up. I don't know. I'm only like 9 minutes in but I'm already starting to see holes That might become the issue that kills the project like I said I'm only 9 minutes in but I think this is going to be what kills the project. Just remember it's my personal opinion and this is for fun
If it included multiple energy types connected to a unified regional grid it would have worked but by having such a narrow view of the world and kind of trying to ram it through the success rate would have been zero especially since cheap Chinese PV's have now made solar the cheapest source of power globally with some bids as low as 1c/kwh USD in the middle east.. Overall still a good concept just needed more cooperating and yes flexible planning...
Why don't we just put instead independent solar power in the desert near their big mining sites. The they would have the energy needed for refining their raw extraction and ship their refined products to the world's market. Less transport costs than shipping the heavier raw material to oversea refineries. And it will be refined with green energy. Best solar panels create shade under them. If we put them high enough to reduce the sandy wind erosion, we could have a shaded area where the soil temperature is lower. The water evaporation of the few rain they have will be lower. So desertic plants could grow more. Even in good conditions, that shaded area covered with plants could serve as pasture for the nomadic shepherd tribes.
Wow every word in that paragraph was wrong. OK who builds and maintains these plants near African mines well known for being completely safe and not at all involved in shady and human rights violating activities. Second, give each mine a refinery? Are you suggesting that they hook the power plant up to the raw material to magically transform it into processed material? How processed? What form would it take? Are you saying that everything that comes up from the mines are same material? Do you believe the world works on CIV 5 logic and you place power plant and suddenly factory exists producing "product"? Let's not forget the brilliant statement, let's encourage nomadic herders and their flocks to set up shop amongst the power plant. I foresee nothing going wrong. And of course it would be far cheaper to build a refinery for a single mine and transport it than the current method of shipping off raw materials which is why it's been done already, its not like getting cheap minerals is the whole reason anyone deals with Africa. God damn the sheer pie in the sky naivety makes me glad trump won just to deal people like you a blow from which you'll never recover
“Kw per hour per square metre” is just one example of incorrect units being used. I’m not sure if you ever got the right units for power or energy. I realise that (for some reason) lots of people stumble in this area, but that’s no excuse. Just get someone with a science A-Level to check all the units in the script. Shouldn’t be too hard to find one somewhere.
There is a couple of CSP-plants in the US. And Crescent Dunes is even one with molten-salt-energy-storage for 10 hours. It doesn't work like expected, but it exists.
Yeah, if you can't use sea water or use a closed-loop fresh water cooling system all you're going to do is pull massive amounts of freshwater out of the ground and make life even harder for everyone within a 10000 miles or so
Was it proposed by countries that actually own Sahara? I'm sure every American would be delighted with proposal to cover Texas and California with solar panels without consulting with US.
700 TW per year doesn't even make sense. TW is a momentary measure, not a measure over time. 700TW is also far more than the electrical needs of the entire planet. (The total electricity needs of the planet are about 15TW) What you mean is 700THh per year. What you're actually talking about is something on the order of 80GW continuous, but they won't run continuously (though with the right storage system they could level things out pretty well, it wouldn't be perfect given seasonal fluctuations). 80GW flattened out through storage would still likely mean something like 120-180GW peak (I'd have to know something about the storage systems they're talking about to be able to extract a more precisely estimated peak power from the average power rating). 80GW avg or 120-180GW peak is a large amount of generation, and a measurable (though small) fraction of global electrical requirements. That's a worthy goal (though as ou state, one not actually achieved). There's no reason to artificially multiply it by 8,760.
18:03 I'm not sure how a drop in price in solar equipment leads to excess electricity but the fact that too much of a precious resource tanks the market makes this feel like some kind of wish that was granted on the monkey's paw.
The financial crisis didn't help the willingness/ability to actually pay for it either. The stupidity in thinking that diversifying your energy supply makes you more vulnerable is just mind boggling. About water for cooling, it doesn't have to be drinking water, technically you don't have to use water at all, but helps a lot. But sea water, or ground water that can't be used for drinking or irrigation can be used for cooling.
Yes, but "terawatt" hours, not "terrawatt" hours. Also wrong in minute 19: "Kilowatts per hour" (radiation intensity) and "Gigawatts per hour" (annual net output).
In theory yes, but those places in Europe receive far less solar radiation and the terrain perhaps is not as favourable as in Northern Africa, also Europe is mode densely populated than North Africa.
It sounds like a good idea but then you realize there’s so much wrong with it. 1) cost 2) transmission 3) looting 4) sabotage … I’m sure there are more
Desert- tec. Not to be confused with dessert -tec.... Repeat after me desert... A large sandy place... Dessert - something you have after the main meal......
De-desertification programs are proving successful at turning deserts into fertile land. They require much, much capital investment and with proper stewardship can be sustainable.
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@@aprildawnsunshine4326it doesn’t even work worth half a damn.
