Desert sun can meet European energy needs
1 Dec 2006
According to the TRANS-CSP report, a key element of these proposals is collaboration between countries in Europe, the Middle East and North Africa (EUMENA) to exploit “the truly monumental quantities of energy that fall as sunlight on the world’s hot deserts.”
“Every year, each square kilometre of desert receives solar energy equivalent to 1.5 million barrels of oil. Multiplying by the area of deserts worldwide, this is nearly a thousand times the entire current energy consumption of the world.” said Dr Franz Trieb, project manager for the report.
“We can tap in to this energy by using mirrors to concentrate sunlight and create heat. The heat may be used to raise steam and drive a generator in the conventional way. This kind of ‘concentrating solar power’ (CSP)—which is very different from the better-known photovoltaic ‘solar panels’—has been producing electricity successfully in California for nearly twenty years.
The cost of collecting solar thermal energy equivalent to one barrel of oil is now about $50 right, said the report. This, it added, is already less than the current world price of oil and is likely to come down to around $20 in future.
According to Trieb, with modern high-voltage DC transmission lines (HVDC), only about 3% of the power is lost for each 1000 km. so solar electricity could be imported from North Africa to London with only about 10% loss of power. This, he said, compares extremely favourably with the 50% to 70% of losses that have been accepted for many years in conventional coal-fired power stations.
“We have calculated that solar electricity imported to Europe would be amongst the cheapest sources of electricity, and that includes the cost of transmitting it. CSP imports would be much less vulnerable to interruption than are current imports of gas, oil and uranium.”
