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
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
@@qazhr You obviously didn't watch the video? Desertec was about solar thermal power plants, with heat storage for continuous operation, without batteries.
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.
That is a good example of when you put politicians and idealists in charge instead of electric engineers. It's not going to happen, transmission and energy storage are huge problems that is insurmountable. At the end of the day, everything needs to be dug out of the ground to build the energy systems. The advantage with dispatchable sources of energy like coal gas or nuclear is that the energy operator can turn it up or down based on demand, you cannot do that with intermittent energy. Intermittent energy can only leverage dispatchable energy, not replace it.
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
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?
Pros: If we covered only 1% of the worlds desert in solar panels it would provide enough electricity for us all. Cons: Electricity doesn’t like long distance travel. Long power lines create a lot of losses. A cable from Africa to the UK just is feasible.
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.
@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.
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
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.
Yeah. I saw one study claim (not sure if it was peer reviewed) that covering the entire Sahara with solar panels would raise earths temperature by about 1 degree Celsius. Not sure that figure is true, but light absorption is why losing the ice sheets are such a problem
I have an upstairs roof window I don't open in sunny weather as the South facing roof (tiles) get so hot that the rising heated air comes in the open window and that's Scotland, Africa would be a little hotter
Solar panels have a limited life, especially when exposed to strong sunlight. Hard or impossible to recycle. Solar panels require to be kept clean and free of dust, desert not the easiest location to find water. Desert sand highly abrasive. Huge amounts of coper and other metals needed to transmit the electricity across to Spain, France or Germany
FYI- CSP use mirror like panels and are designed to reflect the light as efficiently as possible, the exact opposite of a PV panel. And yes, PV panels would increase the surface temperature of the region. There are multiple models where there are differing conclusions regarding how that increased temperature would affect the region and indeed the world. However those studies have a coverage rate of 20-50% of the Sahara. The issue with that is if you covered 1.2% of the Sahara that should in theory be enough to power the entire planet...much less just Europe and Africa. So basically those studies are essentially useless since there would never be a need to cover a anywhere near that much of the desert. Honestly I don't know how these researchers don't take into account something so blatantly obvious.
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
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!
@@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
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.
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….
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
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.
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.
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
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.
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?
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
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 👎
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?
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
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.
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.
Yes, but "terawatt" hours, not "terrawatt" hours. Also wrong in minute 19: "Kilowatts per hour" (radiation intensity) and "Gigawatts per hour" (annual net output).
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.
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.
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 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
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
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.
So Why do we believe the best option is to build a wildly resource intensive and inefficient infrastructure, add the financial and environmental costs of storage, then double the ridiculously overbuilt infrastructure to charge the storage? I think the only reason this looks good to anyone is because we are so in love with the idea of RE being better because it's RE. Instead of looking at our options critically, we give RE a pass because it's called RE. We believe it must be better environmentally and for humanity, not based on performance but on responding emotionally to what the term means to us. RE is actually nothing but a misleading marketing term like all natural or chemical free.
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.
Before even watching the video let me guess: Geopolitics, wouldn’t benefit the people that built it, and money squabbles. Am I right? Off to watch the vid.
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
@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.
Another ones of those idea where techology is nowhere near ready because physics say that there will always be inefficiencies in power generation, storage and travel. Solar and batteries are nowhere near ready and bet that the size they wanted would not be enough to
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.
Terrible use for drinkable water. Address the poverty by giving electricity to the people who would steal it first. Then educate them to farm sustainably. Then educate them to maintain and expand their own industry. But no, the west sees people in the desert as bumpkins and disposable. Imperialism didn’t die it just got better at hiding in plain sight
The quote at the end pretty much summarizes all of the failures in just a few short sentences. Too big, two unfocused, too many egos involved. 🤷oh well…
How about wind turbines? Is there enough wind in the desert? Oh, and Simon! Could you please turn the little blue spotlight in the background again? I miss it... it made the set "whole", lol. 💙
Radiation intensity would have been kilowatt hours per squaremeter and year (kWh/m²a). Net output of the power plant would have been gigawatt hours per year (GWh/a). And of course, the mentioned "700 terawatts" would have been "700 terawatt hours per year" correctly.
