The Problem with Solar Energy in Africa

The Sahara Desert and North Africa in general are one of the world's largest untapped

energy

resources. The

solar

energy

hitting the surface of this desert has the potential to power the entire world. A single

solar

panel placed here in Algeria is capable of generating three times more. electricity than the same panel placed in germany what was once a geographical disadvantage the scorching sun of these desolate lands could now provide an economic boom for these historically impoverished nations a panel on a solar farm located here one square meter in size would generate in average five to seven kilowatt hours of energy each day, increase that to one square kilometer and we are generating five to seven gigawatt hours of energy each day, increase that to one thousand square kilometers and we are generating five to seven terawatt hours of energy each day , enough to satisfy Almost 100 of Europe's energy needs are multiplied by 10 and we are generating between 50 and 70 terawatt hours a day, enough to supply the entire world.

These are impressive and often repeated statistical calculations that paint a drastic new vision of the world. A utopia powered by solar energy. Plans have even been drawn up to transform simple mathematics into reality, but reality has a way of interfering with futuristic calculations like this. All plans to turn this dream into reality have failed in this episode, we will learn why transporting electricity out of these remote regions is the first challenge. There are currently only two interconnections connecting North Africa to Europe. Both are located between Morocco and Spain. Two 700-megawatt interconnections, one completed in 1998 and the second in 2006, with a third connection expected to be completed.

At some point before 2030, for a total of 2,100 megawatts, if we wanted to transport enough electricity to power Europe, ignoring transmission losses and storage

problem

s, we would need between 592 and 831 more of these 700-megawatt interconnections. These are not just cables that we run between countries. They are incredibly complicated and expensive pieces of infrastructure, it is estimated that the third interconnection that unites the networks of Morocco and Spain will cost 150 million dollars, an enormous investment that will make both countries pay half of the bill 592 more of these connections would cost like minimum 8.9 billion dollars and that number was obtained by simply multiplying 150 million by 592, but these connections are the shortest route to Europe from North Africa, they are going to be the cheapest to build to build a truly interconnected network , we are going to need even longer interconnections connecting Tunisia with Sicily. from Algeria to Sardinia and then to northern Italy, from Libya to Crete and from there to Greece and Turkey and the rest of the Middle East network, while sufficient internal interconnections are built in Europe to facilitate the passage of the solar parallel towards the north , while the wind is traded towards the south.

Billions will be needed to complete the plan, but even with these

problem

s, European leaders have drawn up plans to connect North Africa and the Middle East to Europe and believe the cost can be recovered. Desertec is or perhaps more appropriately was a German-led initiative centered around the middle. -Trillion-dollar investment fund that would invest in generation and transmission infrastructure in North Africa and the Middle East. 55 billion were allocated to increase transmission capacities throughout the Mediterranean. This investment would be allocated to both the transmission of high voltage alternating current in shorter intervals such as those from Morocco to Spain and the high voltage direct current in longer distances.

There is a critical distance where the transmission of high voltage alternating current does not have sense. If we graph the transmission losses per kilometer for AC and DC transmission it would look like this, however DC loses less power per kilometer. To convert our regional AC grid power to DC for these long-distance transmission cables, we need expensive transformers and converters. If instead we plot the cost versus distance count on this infrastructure it would look like this and we can see that the DC and AC lines intersect around 500 to 800 kilometers, this is the breakeven point where the DC meets becomes more cost-effective, so the lines connecting Morocco directly to Spain, which extend only 28 kilometers, make no sense for high-voltage DC, while the longer lines connecting Tunisia to Italy will probably be high-voltage direct current. voltage.

Light transmission losses for high-voltage direct current are around three percent per 1,000 kilometers and Germany's capital is only 1,800 kilometers from Tunisia. Transmitting energy with this amount of investment money is perfectly feasible. The technologies exist, so let's move on to the generation part of the desertec plan desertec was formulated with concentrated solar energy in mind, which works very differently than photovoltaic solar panels. Concentrated solar energy installations would extend along the borders of the Sahara and Arabian deserts. One such facility already exists in Morocco and is the largest concentrated solar power plant in the world. It's huge, with three separate sections.

Not one, two, and three, each using slightly different variations of concentrated solar power that combine to provide 510 megawatts. Ni 1 and 2 are cylinder systems that use parabolic mirrors with the tube located at the focal point of the mirror. The tube contains a synthetic oil that collects the heat from the 500,000 parabolic mirrors spread over 308,000 square meters. This oil becomes extremely hot up to 400 degrees. Celsius, allowing it to boil water and heat exchanger to drive a steam turbine that provides electricity to the grid. Oil at 400 degrees is also hot enough to melt salt in a molten salt heat storage system.

Nor1's molten salt heat storage can store enough heat to keep the plant operational for three hours while Nor2 has enough energy for seven hours, however, this salt solidifies at 110 degrees and if that happens, the plant will not operate. in the morning, so neither 1 and 2 need a fossil fuel burning system to keep all system working fluids to a minimum. operating temperatures at night and to keep the oil system pumping, this fossil fuel burning system can also keep the plant operational as a reliable baseline power source, eliminating the need for separate natural gas peaking plants. nor3 does not use these parabolic mirrors and instead uses a tower system.

