I’m in Australia and there’s a big factor that you’ve missed. Ironically, panels don’t work as well in extreme heat. Sun light = good, extreme heat = bad.
I was involved with solar in the UAE and sand was a major problem because the panels become ever so slightly damp with condensation in the morning and coated with a fine layer that had to be washed off. I seem to remember the efficiency dropped by up to 80%. It's the same problem with cars left out overnight. We were even looking at automated rinsing systems. It was a decade ago and I don't know if they solved the problem.
A retractable cover that auto closes at night and opens when it's sunny and dry? And the retractable mechanism has a soft wiper blade? I'm guessing smarter people have thought of this and found it unworkable.
The main impediment to going green is conservative-capitalism. Not saying I don't love that all of you here are thinking about efficiency. Ridding ourselves of the chains of unfettered-capitalism is just another way we can be far more efficient with literally *all* of our planets resources.
How about mounting the panels on axles that turn them upside down at night? Dew mostly collects on upward-facing surfaces. The panels wouldn't be turned right side up until the temperature exceeded the dewpoint by an experimentally determined delta.
You are assuming you are still a colony. Can you imagine how quickly exporting energy to Europe will make the countries in that region prosperous? However, considering the tendency of countries in Africa to fail due to corrupt leaders and tyrants, I suppose the only real beneficiaries will be Europe... and the "leaders" who will retire in Saudi Arabia.
@@2msvalkyrie529you are literally so ignorant. Read some history, try and understand how global economics works, and then get back to me. So dumb saying dumb things about subject a you have no idea about. Grow a brain
@muldererick have u read the contents of the contracts? African governments are always short-handed because wat happens is that the west ,imf and world bank always conjure plans to get African states into unjust,unpayable debt(with clauses such as "open up yo markets","we need control over sum of yo assets, u can't grow yo own food, u can't industrialise ").now when we fall back on payment,as expected because they design it that way with the cia, they come back with new loan reform which will say something like "if u allow us to set up renewable energy structures in yo desert ,servicing Europe, we can make 80% profits, the 20% u can use to service the world bank loan. That's why Africa's poor. The west long had meetings where they agreed that Africa should not produce,but consume products from the west. Read the book by former cia agent,John perkins, who used enforce these loans on African states.he states that in his time 2 presidents had to be killed because they wouldn't sign n accept the debt-trap loans. The book "Confessions of the economic hitman "
I live in Kenya and solar here is incredible since there is no true "winter", its only sunny and rainy season so there is not less sunlight or less sun hours around the year
@@RealEngineering What do you say countries like Japan, South Korea replacing LNG with Hydrogen(electrolyser) importing from Africa. How costly would that be?
@@Vignana_Pradarshana Right now? Insanely expensive, the idea of importing hydrogen from that far away makes little sense when you can just make it locally. I could see countries along the Suez Canal creating a hydrogen/ammonia fuel project to refuel ships though.
Dear Real Engineering Team, there has been some confusion with Desertec and other organisations. As a director of the Desertec Foundation I hope to start a productive discussion about the Pros and Cons of the concept. Some information presented is outdated (for example the water issue has been solved with newer plants). I send you a mail with some further information. If you are interested, I can try to organise a visit to a more sophisticated plant. Then you can see the solutions in real life!
And many forget the main problem: HAving black surfaces that absorbs lot of heat (not all go to electricity), is a very bad idea in Africa and arabia. At least the sand reflects back much of the heat into space. THAT albedo effect can cause global warming.
@Yamile Magubeni It doesn't matter if they're developed or not. It's a massive security threat to have another country running your power regardless of who they are.
We recently did a short school project on Nigeria and ~40% of their population is off their grid/doesn't get reliable electricity. Using local solar they can support their people without heavily investing in grid infrastructure. Solar is a win internally in Africa.
@SerpentInside The comment had nothing to do with wokeism.. I think you should take a break from politics if you are starting to see ghosts. Too much politics is really bad for your mental health anyway.
I have watched the desert dwellers work with solar panels. Deserts equal dust and sand. We are not there yet. Small set ups that are easily cleaned and maintained by the direct user seem to be a good option.
That's why we need African emigration to stop and for them to start an industrial revolution, so their citizens could each own a house, with 1.5x + solar panels that they actually need, incentivized by a rebate or pure profit motive....provided that the panels actually work
Would seem like, even if somehow an automated solution can’t be identified, it would be totally economically viable to have a few guys travel around the solar farm wiping off the panels periodically.
As someone who grew up in West Africa, it will come down government officials and how honest they are. Corruption even in the countries that are doing well (Ghana for example) is still present. Ask any Ghanaian about ECG (the Electricity Company of Ghana…also known as “Electricity Come and Go”).
@@vervetech9395 East Legon in Accra. Maybe the government/companies have changed their practices since 2005-2012ish, but for a long time, it was 24 hours of electricity, 24 hours off. We spent so much money on fuel for the generator. How can you export power to neighboring countries when sections of your own capital city goes without power?
Dumsor is real. As Ghanaians we need to stop looking at our corrupt government for solutions. The solutions will come from us the people not the politicians.
You will never get a grassroots solar energy buildup no matter what country or government system you use. Solar energy is prohibitively expensive and only exist because of government subsidies and a complete neglect in environmental standards when producing in China. A huge industrial base is needed to make all those panels and a huge investment that can only come from governments is needed to start the projects. Why should any government invest in Africa when the African governments have no safeguards to protect the project?
Wait until you hear about kilowatt hours per day per megawatt (of installed capacity). Not sure how prevalent it actually is in literature but i found it funny when i read it before learning about dimensional analysis
In China they use solar panels in the desert along with planting small plants under the solar panel to fight against desertification. One woman who won the noble peace prize over a decade ago was a Chinese woman living in the desert with her husband. She and many others have found methods to plant in the desert. I'm hoping that with the amount of incredibly skilled and talented innovative brains in this world, can come up with a solution for a greener planet. We may not see them but they exist and are working very hard for a better future.
There was only won nobel peace price ever awarded to a Chinese, that was Liu Xiaobo. He was a dissident scholar and received his Nobel Peace price for human rights work in China - he didn't work on desertification.
@@sisouhzl5645 why wouldn’t it be? We’re about to become the first car manufacturer in Africa and we’re already number one in the aerospace manufacturing industry, all those industries require a lot of energy. We’re currently net importer of energy, and that need to shift as the industrialization of Morocco is growing too fast for the current production capabilities We don’t have petroleum ressources so we need to innovate so
The Xlinks Morocco-UK Power Project, as it's known, will cover an area of around 579 square miles (1,500 square kilometers) in Morocco and will be connected exclusively to the UK via 2,361 miles (3,800 km) of HVDC subsea cables. 27 Sep 2021.
Reasons why this project would fail mainly because of the country's background, maintenance, location, distance, geography aren't feasible especially for customers in Europe. They just don't feel safe unless that country is Japan and located next door not separated by sea.
@@jawarakf if you're talking about cost, the plant could easily be scaled and Moroco can maintain them and the costs associated because it's financed by the state.