As a Managing Director of the Desertec Foundation, I would like to add some comments:
The solar projects back then did NOT secure funding. The mundane, boring reason why the concept is only implemented now is that there was no business case ten years ago. CSP was twice as expensive back then and PV was even more expensive at that point. The focus on sociology is an interesting ange if one considers that the fossil fuel version of a trans-mediterranean energy grid has long been implemented: North Africa provides Europe with 15 % of its gas, mostly from Algeria. Same idea, yet all non-technical concerns played little role: No terrorist attacks on pipelines took place, no disruption of supply (even during the Arab Spring), no massive protests by the local people that the gas should not be sold to Europe.
The Desertec Concept would have alleviated the dependency on mostly one country to several countries and of course eliminated the carbon emissions. Yes, still a dependency, but far better to the status quo.
Now that CSP has fallen in price to compete with gas power plants, suddenly all political issues were unimportant and our Foundation could finally convince Italy to allow Tunisia to lay an electricity cable to Europe. Egypt followed with 6 GW of electricity cables to Greece and Italy now being permitted. Whether we will achieve a total investment of 400 billion until 2050 remains to be seen :) But massive progress has been made, especially through technological innovation making it much more affordable. Small detail: Al Maktoum IV has overtaken the Al Noor Complex as the biggest CSP power plant, while showing the massive technological advances since then: Air-Cooling-Systems, massive reduction in building costs, longer storage times.
The concerns about water are obviously very important to us as a non-profit organization, that being one of the reasons why we are very careful to endorse hydrogen projects, which have an even bigger water consumption. Luckily the issue has been resolved with CSP. Cooling is now done with air-coolers, meaning that water is no longer needed for cooling.
@Simon Whistler @megaprojects9649 Feel free to contact us for news about the current projects. Happy to give out information on current progress.
China just completed a 3.5-gigawatt Solar Power Plant, in the desert area of Xinjiang in June this year .
They should be able to help .
@@chopinmack5418 China has basically implemented the DESERTEC Concept within its borders. Large scale PV, Wind and CSP in the Gobi Desert and several Gigawatt of Transmission Capacity over 3000 km. Obviously a different political situation, but the laws of physics are the same in China. So at least the questions about technical feasibility are answered. The economic viability in the trans mediterranean case is now there, but this has to be implemented.
Only now that we do not have access to cheap Russian Gas and even cheaper Arab Oil and Gas do those people "in power" wake up? Have their felts been washed away already?
@@TimoBracht_Desertec That is the point. China "implements". They do not "discuss". Whether this is good or bad must be seen. But they DO.
@@wolfgangpreier9160 One of several key issues in corporate decision making is the separation of daily business and strategic planning. Depending on the legal form there are differences, but many bigger companies have some kind of management that conducts the daily business decisions. They have lots of expertise about the market they operate in and usually look a bit more ahead. However the broad direction of the company is set by some kind of supervisory body, in case of a publicly traded company the general meeting or some kind of representation of the investors. The investors can have short term interests or specifically invest in companies to influence their strategy. The later is often done with car manufacturers, where Oil Companies invest in those, to slow the adoption of electric cars for example. Therefore only some investors have long term strategies that only have the companies well-being in mind.
They're planning on doing something similar in Australia for Singapore. Australia - Asia Power Link.
I think that would be a good follow up video to this one.
Isn't this project already dead?
@Killdozer667 it's still going ahead. The company that started it went into voluntary administration in Jan 2023 and was brought out by another company in Sept 2023. They're hoping to have it Supplying Darwin by 2030.
The same thing happen. The two CEOs, ie founding investors, couldn't agree on how the project should proceed, so one bought the other out.
@@andrewclark3236except Andrew Twiggy Forrest through Squadron Energy was going to turn Gladstone in to a hydrogen industry hub powering the Aluminium smelter, using tax payer money to subsidise the solar array, buy the land that the power lines would need and build the hydrogen generator. Then sell the excess stored hydrogen for anyone who needed it for electricity or steel making. There is so much wrong with this I don’t know where to start.
In any case the champion Dr Steven Miles got the a$$ when Qld voted in David Crisafuli. No Queensland hydrogen hub means no solar field. No solar field means Darwin gets zero, stuff all. Nothing. They have no money and all Twiggy cares about is getting tax payer money. Saving the planet would be a happy coincidence
@@jackvos8047I’ll take that bet. No it won’t. Not by 2030
1:10 - Mid roll ads
2:45 - Chapter 1 - Early concepts
5:40 - Chapter 2 - The brains behind the operation
10:05 - Chapter 3 - A place in the sun
14:45 - Chapter 4 - A composite failure
Thank you for making another one on infrastructure. Those are my favorites. I work in the energy industry and love these types of videos
I like these videos too. It's very interesting learning about international affairs that aren't shown through an American lens (I'm American btw)
You know it's ironic, people deemed the Desertec project too risky in terms of holding European electricity to ransom. And yet, that is exactly what happened with those Gulf Stream pipelines, when Russia thought they could leverage oil exports to prevent European support for Ukraine. Where was the commentary that over dependence on Russia could be "problematic"???