This striking circular installation to the north looks less like an industrial installation and more like a new age burning man art installation. This design allows North 3 to ditch the oil lines and pumps of nor1 and 2 and instead use concentrically arranged mirrors. circles around a central tower, the mirrors are then controlled to focus the light on a single point on the tower which directly heats the molten salt which is the working fluid rather than the oil based system, the solar concentration here is much higher and in turn the temperatures achieved are much higher with the water heated to 550 degrees, this allows the tower based system to use more efficient steam turbines and the use of molten salt as a working fluid eliminates the need of an oil-to-molten salt heat exchanger in the North Heat Storage System 3 is the world's only operating tower-based concentrated solar power system with molten salt storage following the closure of Nevada's Crescent Dunes plant in 2019.

The Crescent Dunes plant ceased operations in 2019 after only four years of operation. NV Energy broke its purchase contract with the plant after it failed to meet performance requirements and was marred by maintenance problems, including an eight-month shutdown due to a leak in the molten salt tank, even when it was in operation. fully operational, electricity from the plant cost $135 per megawatt hour, while a nearby photovoltaic plant managed $30 per megawatt hour, and here lies the crux of the matter: Concentrated solar power costs per megawatt were extremely competitive with those of photovoltaics in 2009, but in the last decade photovoltaics have become obscenely cheap.

Concentrated solar power simply cannot compete in a market like this and the same can be seen neither one nor two. and three, however, are currently being measured using a metric called the levelized cost of electricity, which is an average of the cost of generating electricity over the entire life of the plant, but this does not take into account the cost of storing the electricity. photovoltaics, which is often just an inherent benefit of concentrated solar thermal, so in the future the industry should use a combined storage cost and electricity cost metric; However, the most recent addition to this solar farm is nor4, a solar panel farm that brings in 73 megawatts with the rise of cheap solar panels.

Desertec, contrary to what one might expect, was doomed to failure. Concentrated solar thermal energy by nature requires a lot of land. The plant has a minimum viable operating temperature and to achieve that we need enough mirrors to reflect that light. Solar panels do not have this solar problem. The panels can be installed on top of houses, above parking lots or even in farmers' fields to help shade plants that need shade. We don't need large tracts of land to make them work, and because they're so cheap, it's perfectly feasible to build smaller solar farms. in Germany and avoid those transmission losses and not incur the enormous financial risk of investing billions in a country that is not their own, that is particularly important because many investors are very hesitant to invest money in these often volatile countries, not We need to look further than the 2013 attack on a BP natural gas plant in Algeria to see why this would be considered a risky investment in many parts of North Africa.

It is a vital economic resource for Algeria, but it is isolated in the middle of a vast desert that is a transit route. For Al Qaeda in North Africa, it is no surprise that it was so difficult to defend and such a tempting target for militants. This is exactly why Germany is investing in its own domestic PV generation and in 2020 solar energy accounted for 10 of Germany's power generation this year. The idea of ​​European countries extracting natural resources from Africa to benefit their own economies has some undeniably problematic historical parallels. Any foreign investment like this will be accompanied by some supply guarantees for Europe, beyond the difficulties of organizing cross-border cooperation like this, which is not going to work.

To do well when the country hosting these plants needs power for its own grid to boost its economy or simply stabilize its own grid for current needs, it becomes even more problematic when you consider the amount of water these facilities need to cool the steam. turbine and to keep the mirrors clean, this installation in Morocco uses between 2.5 and 3 billion liters of water each year, taking water from a dam 12 kilometers away. Morocco is already susceptible to droughts, so these water demands increase just to meet Europe's energy needs while drinking water. away from the farms that feed Moroccan citizens is even more problematic to truly scale this energy generation, some technological improvement would be necessary that reduces water consumption or simply combine the facilities with desalination plants and use the extra water, if any. , to irrigate local farms to further boost local economies so that this dream of turning the Earth's arid deserts into energy generation centers becomes a reality, it has to be a grassroots movement, not a megaproject of US imperialism. new era that comes with a large amount of guarantees in exchange for almost half a billion. investment in dollars North Africa is one of the regions most affected by climate change in the world, where desertification and water scarcity are becoming a serious problem.

This plan, despite its superficial level, good intentions sought to exploit these countries that have suffered the most as a result of Western industrialization. There is no need to look for evidence that this was their intention at the time the technology was developed to enable European countries to meet their renewable energy needs within their own borders. The plan fell apart. The plan was never to help African nations, but the idea is not dead. in the water these countries have thenatural resources to benefit from solar energy Morocco is in the best position to set an example its proximity to Spain allows relatively short interconnections to the European grid its government is relatively stable compared to its North African neighbors with a political stability index of -0.33 Algeria Tunisia Libya and Egypt are all much lower, and while Morocco has abundant solar resources, it also benefits from constant desert winds along its coast.

Morocco has the potential to invest in its own energy needs while exporting access to Europe, leading by, for example, moving away from being a net importer of fossil fuels and becoming an energy exporter. A local infrastructure that benefits the local population first. An African nation that uses its resources to benefit itself first and foremost. The potential for the future of solar energy in Africa is undeniable. The technologies that will facilitate its development. There is cross-border energy trade and investments are being made to increase trade capacity with this third interconnector between Morocco and Spain financed equally by both parties, ensuring a level playing field.

Determining best practices for growing and improving our electrical grids is incredibly complicated. They are effectively the largest machines on the planet, hundreds of generators scattered across countries connected to each other by cables, relays and switches, the task of managing it manually and making sensible decisions for a single human being is impossible and more and more network infrastructure is being destroyed. returning towards an intelligent network controlled by algorithms. Battery companies employ coding and math experts to develop algorithms that allow them to buy and sell the electricity they store to maximize profits. and coding like this is an invaluable skill and, whether you're a high school student or a seasoned engineer, Brilliant is a great place to start learning.

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