@@d.h.2509 It's more of trust and safety measures. Western Europe never felt safe with nations that aren't from their factions and influence, more towards political & religion factors. Say in case of war, rising extremism, anything serious such as boycott or sabotage would cause disruption leaving Europe in power outage
@@d.h.2509 So far it is neutral but European mindset of generalizing for safety precaution is there. It's just they aren't going to depend on country that they are doubtful of.
This panel can put out close to 100 watts th-cam.com/users/postUgkxOqI2yqX0XVrhR2BMJciTWrHJpG8FhJyg when positioned in the appropriate southernly direction, tilted to the optimal angle for your latitude/date, and connected to a higher capacity device than a 500. The built in kickstand angle is a fixed at 50 degrees. Up to 20% more power can be output by selecting the actual date and latitude optimal angle.The 500 will only input 3.5A maximum at 18 volts for 63 watts. Some of the excess power from the panel can be fed into a USB battery bank, charged directly from the panel while also charging a 500. This will allow you to harvest as much as 63 + 15 = 78 watts.If this panel is used to charge a larger device, such as the power station, then its full output potential can be realized.
There are a couple of points left out, such as temperature, cost of land and intermittency based on location. Temperature is an efficiency factor for PVs and installing them in a desert where temperature goes beyond 45 C is not a very feasible idea. Cost of land in Germany is multiples higher than cost of land in Morocco. Finally, in Germany PVs energy supply will be more intermittent than that of Morocco's.
European countries exploited TRILLIONS of dollars out of Africa = It was natural order of the world. European countries investing back a tiny percentage of that money back = It is TOO RISKY lets forget about it.. Then some ''geniuses'' wonder why exactly refugees and illegal immigrants trying to cross into Europe while it is because they think Europe is the reason why they are refugees and immigrants and they are absolutely right about that...
The Moltex molten salt nuclear reactor runs continuously while heating the same type of heat storing salt used in solar boilers. The heat is used to fill peaks in demand while the reactor runs continuously. Costs are cheaper than coal and you don’t need all the cabling of solar (any type) to connect the panels.
Sure but the estimated cost is around 1.5 billion per gigawatt/h which is more then the cost of the solar panels and undersea cables talked about here. The truth is at this point almost every method of producing energy is cheaper then coal so a comparison to it is kind of redundant.
Also molten salt if I'm not mistaken is highly corrosive and add radioactive to maintenance issues make this a dead dream. That is one of the reasons why the American trial plant was considered not feasible, again if I'm not mistaken.
This is a worldwide problem. Canada went on a crusade against its own tar sands which resulted in actually importing oil from countries who do things in a far less environmentally responsible way. It's beyond belief.
@@jasondashney California was shipping ethanol made from corn to Brazil and importing ethanol made from sugarcane because it takes less energy to make it from sugarcane.
I guess this is the argument you would get from people on the far right who do admit climate change is an issue that needs to be addressed. "Own solar panels first!" 😂😂
@@jasondashney sounds like California, they buy alot of power from other states so other states try to reduce their power consumption so they can sell it for more to California even though alot is lost to transmission
Right but you understand the issue with that line of thinking right? Noor III in the middle of fucknowhere uninhabitable desert is just fine. It would literally NEVER make economic sense dead centre of London.
@@scout360pyroz These are kind of open questions, and the geopolitical factors of doing this in the Sahara are probably insurmountable. But costs do keep coming down, and effectiveness of the collectors improves as well, so it's certainly conceivable both of those questions will have a workable answer soon. I hope anyway.
@@justaguy6100 It is not just the cost to build it. It is the cost to maintain and replace critical parts (right down to the cable used) if something breaks or is destroyed. You also have to bring much if not all of those parts over very long distances (sea or land) from the outside. That means the area's power is completely dependent on outside forces to maintain itself. That is a dangerous position to be in as a nation or group of nations develops and grows and gets rich.
@@scout360pyroz And the same holds true for every means of production. I'm NOT saying putting a grid on the Sahara is a solution, more because of the geopolitical hurdles really, the biggest current factor in thermal plants is fuel costs with the exception of nuclear and those are expensive to build and maintain, too. Add to that the danger and expense of disposal of spent fuel and the other dangers they potentially pose, it becomes difficult to justify, although new technologies have promise to mitigate a lot of those factors. Whatever the startup costs would be, the fact you're getting the electricity without fuel cost will mean there IS a payback for implementing it at some point. It's at least worth consideration and study, even if doing it in the Sahara doesn't become the ultimate solution. OR we can keep waiting and hoping for that fusion breakthrough that seems permanently 20 years away.
They can use the power for desalination plus reforestation. Plus you can put solar panels a bit higher and do some farming underneath and help for dessert animal and plants to get some shade. Multipurposing this idea can save the region and whole world eventually but you need small steps of course. Also reforestation and farming will help with extreme heats which can decrease lifetime of solar panels and increase need for cooling systems.
@@jerbear7952 Yeah I watched the video. Europeans want to exploit Africa again and I proposed a plan that will help both parties. Although they still need to fix energy transmission problem but it is a good thing Eu cant take all of the energy local government can use the leftover chunk themselves instead.
I work on solar sites in the northeast us where hundreds of acres of forest are cleared for photovoltaic solar arrays. It’s hard to see a solar array under construction and not think that the environmental cost is worse than the benefit.
That and in West Africa I think sandstorms will be a huge limitor in replace of clouds. Plus the heat variation from sweltering in the day, bad enough for solar panels as is, will be met with freezing cold nights after. Is it really going to last if you did put them there? That sort of temperature fluctuation, even over the course of an hour or two, ought to be detrimental to the electronic components.
@@UltimRoGuE Exactly! Nuclear is much cheaper in the long run, needs limited fuel input and uses a small amount of land to produce huge amounts of power!
@@OnlyGrafting that is only a question of targeted research. might be that the western consumer solar panel is not optimized for this or that this is simply not in the market yet.. in large scale i could not imagine that this could be the crucial cause. As an engineer, one thinks like this actually. I the marketing department of course they must strive for the compensation of efforts.
A very important factor to take into account when dealing with African countries is the level of corruption. Those of us who live in Africa know this fact all too well. Politicians line their pockets to such a degree that the country suffers. They don't take 10%, they take 90% and leave the country the rest.
Guess you're not aware of the corruption in Western Governments or are you do think it's just "African countries" with corrupt as fuck governments? Senator Joe Mansion in the US has taken MILLIONS from coal mining and is now blocking Green New Deal policies in the Build Back Better policy. Boffwit Johnson, UK PM has funnelled £37BILLION to a private company, SERCO, under the leadership of Dido Harding, a Tory party member.
@@RichO1701e Bro you cannot compare compare corruption in developed countries with those in developing countries. I’m Indian, and the corruption here is so bad at all levels. You can avoid corruption in america if you want to; here it is a necessity to get anything done. Yet we don’t even get proper roads because of corruption. Also that developed countries have developed industries and an efficient and fair judicial system so corruption doesn’t hurt as much as it would in developing countries.