Weirdly enough Trump actually brought this up. I can't stand him but he was definitely correct on that call.
@@Komainu959 Lets not credit Trump with a momentary spark of sensibility that he later turned out to be right on. Fact is, building the Gulf Stream pipelines makes a great deal of sense, and the construction of which had absolutely nothing to do with Trump. At least the first Gulf Stream pipeline was in place well before 2016. Plus it's hard to tell what motivated Trump's comments considering how he was definitely driving America to be increasingly isolationist, and further thereafter, Trump seemed to develop personal (and arguably compromising ties) to Putin.
It’s called double standards … it’s what Europe excels at …
It was very debated in Europe and to some extend it was partly a way to reach out to Russia and try to build a bridge so we could finally leave the cold war behind us. As we all now know, that did not work out and I fear there will decades before Europe will try that again with Russia.
You probably refer to the North Stream pipelines, which are for natural gas? Oil mostly came through the Druzhba and other pipelines. Several European countries deliberately forfeited access to their domestic oil and gas resources via moratoria or outright bans on shale gas and shale oil development, because that would have involved fracking and doing the "dirty business" right on the doorstep of people who started antagonising fossil fuels.
ignoring the technical challenges, the whole thing would be looted and stripped bare almost immediately due to the systemic poverty and instability of the region
Thank Obama for making it a lot worse.
But Europeans can't stop their inbred desire to r word the African continent.
And criminals
Due to poverty? The funds would be stolen by the governments long before the average person got a chance 😂.. poverty doesnt create crime.
@@manoz6194 - truth. Libya was stable, controlled, and the muslim brotherhood were heavily suppressed. But Gadafi wanted to trade oil with gold not the US$. And so his oil had to be "liberated".
Similar (but different) to what Obama did to Syria. That was a oil pipeline that Assad said NO to.
The main problem is energy transmission. These lines, like from Morocco to Spain, cost enormous money an we need like 70 of them. Turns out, despite the fact that solar panel in Germany is about 3 times less effective, than in northern Africa, it's cheaper than all the things related to transmission of this energy from Africa.
This is key! Shipping power by transmission line is super expensive.
It is surprising to many but a pipeline moves energy at a fraction of the cost of powerlines.
The economics of green hydrogen or even better, green ammonia are different than green power because power is in tanks and pipelines.
Yeah this was a dumb idea. Technology has caught up.
Building solar panels in North Africa? Trusting those people? Letting Muslim countries have leverage and literal power over Europe? Come on. How blind can you be.
Youd need to have an army made from a coalition protecting it. Or lest it be destroyed due to radical Islam just looking to damage everything.
How stupid can Germany be. First trusting Russia, and then after that backfires with LNG. They switch to Muslim countries with Solar!
Just make nuclear already FFS. That way the west can cut ties with the Middle East for oil as well.
but what about using the panels for africa (e.g. solar panels in Sinai desert for cairo or alexandtia)
The main problem is that the main problem is the main problem. And being the main problem the main problem is that the main problem is really the main problem. Turns out, youtube commentors are full of it 99.99% of the time.
@@Greenammonianews Yeah, maybe not in the shape of pipelines as these would also be very disruptable, but definitely an interesting alternative. He mentions in the video how blackmailing and withholding was a big problem with oil which would be transferred to hydrogen etc. But in that case we're just assuming that everyone would become a silly billy as soon as they get a taste of exports. I guess it's likely but you'd hope that someday we'd learn.
I think the key is to not rely too heavily on this source, like we unfortunately do with oil, and only use it while we develop solar cell tech further. Or even set up whatever energy intensive factories they're planning to use all that power for in close proximity to the solar farms. We have 20/20 hindsight vision with oil, but we can turn that into foresight with new endeavors. In any case, I think it's meaningful to allow the countries along the equator get a chance to develop for many reasons.
On the Noor I to III combined output: I had to relisten a few times since you misspoke, but 1470 GWh (not gigawatts per hour, mind you) for $9 billion is actually very expensive. A typical 1 GWe nuclear power plant costs about the same and produces six times more electricity.
Hincley Point C is expected to cost around 50 billion GBP by the time it's completed. With a nameplate capacity of 3.2GWe. That's definitely not "about the same" as 9 billion for 1.47GW for 9 billion USD.
@@jur4x Yes, and here we get into the weeds, as we're citing different numbers. I was referring to overnight costs as a metric, which I used as I have no idea how the Noor stations were financed. You refer to the total cost, which consists of 65% of financing costs. Yes, you read that right: if we fixed paying high interest, we could build HPC for 16 billion Pounds. This is a huge wildcard.
@@jur4x Take a look at what Sth Korea can do, things like HP C are a result of mismanagement and piratical/legal action, not the tech.
@14:05 While this design might have used standard steam turbines, but they don’t need to. Brayton cycle turbines are dry, and you can run the bottoming distillation plant on a dry cooling tower. The main use of water would be for cleaning, and that could be supplied by the distillation plant.
