Sahara solar project facts

Sometimes called the Saudi Arabia of solar energy, the Sahara could soon be home to dozens of huge solar farms under a new EU supergrid initiative to supply the continent's electricity needs with renewable energy.

The 20 companies aim to sign a memorandum of understanding to found the Desertec Industrial Initiative, which would then commission studies on various projects in North Africa.

Siemens AG, Germany’s biggest engineering company, and Munich Re are holding talks with utilities on developing solar plants in the Sahara desert to supply 15 percent of Europe’s power needs by mid-century.

Desertec Industrial Initiative main informations.

The German companies want to harness a free fuel source that’s plentiful in one of the world’s poorest regions and sell the power to industrialized Europe.

The plants and transmission lines may cost 400 billion euros ($555 billion) through 2050 and stretch across 130 square kilometers (50 square miles) of the North African desert. Just for reference: Manhattan Island is 58.8 square kilometers (22.7 square miles) in area.

20 gigawatts of concentrated solar power (CSP) - the equivalent of 20 large conventional power plants - could be harvested each year by 2020 if the project got off the ground.

The first power station with a capacity of 2 gigawatts in Tunisia with power lines to Italy would take five years to build once it gets regulatory approval.

A possible long-term project could be a 100 gigawatt solar thermal power station in northern Africa and the Middle East. It could be finalised by 2050 with power lines connecting it to central Europe.

Of the anticipated costs, the power plants would account for about 350 billion euro ($486 billion) while transmission lines to Europe would cost about 50 billion euros ($69 billion).

The project would rely on a technique called "concentrating solar power" (CSP) to generate electricity; a CSP station uses hundreds of huge mirrors covering a vast swathe of land to focus the sun's rays onto a central metal pillar filled with water. The super-hot water, which can reach temperatures as high as 800°C, is then vaporized and channelled off to drive turbines that produce the electricity.

The main reason for favouring CSP over photovoltaics is its ability to supply power on demand for 24 hours a day. PV is more expensive than CSP and needs expensivesystems for storing electricity, such as pumped storage.

Sahara solar project (illustrative).

Power plants will not only generate electricity that they can sell to Europe. In addition to energy generation, the stations would be used as desalination facilities to provide desert countries with much-needed supplies of fresh water. This scheme is also known as Desertec technology.

The Sahara covers huge parts of Algeria, Chad, Egypt, Libya, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, Niger, Western Sahara, Sudan and Tunisia. It is one of three distinct physiographic provinces of the African massive physiographic division.

Solar insolation levels are high near equator, and low around Earth's poles. For comparison, consider the average annual insolation levels of these two extreme locations:
* Oslo , Norway = 2.27 kWh/m 2/day (very low)
* Miami , Florida = 5.26 kWh/m 2/day (very high).

In six hours the world's deserts receive more energy than mankind consumes in a year.

Influence of the current financial crisis on this project is yet to be seen, but with governmental financial support of EU countries it is realistic that project will be successful.

Find out more about this project in following video:

Solar energy pushed back because of recession

Economic recession and credit crisis is having serious effect on future development of solar energy sector. A year ago optimism around solar energy was constantly rising with many energy experts proclaiming it as renewable energy source NO.1 , and one of the top future energy sources. What has happened in only one year that changed all of this? First of al investors have started thinking twice before investing into solar energy sector mostly because of falling government tax receipts. What investors want are some positive incentives and this is something that has been very rarely seen in last couple of months.

Some energy analysts claim the same scenario will continue in following months and how we haven't still seen the worst. Their major concerns are that higher cost of finance will continue to prevent further growth of solar energy sector, which will put much more emphasis on some cheaper energy projects. We must also not forget that solar energy is only in its early stage of a 30–50 year run after which according to many energy experts should show its full potential.