My question regarding solar is how long do the panels last, especially given the wind-blown sandy environment, and when the panels require replacing, what happens to the waste? There is a hell of a lot of heavy metals in solar panels. Who pays for the clean-up, or is it left to the poor African countries to deal with?
i read from somewhere that solar efficiency loss is 0.5% to 1% per year. However, this is only apply for our normal solar. Large scale plants like this one would be using a much advance version of solar panels
Well, normally, the efficiency has depleted considerably by 30 years. Sandstorms badly scratching the panels will probably cut that lifespan down a bit. More expensive panels could be a bit more scratch resistance, but there's a limit to how tough glass can be made and it still conduct light well enough to be useful
No normally panels are still producing 80% of original by year 50. And it’s a lot less waste than disposing of say…an entire power plant or 50 power plants.
@@marthatjarks6047 What are you on, and where can I buy it? That must be a hell of a drug if you think solar panels are still 80% functional after 50 years of use.
The countries of Africa can still use solar for their own power needs. Sure, it may not be able to save Europe's power needs, but at least it means clean renewable energy in poorer countries that tend to have lax environmental regulations and use carbon-based energy.
Lax environmental regulations, but more naturally sustainable living. Countries with the biggest carbon footprint and waste in general are not in Africa.
@@abanobgerges9399 nope if you got a problem with it then that’s on you. 🤷🏾♀️ don’t get mad that I’m for Africa being able to keep their resources rather than getting exploited from racist countries
This is all fascinating. On the surface if someone said to me "let's turn the Sahara into a giant solar plant" I would think it's a good idea. You bring up a lot of good points.
The idea isn’t to literally use the Sahara to power the entire world, but just to show that using PV cells, you’d only need a small surface area compared to the earth to power the entire civilization. Most of these PV installations will be very local, mostly on top of roofs of houses and buildings, and the remaining can come from wind.
We should be careful about the operating cost of PV. I worked in the KSA for a year and although skies are clear, there's a lot of dust in the air and there's an issue with water needed to keep the panels clean so they can maintain their efficiency
@@karstenschuhmann8334 alot of dust and various minerals have been known to make it across the Atlantic from South America. (basically stuff from the Amazons) pretty incredible when I heard about it. I have not idea how much salt is in the air
@@darwinjina Sure, that is true. And in every region without rainfall, some cleaning of panels will be needed. But it is a big difference if you need to clean once an hour or once a year.
@@karstenschuhmann8334 did it become that frequent in Africa? I guess that with lack of water was unsustainable. I found even with raining season I need to do some cleaning.
@@darwinjina I would guess it depends on where in Africa you are. You have all kinds of weather in Africa. But here we compared the center of a desert with the Moroccan coastline.
Decentralize. Any other option will screw the consumer with inflated prices and lack of innovation. Put panels on your home coupled with battery storage. Preferably in the form of an electric vehicle. Selling to consumers drives competition. The capacity goes up and the price goes down. Recent drops in panel cost are a real world example. Not an estimate. Decentralization is also a strategic move for national defense. An attack on the grid is ineffective if most people are not on the grid.
I'm all for decentralization in principle, but how would you handle the infrastructure and storage? Infrastructure by definition cannot be decentralized, and many storage solutions benefit from economy of scale. So either you skip infrastructure, which means self-contained systems and a lot of wasted power production when you yourself are converting it inefficiently, or you need a central organisation to manage the powerlines and converters.
On the winter solstice, the solar power in Algeria is about 277.9 watts per square meter in Algeria. Adjusting for capacity-factor, on that day in Algeria, a square meter would net about 1.3 kwh in a day.
So what about Chile's massive potential of energy production in the Atacama desert (photovoltaic) and Patagonia (eolic)? Maybe the low local demand of energy may be a benefit for exporting stacked energy in the shape of hydrogen from water desalination electrolysis plants, specially considering that every in Chile is close to the coast. It's just the perfect industry for my country
A quick search shows that Chile's natural energy reserves are massively underdeveloped. Along with the deserts where cloudy days simply don't exist, you have all that coast line along some of the world's stormiest seas, which is perfect for offshore windfarms. Also, it looks like you have a huge amount of geothermal energy that is untapped. Looking at it, with the right investment Chile certainly could become the main producer and exporter of renewable energy in South America, and practically almost eliminate its need for fossil fuels.
A lot of the southern 2/3rds of the country also get a ton of rainfall. Seems like it would be fairly cheap for Chile to nearly achieve energy independence through hydroelectric alone with enough investment, especially with droughts being fairly rare.
One of the issues he didn't address is the problems with the falloff of the efficacy of photovoltaics outside of +/- 30 degrees latitude from the equator caused by the increasingly indirect nature of sunlight in those areas. Atacama may be too far south and in sunlight that is too indirect to be as cost-effective as it needs to be there. It may be OK as a supplemental source, though. I need to look into what Germany is doing, as they should be having some issues with this. The USA will learn this the hard way over the next few decades too... I worry it will hurt the reputation of Solar overall, which is not a bad technology. It just has limited use and is not the panacea those looking to solve the Climate/Energy issues hope it to be. Honestly, we need to get solar panels into space where they are unobstructed and transmit the power back to ground stations on Earth via microwave, but that's probably about another 50 years off.
@@phoenix042x7 Atacama desert is within tropical or subtropical latitudes. It's also a mostly high altitude desert so sunlight will be less attenuated by the atmosphere.
Rather than relying in transmission lines, why not use the electricity locally for something that is energy intensive (Mining and Refining, Magnesium via electrolysis, Methane via Sabatier Process, etc.) then transport the products.
Because the local country may lack sufficient infrastructure, educated population, economic and political stability to support an industry that consumes such amount of electricity efficiently. Very few countries around the world can. Look around the world, very rarely do large electricity producers and consumers to be in close proximity of each other.
Agreed. He's clearly concerned about global warming, but he's not afraid of it to the point of overriding his analytical attitude and clinging to every purported solution to it. Interestingly, the math errors that I've seen commenters call him out on all happen to make the green energy idea in question seem _more_ plausible, not less. (e.g. by underestimating the cost of transmission by a factor of 10) I think this demonstrates just how well the rest of his analysis is put together--he's still convincingly making his case despite occasionally shooting himself in the foot.
@@jackjhonson5757 No genius, third world countries such as the North African ones don't have the technology/engineering and finance to build such plants. Have you considered that?
These "ideas" are still cleaner and more sustainable alternatives than fossil fuels-based energy. Just because there are challenges doesn't mean we shouldn't convert.
Also I'd be careful calling deserts barren, yes even the Sahara. Deserts are huge carbon sinks in ways that arent fully understood by scientists. Its not just the underwater basins but also these huge crusts of bacteria that grow on the surface of deserts. Building huge projects like this destories those crusts. Theyre extremely understudied and theres definitely ways they interact with desert ecosystems that we just do not understand at all yet. I know the discovery of these systems is recent, but the way everyone describes deserts as barren is really troubling. Theres still an ecosystem there and ignoring that to treat it as empty land could lead to huge losses we dont fully understand the consequences of.
Ok this was new and i agree with you. Medelling too much with forests and water etc without knowing about them properly got us in the issue of global warming in the first place. Better be careful this time around.
Why bother. Separate facilities are more efficient. As long as you have cheap power from the one it is better to place a desalination plant where it is needed. It is easier to move electricity then salt water. Trying to make facilities to do both will just result in inefficient facilities to do either.
@@logdog6762 Mind if i recommend you some science-channel and general-education-youtuber? Just because the learning shall never end and for no other reason?