We have a CSP plant in Israel. It works but apparently it produces less energy than they had expected and the thing is so bright that you literally can't look at it if you are closer than a couple of kilometers. Honestly, it's brightness is the biggest problem.
See Ivanpaugh in the American desert southwest....
Israel proper or illegally occupied & settled area?
Least you have some renewable energy either answer
@@Inucroft Israel has an extremely high portion of renewable energy. I said Israel, not Palestine.
@@Inucroft lets be real, you think all of Israel is illegally occupied.
" it produces less energy than they had expected" Yes. That is the problem of all CSPs. They do not take into account that the efficiency is measured in real world not defined on paper. And it is always much worse than imagined.
Just like building a house. You need 50% for "extras". At least!
One thing I am very curious about is how would they protect all those solar reflectors from sandstorms.
They don't. It's a scam project like those Arabian mega-follies. Consultants want to get paid.
Briefly shown in the video is a truck with a mechanical brush that cleans the reflectors. Since the reflectors are simple polished metal, they are resistant to wear damage from sand and can simply be brushed off to clear accumulated sand.
Is that code for something races brugh?
@@miles8385 Nay Bray. The reflectors are made out of a type of reflective velcro and coated with a thick gelatinous goo to fully capture the sun's rays for the pocketing. It's never work because of these obvious facts. Brugh you need to do some research before you go shooting out of your mouth. Maybe take some shots to the mouth yourself before you start goin' hog wild?
Not a worry mate, they don't move or make noise.
Few details were left out here, I was working back in the day with a startup in Orange county which was involved in the project, first of all the Germans at the end tried to make the north African countries invest themselves then buy the electricity from em which was weird for such projects, also Tunisia pulled out, then Libya became a non option because of the war raging there at the time, and then Algeria have strict laws on how foreign countries use their natural resources and soil but also if I remember they required the solar panels and stuff must be produced locally, then came Morocco but here again there was a problem, the suggested location was in the disputed Western Sahara territory and that means the saharaui people must consent first if any European company plans implementing there, again dead-end, thats most of the things I remember, the sad part is Europe will only try to exploit Africa in the cheapest way possible.
what you just described was an attempt to buy power from all those countries if they put in the investment to build the generation capacity. These countries could make a ton of money but they are so paranoid of eurpoean exploitation that they just rot in poverty. If I were a billionaire I'd be willing to lend them the money on basically no interest just to get them started.
Plus there's the whole "When China wants to cover Africa in trash and force them to pay for it for generations to come" truth. Some might even call it slavery....
Safe Base Load Energy density is the most important thing in order for a people to grow and excel. The more dense and consistent power is the more easily they can improve their world.
"Exploit", seriously? Paying them for sunlight and space, neither of those they have any use or competing demand for?
Thanks for recognizing it. Western exploitation of Africa is so normalized that I even saw a comment complaining about poor people stripping the panels for money.
I mean that's what private investors and companies are, just after profits.
The people, the law, the governments are there to balance that desire
Yes! Another Simon video, I already know why this didn’t happen, but I’m going to watch anyway
You don't know jack brugh
@ ok
@@emeraldfinder5 Don't bully me or I'll come.
One very big question where are they going to get the water to clean them?
We have one in Vegas. It’s epic
Honestly surprised that no one has thought of using CSP not to melt salt but to power a giant SPIL (solar-pumped iodine laser) that would in turn serve as an ICF ignition source.
All you'd need to do at that point is rapidly add some deuterium, tritium, and/or helium-3 to the already-ignited fusion reaction once it gets going (most conveniently this would be by forming a FRC around the ICF pellet) and you'd have a perfect solution to the intermittency problem.
All they had to do was design the project in stages, start smaller like the Morocco plant focussed on a single grid connection, and then build out additional plants and interconnects gradually over time, focussing on the most viable areas first.
Security would be constant consideration. I have seen random theft of solar panels from small rural electrification projects in Sub-Saharan Africa ruin government projects.
The possibilities of heat reflecting, might be a problem, mind you maintenance will be absolutely unbelievable 😳.
another project that will never come to pass
One that was never going to work because these people had forgotten how inefficient solar is and how not ready batteries are for this level of power
@@qazhr You obviously didn't watch the video?
Desertec was about solar thermal power plants, with heat storage for continuous operation, without batteries.
@@701983 still does not feel they understood the inefficient the whole thing was going to be if real politics didn’t kill it
Good thing
layered mixture of technologies, to suppliment the needs of the facility and the questions of immediate storage to long term use of, use right now what you can, store what you can, take advantage of the multiple sources not just the singular and have a good day
Despite all problems, this is still a viable addition to have in a European/North-African power grid.
Instead, we decided to go all in by making us depend on cheap Russian gas. Worked great 🙄
Maybe you should learn to get along with Russia.....