Cost competitiveness is still factor that is sorely missed in solar energy sector. Energy is still all about more efficiency and less funding and this is something solar energy still isn't providing. There is no doubt that once solar energy becomes competitive with fossil fuels, we should expect completely different story. Financial incentives would of course have to play major role in achieving this competitiveness but this can be only expected once financial crisis is over.

There are already some positive experiences in solar energy sector that should be good basis for future projects. For instance experience in the flat-panel and semiconductor industry indicates that even without technology or efficiency gains, productivity improvements are likely in the 10%–30% range per year, with annual yield improvements of 10%–15%.

Cost decline is the most important thing that solar energy needs to fully blossom. Once costs decline, solar energy technology is likely to advance. In order to achieve this there would also have to be a network that would connect resellers and distribution, making technology transfer fairly easy.

Of course some other factors will also play important role like geography and politics. Geography is very important factor that will determine the shipping costs as well as manufacturing location, and politics should provide incentives and tax benefits to attract major players in solar energy sector. Solar energy projects have been steadily growing in China, India, Korea, Spain, and in many other countries around the globe. Good old Uncle Sam is also focusing more on solar energy sector, especially in sunny states like Arizona and California.

So we are definitely seeing some positive movement in solar energy sector but sadly not as much as we would want it. It will be very interesting to see whether solar energy sector will experience big boost once credit crunch is over, or will primary attention turn to some other energy source.

There is absolutely no doubt that solar energy has extremely high potential and that we should give this energy sector a chance that it definitely deserves. We mustn't forget that energy demand is growing each year and that we should be already thinking how to satisfy our future energy needs. Solar energy could be one of the best solutions, not only because of its high potential but also because it is ecologically acceptable energy source.

Next generation wind farms

Next Generation contest 2009 with its very prestigious prize is over and the winner is so called "Wind-it" project created by French team. A French team of one engineer along with two architects has won this year’s prestigious part thanks to some really innovative ideas that could be used in installation of future wind farms.

The biggest problem many people connect with wind farms is their size, or to be more precise the size of territory they need since they usually need very large area for all necessary installations. Not only that many people complain how they are spoiling the true beauty of environment but French tam showed how this can be done by using current, already existing infrastructure.

They suggest the use of already existing towers and pylons that for instance dot the more than 157,000 miles of high voltage power lines in the U.S. Basically what this team is saying is that we should locate these large structures into transmission towers which already exist so this way landscape won't be changed and wind farms would be simply and wisely integrated. So simple, and yet so genius.


When French team was asked how they would solve the problem of transmission for easier transfer of wind created energy they said that the best solution would be to link energy generation and electricity transmission in the same way–by co-locating them. It sounds really simple, but in reality it can be nonetheless very effective.

Just imagine we could use already built infrastructure to explore wind energy. This would significantly decrease installation costs saving a lot of money for investors.

Connection of towers and turbines could really make the boost in wind energy sector. Some calculations say if U.S. would about to implement this new idea into its existing infrastructure this would be enough for somewhere around 15 % of current U.S. energy demand, so this idea really deserves further research, especially since implementing this isn't exactly a piece of cake.

The biggest problem in implementing this "Wind-it" project in U.S. is the fact that American power grid is clogged, archaic, and above all too small so it would be unlikely to expect that Wind-it would be able to transmit to electricity to the cities where it is needed the most.

In order to fully utilise the advantages of this Wind-it project U.S. would really have to build new towers, which is something that many experts have already suggested. If U.S. would decide to go for it than this would really be something of a two-in-a-one project with double benefits but also with rather high installation costs.

In any case this project is at least worthy to have in mind when building future tower infrastructure because with reasonable additional costs we could have coexisting two-in-one project that has significantly smaller price than it would be if those were two single projects. It also wouldn't degrade the landscape, and would mean more energy from renewable energy sources so it definitely deserves more attention. Such innovative solutions are really necessary if world wants to be free of fossil fuel dependency in years to come. Whether we will succeed in that or no still remains to be seen. But innovation projects such like this one could really make the difference so I'm really hoping to see more of this.