I think we learned that relying on energy from people who view us unfavorably did not work out the first time. And the distribution of the energy was much easier.
europeans have yet to learn this lesson. europe still thinks ravaging Africa will continue to work in their favor. watching this backfire like the "Russian incident" should be an entertaining spectacle to say the lease.
It's more a question of relying on energy from a single country. I doubt that Europe would have to make fewer concessions by importing energy from Australia or the US, compared to Qatar or Saudi-Arabia, or in this case Morocco or Algeria. Few countries can thrive without relying on global trade. Self-reliance can be very costly, and interconnectivity makes wars less attractive. But relying on any one single player is a bad idea, no matter how favourably they view you at the moment.
@@poondaddy9992 yea isee this and think "dont africans need this power also? and its their country, funny how these anti immigrants dont want people in their countries whilst stealing the resources from the very same unwelcome people. leave africas power to the africans, who's making the profit from this? does it go to africans? doubt it.
General gist is that we need a total comprehensive solution that combines not just the energy resources itself, but also energy storage, transmissions and smart grids.
It seems dodgy to place such fragile systems so far from home and something ain't right to place them over green grass, the more I see this type of video the more I believe in the nuclear option. I just wish MSR's were viable
@@travis938 cheaper ? no. safer ? sure. nuclear is way cheaper, but its way too dangerous to use, until we have fusion technology, we shall use solar only.
@@DrakyHRT Molten salt reactors and thorium reactors are some of the safest nuclear reactors around, they leave almost no waste and fuel behind and can not be used for making weapons. People forget the supply chain for the manufacture of solar panels (and lesser extent wind turbines) is fairly polluting often requiring a lot of energy from their manufacture and the strip mining needed for the heavy metals that make them work.
@@travis938 nonsense - there are solid reasons to support other systems. Only an ideologue would claim every competing systems is supported by "crackpots." I would love to see variable localized systems.
indeed many of these points could be just termed as colonial thinking. > use some energy for water pumping and greenify some of the desert. > locally use the energy. you can go quite far with 500kv/hvdc transmission lines. > you could also become a great place to do high energy production of things like aluminium. > thermal solar could be used for many industrial processes. Oil refining being one that comes to mind right away.
I see a really awesome game like Factorio or a mod that focuses on electricity generation and distribution in a more complex and realistic way. This is fascinating stuff. Enough so that I feel I chose the wrong career.
The joke is Factorio teaches you solar is pretty lame even if it's artificially easier in the game. You need to cover half the map with solar, and a quarter with batteries - even though nights are shorter in Factorio. Meanwhile, nuclear power gets you there with 1/50th of your base..
The thing is: Spain has enough desert / dry areas to power all of Europe. Gobi desert has enough space to power all of Asia. Morocco / Algeria has enough desert space to power Africa. Australia has enough dry space to power themselves and NZ. The task is much easier and cheaper if we look at it on a continent-wide instead of a worldwide scale.
Morocco / Algeria are at the very top of Africa. You'd have similar distance problems sending power south. First of all - the Sahel is pretty politically unstable so transmission lines would be vulnerable - second, the distances in Africa are huuuge. Many countries in Africa dwarf even the largest european countries (Russia not included).
Best to avoid the one size fits all approach or idea, we love falling into such a simplistic thought process. Diversification is key in generation and storage. Reliable, consistent solar generation of the desert will be critical going forward, but should not be considered a monopoly.
Generating hydrogen with modular, mass-producible setups might make more sense in these areas. When you have energy to spare, it's not so bad to waste it in the conversion. I guess just pumping large amounts of water from Mediterranean would be a challenge there, hence why it also makes more sense to do that closer to the Mediterranean.
Making cheap hydrogen using solarcells is a great idea. You make it from sea water. Transported by pipe would be cost efficient and would allow amazing amounts of storage inside the piping system. But yes, the country needs to be stabile for it ever to happend. Probably it will happend first in europe and then piping will expand at closest neighbours at first.
3:05 let's not forget about economy of scale and the fact that each interconnection could be scalled up. The UK has 6 GW connections to france, and a new 1.4 GW interconnection to Norway that measures 720km and required €1.4bln to build.
Purely in terms of financial cost, it's really not much compared with other infrastructure costs. And once built, it's RELATIVELY cheap to maintain, compared with roads, railways, mines, oil processing plants etc with huge returns in terms of material transport costs (coal, oil, gas), less air & ground pollution. The ONLY real problem is greed, politics, religion and the aggression between countries... humans just don't like each other! 🤔
@@dragon.fromindia3235 but at any price, the Oil industry has had $Billions in Govt Tax Subsidies every year for decades, plus the on going cost of environmental & health damage. Oil, has been GREAT, we depend on it, but it's time to see it's true cost to us, not just the cost at the pump. (and yes, renewables are being subsitied too, now, as it's still being developed.)
Solar’s main advantage is that it’s super easy to connect locally. Locally produced, locally used. It’s like having a water source in your backyard: it’s super easy to use that water, but it would be very difficult to transport it
@@fioredeutchmark If you look at systems for powering single homes, it is possible to extrapolate. For a large home, you might be looking at something the size of a small closet (think Powerwall).
Morocco use this plans to use it locally as main goal, minimizing the cost of importing oil by 50% or more is the objectif, there is also wind energy. I think they did a good job.
@@geraldarnie4034 Well, that and people in the power company being appointed based on racism rather than skill. If you reject a quality engineer because he happens to be white and instead and get some ANC gang twat who barely finished highschool, only speaks xhosa and steals money from all projects you're not getting anything done.
correct me if im wrong but i heard somewhere that generating energy is not as big a problem as storing and transporting generated energy where theyre needed.
Your Right, for example the German energy system is basically split into north and South, it bottlenecks in the Middle meaning the North sells of it's excess energy to Denmark at a heavy discount Because we can't move it far enough down South. Maybe we should fry a few more fields of kettle to work out wireless energy transmission...
Enjoyed the narrative and video. But wouldn’t the total costs also need to include disposal, or recycling costs of the solar and wind equipment after it meets its economic life?
Kinda behind the curve on this, these North Africa projects are back on the agenda. X links Morocco to U.K. HVDC link 7GW PV 3.5GW wind being just one. There’s also a lot of multi Gigawatt plants in planning most coupled to Hydrogen production at the large scale with a mix of H2 and Battery to provide baseloads
When X link has been running for a couple of years we will see what crops up. Unfortunately politics is unpredictable. The western Sahara is hardly an oasis of calm.
I understand that for long-haul energy transmission it's more efficient to use the electricity to split water to hydrogen and then pipe the hydrogen to the destination. There is already a gas pipeline between Sicily and Tunisia - it could be used to send the gas back instead. The best source would be seawater, distillation (which does not require filters that have to be replaced) and electrolysis - not dams of rain or ground water.
@@kevikiruWhere do you get your figures from for "you lose more than half of the energy"? I have found online "With current tech, electrolysis generally produces hydrogen at about 75 per cent efficiency. So to create a kilo of pure hydrogen fuel, which holds about 39.4kWh of energy, it takes 52.5kWh." Anyway, if you have more energy than you can use locally and you're not consuming a finite fuel source, but generating it from an endless supply of free renewable energy and converting it enables you to get it to wherever you need to use it, including places you couldn't transport it via power lines because the line losses over that distance would be too great, or because you need to transport it over large bodies of water, and you can supply it cheaper and cleaner at the destination than any other fuel, who cares if you have to generate twice what you can use to get it there? How does that not make sense?