Kind of hard when they have invaded neighbors 3 times in 16 years and protected a dictator (Assad) who used chemical weapons like nerve agents on his own citizens. Doesn't sound like any friend I would want personally
@@diegoflores9237 or replace the thug Putin
@diegoflores9237 Maybe we shouldn’t rely on anyone but ourselfs when it comes to strategic needs
lucky you now ur depends on usa expensive gaz 🎉
boah the amount of bots is insane!
but apart from that, the issue with turning afrika into a true "power house" is mainly storing & transfering the energy to whre its needed!
would need a HUGE infrastructure project, investment & political will, to really invest into africa..... but historically, no1 wants that, for some reason
Well, very low local population to build and maintain, serious instability, and power loss over distance all really make a difference.
Sorry why are we constantly having to invest in Africa? Africa needs to figure itself out for a nice change.
@@entropybear5847 on this particular topic, deserts are good places for solar panels. Cue in the Sahara, near to the equator and the closest large desert to Europe
If Africa is so rich and perfect why do they constantly need our help?
The technical issue is one of water. On the PV side of solar, there is an efficiency and lifespan issue if panels get too hot. In hot climates you can get more power with upright bifacial East-West aligned panels than traditional panels facing the sun that overheat and run into issues.
On the CSP side it is about heat regulation. The mirrors heat the pipe, which heats the salts, which can be stored. If the salts ever get too cold and freeze, then you have issues. But once your heat storage is full, you need to bleed heat off, which generally means high water use. The big CSP disaster in SoCal ran into heat and water use issues, and had to go through multiple retrofits to fix it. It can be done... But it means over-building the plant vs extra water use. Both options are expensive.
And of course there is the issue of dust, sand, and wind. Water is needed to keep cleaning the panels, but putting glass in a sand blaster is generally not great if you need invisible glass in PV, or highly reflective material in CSP... Either way, more water and constant polishing.
You would think that solar would be amazing for the deserts... But it turns out not to be true.
Yeah, sufficient water use is a major issue that a lot of people don't think about. A family member worked on a large PV plant in the US Southwest and it used a whole lot of water each month keeping the panels clean in an area where water use was an issue.
It funny how reality inevitably bites these alternative energy projects squarely on the a$$....
What is Daniel Egbe even talking about? Europeans make promises then they go? The project was supposed to provide power to the MENA region and even sub-Saharan Africa. Is he implying that the Europeans would just take the electricity and none would go anywhere else? He's part of the African Network for solar energy, where does he think Africa would get solar equipment from, China? You can't just shout "colonialism" at any project that invests in Africa to create doubt.
That’s part of Africas problem. The Europe can’t make investments or projects like this without Africa shouting colonialism. If he’s apart of Africa’s network for solar energy and says they can’t do it cuz of colonialism then why can’t they do it themselves ? Someone already made all of the plans and studies for them….
At 19:19 I assume you meant to say 1,470 Gigawatt Hours, rather than 1,470 GW PER hour
Id rather have 5pv modules on my own roof than relaing on an african state that is as stable as a brick balanced on an single vertical spaghetto.
100% this. I don’t trust that continent to maintain a solar grid at all. Now add to that the corruption and it wouldn’t last a decade at best.
I compliment your use of the singular form of "spaghetti".
Well there's less stuff to pass through then oil and gas from the Persian Gulf to Red Sea and everything but you're not wrong.
@@JeffBilkins diversifying our enery is a good thing, but the thing i really love about renwables is, that they are sort of a grassroot thing. It puts the "power" into the hands of people instead of states, companys or warlords.
@mvphasser2 😂😂😂😂😂😂 who do you think builds massive renewable plants? Yep old Barker got the family 500mw solar plant up and runnin, just needed a couple tools from ol rusty's hardware
Nice idea, but it was overtaken by the political and technical questions. Maybe if they started with a more modest scale and ensured local access. We may have seen something happen.
"Maybe if they started with a more modest scale and ensured local access" No, Qute the contrary. They thought too small. All of them. They should have dimensioned it to the future primary energy consumption of whole of Europe of around 3-4 PWh.
Good point about having a realistic plan
excellent video, thank you! but FYI there's something weird with the sound; there's high-pitched screeches or something, maybe when you're saying Ses. e.g. listen for 10 seconds around 16:58. maybe just EQ down the high frequencies?
Make it so, darnit!
DEZ-er-tech not Dessert-ec
0:52 im gonna guess its too expensive to maintain with all the sandy winds.
I guess the thumbnail was just random solar panels, i thought we would be covering pv solar plants, not csp's.
Transfering that electricity across the sea would be quite a feat. Add to that Chinese ships dragging their anchors and you have a boondoggle.
There is an idea that the energy from the sun can be used to turn rust into iron and the iron can be shipped to an industrial country and be returned as rust after giving off heat during oxidation.
But not impossible, iirc, Singapore is building a connection to Australia as we speak
@@CandleWisp
On hold, if not canceled for now.
@@myparceltape1169
Or in situ conversion to other form, which would introduce far more flexibility to the entire system.
e.g.: hydrogen, NH3 and such.