Sir/Madam, do you know the cost of a windmill or solar farm? Have you ever bought copper wiring? Huge amounts of copper used. The wind turbines have a limited lifespan, duh
Carbon footprint huge, lots of mining and processing, lots of materials used. Look at the resources needed to make a single EV battery for a car then scale that up for a battery farm.
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@@aprildawnsunshine4326it doesn’t even work worth half a damn.
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)
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 I mean, give it another hundred years and we might have the technology to do the idea justice
@@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
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.
That is a good example of when you put politicians and idealists in charge instead of electric engineers. It's not going to happen, transmission and energy storage are huge problems that is insurmountable. At the end of the day, everything needs to be dug out of the ground to build the energy systems. The advantage with dispatchable sources of energy like coal gas or nuclear is that the energy operator can turn it up or down based on demand, you cannot do that with intermittent energy. Intermittent energy can only leverage dispatchable energy, not replace it.
Well, desertec is a consortium with European utilities, solar companies and banks. ABB is also part of it.
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 🎉
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.
Pros: If we covered only 1% of the worlds desert in solar panels it would provide enough electricity for us all.
Cons: Electricity doesn’t like long distance travel. Long power lines create a lot of losses. A cable from Africa to the UK just is feasible.
Well, it's a newfangled problem. Spend a little time to improve power transmission or alternative ways to ship power.
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.
@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.
So they were literally so preoccupied about whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should...
Not really
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?
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.
Dark panels would create a hellscape of furnace like heat 🔥
Yeah. I saw one study claim (not sure if it was peer reviewed) that covering the entire Sahara with solar panels would raise earths temperature by about 1 degree Celsius. Not sure that figure is true, but light absorption is why losing the ice sheets are such a problem
I have an upstairs roof window I don't open in sunny weather as the South facing roof (tiles) get so hot that the rising heated air comes in the open window and that's Scotland, Africa would be a little hotter
If they can make those new more efficient solar panels, they won’t heat up as much.
Solar panels have a limited life, especially when exposed to strong sunlight. Hard or impossible to recycle. Solar panels require to be kept clean and free of dust, desert not the easiest location to find water. Desert sand highly abrasive. Huge amounts of coper and other metals needed to transmit the electricity across to Spain, France or Germany
FYI- CSP use mirror like panels and are designed to reflect the light as efficiently as possible, the exact opposite of a PV panel.
And yes, PV panels would increase the surface temperature of the region. There are multiple models where there are differing conclusions regarding how that increased temperature would affect the region and indeed the world.
However those studies have a coverage rate of 20-50% of the Sahara. The issue with that is if you covered 1.2% of the Sahara that should in theory be enough to power the entire planet...much less just Europe and Africa. So basically those studies are essentially useless since there would never be a need to cover a anywhere near that much of the desert. Honestly I don't know how these researchers don't take into account something so blatantly obvious.
The possibilities of heat reflecting, might be a problem, mind you maintenance will be absolutely unbelievable 😳.
Brian McManus from Real Engineering would be proud of this video!
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
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!
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
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.
Your glasses are shaped like hearts!
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….
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
Make it so, darnit!
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
Good point about having a realistic plan
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.
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
Like sands through the hourglass. These are the days of our lives.
Sand keeps moving guys
One very big question where are they going to get the water to clean them?
Let's go back to Project Atlantropa :)
At 19:19 I assume you meant to say 1,470 Gigawatt Hours, rather than 1,470 GW PER hour
DEZ-er-tech not Dessert-ec
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.
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?
Trying to prevent this planet becoming unliveable by projects that turn the place unliveable. Makes perfect sense.
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
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
Who is going to run around cleaning all those panels?
Wasn’t there a study that by doing this it would cause the desert to become green with plant life?
Two CEO's never works. You can't have two captains on a ship.
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.
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?
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
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.
"What if we exploit a bunch land and resources outside of Europe, and then export all that it produces back to Europe." The story of Africa...
You know Europe lost money in africa right?
Why did the project fail? Let's start with 2 CEOs. Why would anyone think that is a good idea?
Only watched for 2 mins but funny how you prounced it as "deserted" as opposed to desert-tec
One of these plants appears in the post-apocalyptic RPG Fallout New Vegas.
"Why'd it ail?" This sounds like something the CIA would object to. Like Nikola Tesla's work & the FBI raid after his death.