@@kevikiru I suppose there is enough sunlight there all year round (whereas in Europe there isn't) , so even if you lose half of the energy the system may still be feasible.
Problem is that hydrogen is notoriously difficult to work with because the atoms are such a small particle that they can leak out of containment easily, and of course they’re also highly flammable. Large scale hydrogen pipelines would be an engineering and security nightmare
Pipes designed for low-pressure long-chain hydrocarbon gas are not going to work with high-pressure H2 whose molecules are so small they can leak out of the fittings.
We barely brushed on it but maintenance for these are going to be HELL, especially with all the sand And for PVCs, another huge problem other than storage, heat, etc is LIFETIME After ten-twenty years, you'll have to replace the ENTIRE thing It's just so much easier to do things locally
Love how he first says that solar power in Africa could be life changing for them. Then goes on about how we can create connections that supply Europe lmao
@Matt Mann Yeah, that's a... bad thing. That's the problem. Africa is insanely exploited as is. Oil, mining, farming, etc. are already exploited a lot, with any profits being made going to private companies instead of the actual countries. Solar energy powering the whole world would be great from Africa, but even Africa being powered by solar energy would be good.
There is a simple solution to the expensive long cable problem. A way to bypass it completely. You only need to think outside the box. Get rid of the cable, and carry the energy over in ships and trucks. 😁 OK. Here's the secret to my plan. First, you build lots of giant solar farms in the desert. And next to them, you build factories that turns these sand into ... solar panels. We will use all the energy from the solar panels, to build ... more solar panels ... which would drive down the cost of solar panels ... until they get so cheap that they become cheaper than regular roofing material. Imagine that these panels becomes cheaper than regular construction materials. A conventional house without solar panels costs $50,000 to build (excluding cost of land). A house where the roof and walls are all solar panels, costs $40,000. We don't have to do anything. Everything would be covered in solar panels in just a few years. And the factories in the Sahara will continue to churn out solar panels that get ever cheaper.
In life you only get rich by enriching others. Europe is experiencing massive shortage in energy. We could sit on the energy or sell ut fir a higher markup. Nothing wrong with helping Europe. Don't take shit personal if they can pay let's produce the energy nit worry about that neo colonialism rhetoric
I really appreciate bringing up the impact on the people that actually live there, something that has been sorely missing from all of these discussions.
European countries exploited TRILLIONS of dollars out of Africa = It was natural order of the world. European countries investing back a tiny percentage of that money back = It is TOO RISKY lets forget about it.. Then some ''geniuses'' wonder why exactly refugees and illegal immigrants trying to cross into Europe while it is because they think Europe is the reason why they are refugees and immigrants and they are absolutely right about that...
I hate that discussion is all about powering Europe, not Africa. Like LOL, even if that happens can you imagine the brutality of invasions and colonizations by Europeans for 200 more years to "protect" their "interests"?
You guys are seriously complimenting it? Or did I miss the sarcasm? I felt just like I was watching a GM truck on a Transformers movie. This and the apocalyptic scenario painted for solar power (not substantiated by anything in the video, by the way), made me realize that decentralized programming won't necessarily fix the problems we had with network TVs, radio and newspapers. The video is titled "The Problem with Solar Energy in Africa", but after you watch the video, you realize there isn't much of a problem after all. When he bitches about US$150 million to connect Morocco with Spain, I was almost completely sure whoever wrote this video works for Shell or Texaco. Hell - we lose much more money if a Saudi billionaire is on a bad mood and decides to either increase or decrease oil production. I'm sorry to the people behind this video - I really do appreciate your effort to promote science. But I've just had enough of all this talk about the cost of solar power. We don't have to dig 5km down the planet's crust to get solar power. We don't have to build marine-life-extinguishing tankers to move solar power around. Concentrated solar was a bad idea to begin with, and one that could only come from the minds of fossil fuel addicts who are unable to grasp the simplicity and cleanliness of photovoltaic. Your sponsor seems like an ally on the fight for a better world. Unfortunately, your video does look like a knee-jerk appeal to Big Oil's sensitivities. Also... what's the deal about the tone when speaking about the potential political problems within North Africa's countries? What year is this - 1910? It's still OK to talk like an imperialistic dipshit in 2021? I've written too much already. Bitching about this is as useless as trying to make regular people understand why oil is killing us all. So let's just all fucking die while we complain that "solar power isn't as reliable" as dinosaur juice.
@@brenobacci Why'd you take it so much to heart man? If you disagree with the content I think there's a much better way to communicate your argument. I'm not going into whether you're right or wrong here but if you were, you think thats the way that's going to convince anyone?
@@brenobacci People like you paired with the unreliability of solar on its own are part of why green energy fails. The only real green power is nuclear and in the end, yes, you still need to dig because they all need batteries to store the power at the consumer level. Thorium breeders are the bridge to fusion that can meet the need in the near future. Oil helps meet the need now. EROEI. The sky isn't falling.
Just a comment here about the DC and AC comparison. The break-even point between DC and AC lines is as you said in the video. However, for underground and submarine cables (such as the ones you refer to in the video e.g. Italy-Tunisia, etc.), it is much earlier at 40-120 km depending on the cable design.
Greentards: Solar panels in the African desert are super efficient! Everyone: So you admit that solar panels are inefficient in Germany or Canada, where people actually live, and what happens when the sun sets? Greentards: Fascist!
@@bMcgu894 Solar panels produce DC indeed but to go from 36 Volts DC to 10 kV DC you'd need the 36 V DC to first become 24 V AC to xform that, since you cannot transform DC to DC. The system is so feeble that losses are imminent. The best option would be to hydrolize water in the dessert to form hydrogen and transport that to elsewhere... Yes, now you have a new problem: How to find these amounts of water in the driest place on earth. The real problem is over population.
Where I thought the video would go was to discussion of the reduced infrastructure and electrification within not just Morocco but across Africa. After all the sensible thing for electrical generation and transmission absent knowing anything else about the regions would be for plants in the Sahara to power Morocco itself and the countries nearby, transmitting across land, not across ocean, which is terribly inefficient. One might imagine that building power plants in Morocco and transmitting the electricity, for example, to Mali, south, might make some sense. But there are grid problems, security and infrastructure problems, and there are also poverty problems. Mali is one of the 25 poorest countries in the world per capita. Only half the population has access to electricity. So if a profit-driven corporation examined the idea of transmitting from Morocco to Mali, it would not only ask what the electricity challenges are. It would ask: "Who exactly is going to pay us?" Until that sort of problem is resolved socially, the fanciest and largest plants in the world won't make sense.