There are already cables between North Africa and Europe and North Africa (at leas in part) is already part of UCTE synchronous grid.
But the problem seems to be that EU can't persuade (or force) it's members to do something about missing connection in the Mediterranean region, for example HVDC between Spain, southeast France and Italy (and possibly their islands). This would, most likely significantly help with energy transition, but for some reason, those countries are not planning or willing to build those interconnection, that would even out prices and allow for co-operation between hydro power plants in Alps and solar and Wind power plants in Iberia. Those lines are also completely feasible as longer lines already exist between British isles and Norway.
Can this kind of plant use sea water to make steam and gather clean water that come out?
Salt from the heated sea water/steam would permeate and corrode most if not all of the metal parts quickly.
In addition to the points raised in other comments: what about focusing on solar power for local markets? Build the infrastructure to serve African consumers first. Then expand and consider exporting to Europe after.
12:37 lol he lists western dependence on Saudi, a relatively friendly stable country, but not on Russia
My first question would be, how would the cells be kept clean?
The Sahara has quite a lot of wind.
The instability of the region was the main issue.
The idea to lower the dependency on oil due to instability there was one driver, the klima was less of an issue then.
Brian McManus from Real Engineering would be proud of this video!
We may realize that Desertec's ideals are being implemented, not in a multilateral form, but in a bilateral one. Maybe Moore's law will beat Murphy's law over time, and the feasibility of this wonderful project.
The U.S. has already invested vast resources to develop and operate a molten salt power plant, Crescent Dunes, in the desert outside Las Vegas, NV. Having the benefit of very short transmission lines to a major customer, this project still went bankrupt. With a $200M loss in value paid by taxpayers, the project subsequently was restarted, providing power mainly at night from the stored heat. It seems a challenge to overcome the current issues with this technology, along with the long-range transmission issues. Not to say this technology is not attainable, just that taxpayers should be wary. I would keep an eye on Crescent Dunes to see if this technology succeeds.
There is also the issue of even when it was fully operational it had a miserable 57% capacity factor.
Oof, you're outdoing yourself Simon 😉
Regarding electricity disruption, this is a concern with all centralized power generation. This plan is more decentralized than say nuclear power, where you would only need to hit targets in one country. If you wanted to take out the entire system you would have to start a war with a host of countries. In any case, I don't think we would grow completely dependent on this source of power since it would be located in a region of social unrest. I see it as supplemental power, perhaps forcing us to more seriously consider power storage options. I think this would be a good intermittent source of power until we reach higher efficiency of solar cells. When we approach the higher end of the projected possibilities, we would be able to generate plenty of power even on overcast winter days in Europe.
Also, thanks for introducing me to the Club of Rome - very interesting organization!
here's a better idea, cover the oceans with semisubmersible solar panel pods, cools the oceans slightly and it utilizes MASSIVE amounts of area, cheaper and easier using recycled plastic, you can also use a floating platform to launch things into space much much safer, you can make massive electromagnetic mass accelerators for cargo only vessels, can be used as a base of operations for the US military being very easily protected the benefits are literally endless. you can also attach small or large (depending on platform size) collapsible wind turbines for double the power potential, you don't have to worry about people messing with the plants etc. etc. land based solar plants are niche at best oceanic plants would be better suitable for power generation
A big problem with wind and solar is that once the stuff starts to break its toxic waste to some degree especially with wind mills honestly a single nuclear reactor would make more power than covering entire countries in solar panels most likely
They could do this in the desert regions in western US. California has a desert just sitting there. Ismt China doing this in the Gobe Desert?
California has mass solar farms, and they tried something like this in Nevada but couldn't make it yeild decent levels and most of the time it was off line due to maintenance issues etc. look up Crescent Dune's Solar Thermal power plant and two bit divinci has a video
The PV electric energy production has a minor issue - it is not feasible, until some cheaper methods are there.
Are you from 2010 because that seems like an outdated statement
@@ayoCC I am from 1971, if it does matter to you. But the PV is still a pure scam, until there are cheaper ways to generate electricity.
Also why hasnt anyone used this idea use the sun to heat the water like a giant magnifyin glass heating the water to create the steam same principle but it wouldnt involve mirror bit tabk of pressurized water with basically giant glass fefractors over to heat the water
So would these solar panels still work if they get engulfed on a sandstorm?
19:06 kW/(h*m²) is an incorrect unit, it should be kW/m² or kWh/(h*m²) (second one is kind of stupid but also technically correct)
and 19:19 should be GWh, not GW/h
@@thomasandriessen1046 And it's of course not 700 terawatts, but 700 terawatt hours per year.
Kilowatts per squaremeter could be correct for a maximum or average irradiation, but with "2635", it has to be kilowatt hours per squaremeter and year (2635 kWh/m²a).
Which would equate to an average irradiation of 0.3 kW/m².
13:53 lol it’s not resource exploitation if fairly negotiate and pay you for it.