All the money wasted on the desertech ended up just being a scene from the movie SAHARAH.
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.
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.
Southern Europe has enough sun,so it can be done there. Already has many solar power stations ,no need for distant Saharan electricity
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.
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.
I think the regular sandstorms experienced in N. Africa would have maintenance a nightmare.
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.
Simple to explain, like "run a carbon fiber tether to a geosynchronous satellite" but not easy to do.
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...
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 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
Could Europe not just do something similar? With multiple sites across Portugal, Spain, Italy, Greece etc??
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.
The Panels best be Sand Proofed....
Make Agrica Useful Again
So Why do we believe the best option is to build a wildly resource intensive and inefficient infrastructure, add the financial and environmental costs of storage, then double the ridiculously overbuilt infrastructure to charge the storage?
I think the only reason this looks good to anyone is because we are so in love with the idea of RE being better because it's RE. Instead of looking at our options critically, we give RE a pass because it's called RE. We believe it must be better environmentally and for humanity, not based on performance but on responding emotionally to what the term means to us. RE is actually nothing but a misleading marketing term like all natural or chemical free.
Burn the Coal MAGA 2020!!!
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.
Maybe the fact that crime is out of control in Africa and all those solar panels would get nicked
i swear this guy has like 300 UA-cam channels
and all good, too
Before even watching the video let me guess: Geopolitics, wouldn’t benefit the people that built it, and money squabbles. Am I right? Off to watch the vid.
So would these solar panels still work if they get engulfed on a sandstorm?
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
It still amuses me that after all we learned. Steam power raines supreme.
*reigns
@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
With so much cheap solar they should invest in high-energy industries like aluminium melting or digital mining.
12:37 lol he lists western dependence on Saudi, a relatively friendly stable country, but not on Russia
It is not a technically practical or efficient way to produce and distribute electrical energy... That's why it hasn't been done.
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.
Because you'd have thousands of acres buried over night when the first sand storm hits.
Another ones of those idea where techology is nowhere near ready because physics say that there will always be inefficiencies in power generation, storage and travel. Solar and batteries are nowhere near ready and bet that the size they wanted would not be enough to
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.
BAH!! ... should just rename this "The Dreamer Channel" ... its gone well beyond ridiculous at this point.
Anyone looking at the CSP also think, "Hey! That looks like Helios I station from fallout NV"?
Megaprojects: The Megafailure Edition
Who is gonna wash all the solar panels? Sand storms and such.
I'm sure that the locals would be more than willing to pitch in.
Terrible use for drinkable water. Address the poverty by giving electricity to the people who would steal it first. Then educate them to farm sustainably. Then educate them to maintain and expand their own industry. But no, the west sees people in the desert as bumpkins and disposable. Imperialism didn’t die it just got better at hiding in plain sight
Perfect task for a cheap machine.
Those were the advertised "employment opportunities" for the locals, a feature and not a bug.
The quote at the end pretty much summarizes all of the failures in just a few short sentences. Too big, two unfocused, too many egos involved. 🤷oh well…
Too much Africa
@ they built something similar, if not at the same scale, in Morocco.
How about wind turbines? Is there enough wind in the desert? Oh, and Simon! Could you please turn the little blue spotlight in the background again? I miss it... it made the set "whole", lol. 💙
The dust and sand would quickly sandblast the turbine blades to useless.
Units! 19:07 and 19:26. Power is kW, energy is kWh, intensity is kW/m2. The is no such thing as kW/h/m2 or GW/h
Of course, there is. GW/h is sunrise.
Radiation intensity would have been kilowatt hours per squaremeter and year (kWh/m²a).
Net output of the power plant would have been gigawatt hours per year (GWh/a).
And of course, the mentioned "700 terawatts" would have been "700 terawatt hours per year" correctly.
The late 2000s? 🤔 oh! You mean the late 00s 😅
Why does "free" energy come with a big price tag and large carbon footprint?
the hell are you talking about
Sir/Madam, do you know the cost of a windmill or solar farm? Have you ever bought copper wiring? Huge amounts of copper used. The wind turbines have a limited lifespan, duh
Carbon footprint huge, lots of mining and processing, lots of materials used. Look at the resources needed to make a single EV battery for a car then scale that up for a battery farm.