Solution? : Step 1: start a plant by choosing a place near the Sea Step 2: do water desalination Step 3: USE SOLAR POWER TO MAKE HYDROLYSIS with sweet-water Step 4: send hydrogen through pipes to europe Step 5 iterate again while sending salt water to desalination further away from the sea as plants grow with energy that is produced by leftover hydrogen Result: - cheap sending to europe - easy to store energy - no need of fossile fuel to keep plant going (all runs on hydrogen)
Thought this myself, love the idea. But, it turns out not as grand as it sounds. First, H2 molecule is tiny compared to the CH4 molecule of Natural Gas (mostly methane in there). So, leakage, is a big problem, the hydrogen can escape easier than materials we can make. Second, hydrogen transport by pipe isn’t that easy to do and damages pipes. So...these are new engineering feats to tackle. But, I’m with you, I like the plan/idea.
Step 1: Bill gates stops giving "charity" to sterilize black people. Step 2: Invests, not donates, the money into solar powered desalination in Africa. Step 3: Bottle the water. Step 4: Sell water.
If a box is pressed slowly by some arm , inside heat can rise because of pressed air inside and if the arm stop pressing so that the box dont break, box being locked whit brackets so that it remain pressed , heat from walls could be used to heat water or air and produce energy
I remembering hearing about the potential of a small area of the Sahara being able to theoretically supply the world's energy in the 1970s.The falling cost of photovoltaic panels seems to offer a ray of hope for developing countries faced with rising energy costs. Even if storing the energy is troublesome, desalination, water pumping and other processes could be carried out mainly during the day.
Desalination is a junk technology compared to distillation. Why fight to diminish dissolved solids when you can just get fresh water by evaporating and cooling, just like clouds? Slingshot. We need it yesterday.
@@normanclatcher Multistage desalination evaporates and recondensates the steam after it passes through a demister up to 40 stages in large desalination plants in Saudi Arabia. There are other similar systems operating by the evaporation salt separation principle such as vapor compression, which requires power, as reverse osmosis does. (For brackish water)
@@joelvoss1226 Right, We did just that in Bari, Italy, on a demonstration unit, now located in Lampedusa. We used long, tracking parabolic polished aluminium concentrating reflectors heating tubes to drive a ten stage flash desalination system, requiring about 80 kcal per kg product water. The collection efficiency was, to my recollection ~ 45%. All collectors were protected by a glass cover.
Using concentrated solar probably makes a lot more sense than PV for large solar projects from an environmental point of view. It doesn’t use rare earth materials like PV does and most of the facility would be recyclable at the end of it’s life.
I sometimes play a game in my head where I try to guess where exactly the transition to the sponsored segment starts. It's usually at some point when the narration starts rattling on about knowledge in general. I miss the time before sponsors where so deeply integrated into the video itself.
Not quite correct the video, but it gives a good overlook. Germany finalized a Hydrogen Project with the African States just earlier this year, the project is going strong currently. The Hydrogen we need for our industry can't really be produced here within the Timeframe we have (20years), they will rather use ships to ship the Hydrogen to us, with the cheaper electricity in Africa. The Project is called "h2atlas".
I was wondering about this. I've never really seen the point of "hydrogen" as a future fuel. But perhaps it's a cheaper way of moving large amounts of energy long distances, given that it can reuse some of our fossil fuel infrastructure (ports, maybe gas containers and pipelines)
Germany truly is overrated. Worst mistake they made was dismantle nuclear. Not only does Germany pollute more but it also needs to buy energy from France...
@@iliveinyourwalls5193 All European countrys buy Energy from eachother, it even has a name: ENTSO-E, the European Network of Transmission System Operators. Overall Germany did export 52,3 TWh and Imported 33,7 TWh in 2020. That means, Germany did export alot more than they actually needed. For pollution, Germany is about double from what France makes. There are just two things to keep track of: 1) Germany has about 25 million more people and 2) France does alot of Nuclear without any place to store the waste yet or how to process it, they just started building that in a village called "Bure".
@@Sw4lley Nuclear is the way. Using coal causes more pollution and radiation. If they had continued nuclear they would have not bought as much energy. It was a huge mistake on their part and they're paying the price.
European countries exploited TRILLIONS of dollars out of Africa = It was natural order of the world. European countries investing back a tiny percentage of that money back = It is TOO RISKY lets forget about it.. Then some ''geniuses'' wonder why exactly refugees and illegal immigrants trying to cross into Europe while it is because they think Europe is the reason why they are refugees and immigrants and they are absolutely right about that...
I had 5 years ago some Business with a startet from germany.. they convert shipping Containers into solar farms.. you just put them where is space, you unfold the system and connect the village or whatever usage you have.. they cost around 150 000 Euro per piece only.. but its a local solution..
@@kerbodynamicx472 while superconductivity at 15° would be fantastic for sea floor cables, needing 2.6 million bar is a major issue, unless that can be brought closer to the pressure of the surrounding sea it won"t be a reliable system
But... how would it solve the cost-the same problem that made the entire "let's use North Africa to power Europe" plan go under? Are you expecting superconducting cables to be cheaper to build than the ones currently used?
But it just moves the storage problem to somewhere else. Solar electricity has to be converted into a medium that can be efficiently stored else you need to back up 'every' solar plant with a fossil fuel plant.
The statements about interconnections breakeven points applies to overhead lines. Subsea HVDC vs. HVAC is well below 100k where HVDC becomes the cheaper option. But the part about CSP vs PV and global energy market elopements was very interesting and informative.
It should be noted that centralized power generation will always be a terror target. That is not unique to northern Africa. Not only terror attacks, but also weather events. Decentralization increases robustness of the system, though it brings with it concerns of complexity and increased costs. Even so, I believe decentralized power generation will become the norm in the medium to distant future. In a way, when considered from a wider perspective the US power grid is already decentralized. Each plant being interconnected with other plants reduces outage time and frequency. Imagine if it became economical to decentralize to the extent that if your neighbor's power generation went out, the rest of the neighborhood could power the house until repairs could be made.
Wrong. There are huge nuclear power plants, never were attacked. Huge hydroelectric power plants with enormous dams, they're not attacked. But in shithole countries, it's a different story, they have conflict over nothing.
@@sevencolours5014 These are within these specific countries - now imagine entire EU relies on power coming from Africa and some political conflict etc rises and entire power gets cut off or you get charged 100x more for the power. And you can't do anything - you rely on that energy from thousands of km away.
My respect for you increased once I heard you stood up to big corporations that tried to guide you away from producing these good videos. I just finished watching two full ads for your video. You deserve it. Keep pumping out these well researched, unbiased videos 👍🏻 I can't imagine how a creator who instead of making a video on renewables like this, instead decides to take money from oil companies and spit out propoganda. So more power to you for taking a stand
I remember watching a video on a brand new hydrogen paste that might be useful. I could see those massive solar facilities relevant directly powering countries instead being used to produce fuels as a method of storage that would be more efficient than batteries.
@@toomanymarys7355 Expense can be relative. Is the high cost due to the heat required for the chemical reaction or the production costs of Ester? I don't see heat in the Sahara Desert being a problem; construct some solar furnaces nearby the panels and contain the production to one site. Esther and ionised-water could be an imported materials carried on the same shipping lanes which are exporting the paste. "Powerpaste is made by combining magnesium powder with hydrogen in a process conducted at 350 °C (662 °F) and five to six times atmospheric pressure to form magnesium hydride. An ester and a metal salt are then added to make the finished Powerpaste."