I was wondering for many years what happened to that great idea. Maybe it was too early? Anyway nowadays we would have lots of use for that amount of energy production
Like sands through the hourglass. These are the days of our lives.
Sand keeps moving guys
@10:58 700TW/yr is an enormous rate of construction, though I wonder why you would need to build so fast when the worldwide total consumption is only like 10TW.
No. Germany uses ~500Twh per year.
Global consumption is ~27,000Twh per year.
And that does NOT count fuel used for heating and transport - just electricity.
@ But the video stated TW, power, not TWh, energy.
@@wagnerrpSimon screwed up and said terrawatts instead of hours
Your glasses are shaped like hearts!
A solar instalment in a region with a notoriously instable and volatile political structure that's yearning to be given a global trump card... an enormous cluster of mirrors at a location that is notoriously dusty with frequent sandstroms... what could go wrong?
You must be off by a factor of 1000 on the solar output. The total solar energy at Earth's orbital radius is only 3kW/m^2. You said the solar plant was getting over 2000 kW/m^2.
They calculated that it would cost too much to keep cleaning the bird turds off the solar panels.
It's so frustrating when the physics seems so achievable. Surely there must be some mega project possible without moving parts or machinery that mimics how rainclouds form, seawater evaporative desalination trenches, perhaps taking advantage of the day night temperature swing and the Atlantic tides. Surely it needs nothing more than glass and dug trenches. Both expensive but the payback period is decades or centuries. There's energy for all the water for agriculture or solar that could ever be needed.
Exporting green power from regions with cheap empty land and great capacity factors may still happen but look a little different.
Australia for example could make and ship enormous quantities of green ammonia (like hydrogen but more energy dense). Easily enough to fuel Asia.
0:29 pfffft only if we insist on being a surface dwelling civilization. Adapting is how we made it this far…😅
Secret dwarf is obviously a secret dwarf.
What's your favorite type of music? I bet it's rock :P
Those could be used as data centers. Another idea would be to use that energy to produce liquid hydrogen that could be then transported worldwide.
One might consider this to be a potential project for California and the rest of the SW of the US.
Leave our beautiful desert alone, they're already trashing it with giant solar project, cutting down 300 year old Joshua trees in the name of saving the environment 👎
Yes! California loves stuff like this that doesn't work out
I think they tried it already.
Ivanpaugh
Look up Crescent Dunes solar project...
So they were literally so preoccupied about whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should...
Not really
Do you really want to depend on intermittent energy from a country whose inhabitants largely hate Europe? Fed by undersea cables of enormous costs and totally vulnerable to an 'accidental' anchor drag?
No country would "depend" on one source of anything for power. Keep a lid on it jr.. From now on you can read comments but your commenting privileges beyond that have been revoked until further notice.
@@jennyanydots2389
Oh dear. Cancel culture from the renewable shills.
It seems I got more upvotes than you did.
Your comment shows you have almost no knowledge on this subject.
@@alexanderdeburdegala4609
LOL.
You have absolutely no idea how far from the truth that comment is.
I think this is likely difficult to secure against saboteurs.
Not everyone is your friend and in times of war, this would be an easy target.
😂 I've been saying this for about 15 years. The economy it would bring to Africa, stunned its not happened.
I can only imagine the maintenance requirements for a facility like this with the ever diminishing efficiency levels of those panels being sandblasted every time the wind picks up. I don't know. I'm only like 9 minutes in but I'm already starting to see holes That might become the issue that kills the project like I said I'm only 9 minutes in but I think this is going to be what kills the project. Just remember it's my personal opinion and this is for fun
Lmfao 😆 I wasn't even close but still a valid concern but i wasn't even close lmfao 😆
Why not have the solar panels in Spain and Southern Italy.
If it included multiple energy types connected to a unified regional grid it would have worked but by having such a narrow view of the world and kind of trying to ram it through the success rate would have been zero especially since cheap Chinese PV's have now made solar the cheapest source of power globally with some bids as low as 1c/kwh USD in the middle east.. Overall still a good concept just needed more cooperating and yes flexible planning...
Do the solution was just to build out a countries entire energy grid and power system. Sounds easy
Dessert tech or desert tech?
Let's go back to Project Atlantropa :)
They did one already. Didn’t work; cables & distribution way too expensive.
Wasn’t there a study that by doing this it would cause the desert to become green with plant life?
Why don't we just put instead independent solar power in the desert near their big mining sites. The they would have the energy needed for refining their raw extraction and ship their refined products to the world's market. Less transport costs than shipping the heavier raw material to oversea refineries. And it will be refined with green energy. Best solar panels create shade under them. If we put them high enough to reduce the sandy wind erosion, we could have a shaded area where the soil temperature is lower. The water evaporation of the few rain they have will be lower. So desertic plants could grow more. Even in good conditions, that shaded area covered with plants could serve as pasture for the nomadic shepherd tribes.