I don't think you even need to get terribly exotic with what form your hydrogen takes. Storing your excessive solar energy in the form of plain old hydrogen gas seems like it could be a concept.
First of all : I have to wonder WTF a "Political Stability Index" (15:00 min) means and HOW this calculated??🤔🧐🤔 Next: I also have to say that I'm glad the point was mentioned that investing in the local energy-grid is far more cost-effective. Of course this would also be a break from the imperialistic tradition of extraction valeuable resources that belong to foreign countries for the benefit of Europe. Too bad that these subjects didn't get more attention but this channel is dedicated to accuretly analyzing Science & Engineering of course and NOT to international politics. Still 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻.
This was really really interesting. I’ve never heard of concentrated solar, sounded like an awesome concept until you explained the pitfalls. This is one thing, regardless of the environmental benefits that I like about the switch to renewables, because it gives the opportunities for much more countries to have their own energy independence and not rely on energy that comes from other parts of the world just for basic power needs which have primarily been the driver of wars and conflict. The entire world shouldn’t have to crap itself because a 30 mile wide body of water in the Middle East is being fought over by the United States and whoever.
If you believe its that simple, you have not been paying attention. Follow the Money and the Power. Its all about Control . Be careful of what you wish for. Do you have any idea how much the USA tax payer money has been sent to these countries to help them. Yet, nothing has changed. Figure it out people before its too late. This current administration is a joke and does everything to destroy us. Good Luck Ya’ll !
@Ehbfunbcc Whjfhbhjxf On the topic of waste, uranium-235 decays into thorium during its fission, meaning it generates more fuel for other types of reactors. And, not all of the uranium gets "depleted", a rather low amount does, but it's too much for most active reactors. The good news on that, is that the remaining "spent" rods can be used in starting reactors and sustaining them until new full rods can be put in. And even after that, the depleted uranium is used in a lot of military things, like penetrators and armor. The total true waste produced in USA from the moment that we started research is extremely small, with a volume of only a football field size hole, roughly 2.5 meters deep.
@Ehbfunbcc Whjfhbhjxf Their have been several close calls in France only. They will actually denuclearise in the next decades, because they can't build new reactors fast enough to replace the old ones, so they will develop much more renewable energy. Another problem is France gets it's uranium from Niger, with very few care of the locals, or Niger itself (there has been some scandals recently). There is better ways to be energy independant.
I feel like it's also worth considering whether it's even wise to generate virtually all of Europe's power in one or two North African countries as well. It gives those countries immense leverage over the EU and it's not hard to imagine some future geopolitical crisis involving cutting power to all of Europe. While I think the solar Sahara project is of value I wouldn't go all in on that alone.
The same argument about buying so much natural gas from Russia. I think Europeans are more worried about Russia than Tunisia or Morocco but it is a valid point.
NO ONE is suggesting buying anything CLOSE to all of Europe's electricity there. What an utterly ridiculous lie. Did you only watch the first minute to find an excuse to disparage it?
Of course I did, calm down. As pointed out in the video it's not possible meet Europe's power demand 100% due to the lack of cables across the Med for HVAC/DC transmission and just the lack of power available from a few concentrated solar systems and one regular one. But outside of this video you can find no shortage of suggestions of making large solar installations across the Sahara and using them to power Europe or more which are ridiculously impractical from a tech perspective as pointed out in the video. Additionally such a large installation would also create major geopolitical issues and potential areas of conflict, as I pointed out, though it should really be obvious to anyone that thinks about the potential issues for more than 3 seconds.
0:37 solar insolation at the Earth’s surface is 1000W per sq meter. Solar panels are only about 25% efficient. So that’s about 250W/sq m. 5-7kWh per day would require 20 to 28 hours of full face noon sunlight per day. Even the best 30% panels would need 16 to 23 hours of noon time sunlight.
At 0:42 video mentions on avg 1 m sq. Can generate 5 to 7 kWh each day. Most of panels I see available online are larger 2 m * 1 m with 550 w capacity. These panels would need to work at full capacity for 18 to 20 hours to achieve that yield.
@@genobohez6374 It is best not to talk about these PV solar and wind turbine life cycles, the parasitic CO2 emission during manufacture, the mining of rare earth materials, the cost of copper for the transmission systems, the recycling issues, the use of water to clean the panels, the massive environmental of extremely large scale Lithium-ion cells, the problem of producing Green H2 in large quantities not to mention the inefficiency involved, the water required and so on because all this would ruin the virtue signalling and the CC change alarmism of politicians using taxpayers' money to fund all this without considering the fact that electricity storage technology at the scale required is not available yet and that PV solar and wind is does not provide energy if the sun doesn't shine.
@@Ernst12 now do a break down of all the emissions and pollution it takes to produce fossil fuels. Then add the emissions of the fossil fuel themselves. Maybe consider that as innovation continues efficiently will increase. Or are you only interested in the stats that support your belief?
@@supchefofficial Yes of course. The same could be said for all the CO3 billions of people on earth breathe out. Yes there is a carbon neutrality if the vegetables and the meat could be consumed without adding parasitic CO2 for processing, transport, storage and so on.
Starting on a thesis related to this topic in 2 weeks. Let's say we have different ideas to transport energy in other forms than electricity that do not require enormous power grid infrastructure or storage facilities.
But every time you convert energy you lose efficiency. Plus you'd still need to transport that converted energy and store it until it is able to be transported. And once at the source you then need to convert it AGAIN.
@@GeorgeMonet Yes, very very true. BUT, for our current energy mix we already do this (oil, gas, coal) so it is not anything new. On top of that, storing fuel is way easier than storing electricity. As far as the efficiency goes, also, very very true. But again, IF (note: IF) it is viable to gather energy from e.g. the sahara, the amount of energy you could extract there is virtually limitless, so efficiency losses are not the biggest thing to worry about. And if you were to transport the electricity directly, this will also result in significant losses. The point being, that all different ideas have pros and cons. There is no ''one best solution'', but more like ''one least shitty solution''. I think the only thing we can (almost) all agree on is the problem, which is energy security and availability. We have to tackle these problems at some point, so why not start now?
The Australia-Asia Power Link is still a go as far as I know. Power to be supplied to Singapore and later Indonesia via the world's largest solar plant, the world's largest battery, and the world's longest submarine power cable. 20 gigawatts to be delivered for a cost of AU$30 billion by 2027.
An update... the project has gone bust as of early 2023. They haven't even decided where exactly to put the solar farm, never mind installing a single panel. The liquidators are now trying to sell off the project...
All that is actually required is for the metal in a few feet of your cables, transmission-level or local, to be more valuable than the average income in the surrounding area for a month, and sociopolitically, your plan is toast. If you understand Africa, you know that such a project will never withstand such basic economic calculations and actions taken accordingly. If a tribal leader or the populous finds it advantageous to tear the project components to pieces for short-term gain, it will always be torn to pieces. There's the first "pie-in-the-sky" calculation problem.
150 million * 592 is a bit more than 8.9 billion $
God damn it I missed a zero. Ofcourse I would fuck up the easy calculation, because it's the only one I didn't triple check.
Lol
Yeah! It's horrible. Especially when you do that at an exam
@@RealEngineering happens to everybody. atleast somebody caught it.