Wow every word in that paragraph was wrong. OK who builds and maintains these plants near African mines well known for being completely safe and not at all involved in shady and human rights violating activities. Second, give each mine a refinery? Are you suggesting that they hook the power plant up to the raw material to magically transform it into processed material? How processed? What form would it take? Are you saying that everything that comes up from the mines are same material? Do you believe the world works on CIV 5 logic and you place power plant and suddenly factory exists producing "product"? Let's not forget the brilliant statement, let's encourage nomadic herders and their flocks to set up shop amongst the power plant. I foresee nothing going wrong. And of course it would be far cheaper to build a refinery for a single mine and transport it than the current method of shipping off raw materials which is why it's been done already, its not like getting cheap minerals is the whole reason anyone deals with Africa.
God damn the sheer pie in the sky naivety makes me glad trump won just to deal people like you a blow from which you'll never recover
Trying to prevent this planet becoming unliveable by projects that turn the place unliveable. Makes perfect sense.
“Kw per hour per square metre” is just one example of incorrect units being used. I’m not sure if you ever got the right units for power or energy. I realise that (for some reason) lots of people stumble in this area, but that’s no excuse. Just get someone with a science A-Level to check all the units in the script. Shouldn’t be too hard to find one somewhere.
Worked on thatW
Could one of these be built in the south west US? Or maybe Mexico could use one.
There is a couple of CSP-plants in the US.
And Crescent Dunes is even one with molten-salt-energy-storage for 10 hours.
It doesn't work like expected, but it exists.
@701983 nice!
Yeah, if you can't use sea water or use a closed-loop fresh water cooling system all you're going to do is pull massive amounts of freshwater out of the ground and make life even harder for everyone within a 10000 miles or so
Was it proposed by countries that actually own Sahara? I'm sure every American would be delighted with proposal to cover Texas and California with solar panels without consulting with US.
Anyone looking at the CSP also think, "Hey! That looks like Helios I station from fallout NV"?
700 TW per year doesn't even make sense. TW is a momentary measure, not a measure over time. 700TW is also far more than the electrical needs of the entire planet. (The total electricity needs of the planet are about 15TW)
What you mean is 700THh per year. What you're actually talking about is something on the order of 80GW continuous, but they won't run continuously (though with the right storage system they could level things out pretty well, it wouldn't be perfect given seasonal fluctuations). 80GW flattened out through storage would still likely mean something like 120-180GW peak (I'd have to know something about the storage systems they're talking about to be able to extract a more precisely estimated peak power from the average power rating).
80GW avg or 120-180GW peak is a large amount of generation, and a measurable (though small) fraction of global electrical requirements. That's a worthy goal (though as ou state, one not actually achieved). There's no reason to artificially multiply it by 8,760.
18:03 I'm not sure how a drop in price in solar equipment leads to excess electricity but the fact that too much of a precious resource tanks the market makes this feel like some kind of wish that was granted on the monkey's paw.
Megaprojects should do a story on how the US conceived a plan to blow up the moon and nearly did it
One of these plants appears in the post-apocalyptic RPG Fallout New Vegas.
I think the regular sandstorms experienced in N. Africa would have maintenance a nightmare.
Two CEO's never works. You can't have two captains on a ship.
The financial crisis didn't help the willingness/ability to actually pay for it either.
The stupidity in thinking that diversifying your energy supply makes you more vulnerable is just mind boggling.
About water for cooling, it doesn't have to be drinking water, technically you don't have to use water at all, but helps a lot. But sea water, or ground water that can't be used for drinking or irrigation can be used for cooling.
700 terrawatt *hours* per year by 2050. Not 700 terrawatts.
Yes, but "terawatt" hours, not "terrawatt" hours.
Also wrong in minute 19: "Kilowatts per hour" (radiation intensity) and "Gigawatts per hour" (annual net output).
@@701983 He usually doesn’t make mistakes like that. I’m glad a few people caught it.
We one of those in the United States in last I checked it was not functioning and abandoned. The entire thing is literally falling apart.
"Why'd it ail?" This sounds like something the CIA would object to. Like Nikola Tesla's work & the FBI raid after his death.
Simple to explain, like "run a carbon fiber tether to a geosynchronous satellite" but not easy to do.
Southern Europe has enough sun,so it can be done there. Already has many solar power stations ,no need for distant Saharan electricity
All the money wasted on the desertech ended up just being a scene from the movie SAHARAH.
Could Europe not just do something similar? With multiple sites across Portugal, Spain, Italy, Greece etc??
In theory yes, but those places in Europe receive far less solar radiation and the terrain perhaps is not as favourable as in Northern Africa, also Europe is mode densely populated than North Africa.
It sounds like a good idea but then you realize there’s so much wrong with it.
1) cost 2) transmission 3) looting 4) sabotage … I’m sure there are more
Desert- tec. Not to be confused with dessert -tec.... Repeat after me desert... A large sandy place...
Dessert - something you have after the main meal......
I never heard that mispronounced in Germany...
De-desertification programs are proving successful at turning deserts into fertile land. They require much, much capital investment and with proper stewardship can be sustainable.