@@RealEngineering I do that kind of shit all the time. It's a rite of passage for us engineers 😅
I’m in Australia and there’s a big factor that you’ve missed. Ironically, panels don’t work as well in extreme heat. Sun light = good, extreme heat = bad.
Nothing that more panels won't fix
@@DraRed73 Technically not wrong
Just put them in the shade ... duh
True.
They perform best in cold weather with a lot of sunlight.
Mirror-based solar energy makes more sense in desert/orbit (that doesn't mean solar towers only).
I was involved with solar in the UAE and sand was a major problem because the panels become ever so slightly damp with condensation in the morning and coated with a fine layer that had to be washed off. I seem to remember the efficiency dropped by up to 80%. It's the same problem with cars left out overnight. We were even looking at automated rinsing systems. It was a decade ago and I don't know if they solved the problem.
A retractable cover that auto closes at night and opens when it's sunny and dry? And the retractable mechanism has a soft wiper blade? I'm guessing smarter people have thought of this and found it unworkable.
8:40 how is the water heated to 500 degrees Celsius, I thought the highest temp water could get to was 100 degrees Celsius.
The main impediment to going green is conservative-capitalism.
Not saying I don't love that all of you here are thinking about efficiency. Ridding ourselves of the chains of unfettered-capitalism is just another way we can be far more efficient with literally *all* of our planets resources.
@@aylbdrmadison1051 Because people dont feel pressured to study/work more than they need to if they dont get extra benefit of that.
How about mounting the panels on axles that turn them upside down at night? Dew mostly collects on upward-facing surfaces.
The panels wouldn't be turned right side up until the temperature exceeded the dewpoint by an experimentally determined delta.
If only there was a magic rock, that when you put it closer to other magic rocks, it got really hot, and stayed that way for a long time.
Yeah, it's called uranium oxide.
That's hilarious u may be onto something 🤣
@@seths_ma6766 if we say the first rock is a man and the other rock is a beautiful woman i think you will get the heat you need , just saying
The only problem is what we do with the magic rocks
the responses to this comment are the dryest, most boring thing i've seen today. funny joke
The tittle is misleading. It should rather say "The problem with generating electricity in Africa to benefit Europe"
You are assuming you are still a colony. Can you imagine how quickly exporting energy to Europe will make the countries in that region prosperous? However, considering the tendency of countries in Africa to fail due to corrupt leaders and tyrants, I suppose the only real beneficiaries will be Europe... and the "leaders" who will retire in Saudi Arabia.
The technology and expertise is all European ...! Nobody is stopping African countries from developing their own
expertise......😅😅
@@2msvalkyrie529you are literally so ignorant. Read some history, try and understand how global economics works, and then get back to me. So dumb saying dumb things about subject a you have no idea about. Grow a brain
Exactly
@muldererick have u read the contents of the contracts? African governments are always short-handed because wat happens is that the west ,imf and world bank always conjure plans to get African states into unjust,unpayable debt(with clauses such as "open up yo markets","we need control over sum of yo assets, u can't grow yo own food, u can't industrialise ").now when we fall back on payment,as expected because they design it that way with the cia, they come back with new loan reform which will say something like "if u allow us to set up renewable energy structures in yo desert ,servicing Europe, we can make 80% profits, the 20% u can use to service the world bank loan. That's why Africa's poor. The west long had meetings where they agreed that Africa should not produce,but consume products from the west. Read the book by former cia agent,John perkins, who used enforce these loans on African states.he states that in his time 2 presidents had to be killed because they wouldn't sign n accept the debt-trap loans. The book "Confessions of the economic hitman "
I live in Kenya and solar here is incredible since there is no true "winter", its only sunny and rainy season so there is not less sunlight or less sun hours around the year
Yeah, solar works in Africa ofcourse. This was primarily a criticism of this new age imperialist idea of "extracting" solar energy from Africa.
@@RealEngineering What do you say countries like Japan, South Korea replacing LNG with Hydrogen(electrolyser) importing from Africa. How costly would that be?
@@Vignana_Pradarshana Right now? Insanely expensive, the idea of importing hydrogen from that far away makes little sense when you can just make it locally. I could see countries along the Suez Canal creating a hydrogen/ammonia fuel project to refuel ships though.
Same here in South India
Hydrogen long-term storage is still pretty problematic too, isn't it?
10:33 That is the happiest looking meter I have ever seen.
Damn ! you got an eye for detail .
@Kitan Mani SILENCE BOT
Is it just me or does USA power outlets look like surprised Pikachu face? 😅
I thought exactly the same. He has one job and he absolutely loves it.
LMAOO
Dear Real Engineering Team,
there has been some confusion with Desertec and other organisations. As a director of the Desertec Foundation I hope to start a productive discussion about the Pros and Cons of the concept. Some information presented is outdated (for example the water issue has been solved with newer plants).
I send you a mail with some further information.
If you are interested, I can try to organise a visit to a more sophisticated plant. Then you can see the solutions in real life!
Holy cats, there's actually a Timo Bracht on Desertec's website, this seems legit :)
Would love to see the new perspective in a future video!
Interesting! I would certainly like to see this.
wew, this would be interesting.
@@vinceb8041 His account was created today, totally not sus.
Good outreach, Desertec team!
The Problem with Solar Energy in Africa < *The Problem with Exporting the Electricity Produced Outside of Africa*
yeah like damnn, we have whole cities without electricity in africa in 2024
Exactly! Why is the "problem" with solar energy, that Europe isn't the main benefactor of the solution ? The world is a far bigger place.
And many forget the main problem: HAving black surfaces that absorbs lot of heat (not all go to electricity), is a very bad idea in Africa and arabia. At least the sand reflects back much of the heat into space. THAT albedo effect can cause global warming.
Now they want energy from Africa lol
@@Leadership_in_Action Sure, but we are not going to pay for your own problems.
Beyond the technical and scientific issues, there's also the problem of energy dependence. Giving another country control over your power is insane.
And this is exactly why it won't work. Politics distroys everything.
@@canaryliina So what is your replacement for "politics" ?
@Yamile Magubeni It doesn't matter if they're developed or not. It's a massive security threat to have another country running your power regardless of who they are.
This is already true: Russia and Middle East dependence
@@definitelynotadam That isn't nuanced enough. Every time you add a supplier you've reduced your risk.
We recently did a short school project on Nigeria and ~40% of their population is off their grid/doesn't get reliable electricity. Using local solar they can support their people without heavily investing in grid infrastructure. Solar is a win internally in Africa.
Problem is corruption would raise costs beyond the every day user could afford
Tell that to Nigera, not us
Let me get this straight, solar isn't expensive to people off the grid? Scince when isn't solar expensive.
@SerpentInside The comment had nothing to do with wokeism.. I think you should take a break from politics if you are starting to see ghosts. Too much politics is really bad for your mental health anyway.
No. Solar is not a win for anyone
The title is misleading, there is no problem with Solar Energy in Africa, but the problem is exporting resources to Europe.
Did I read it correct or it is true, there is problem?
Exactly!!! Click bait
Exactly!!!!! Still want to continue exploiting resources from and out of Africa 🌍
I have watched the desert dwellers work with solar panels. Deserts equal dust and sand. We are not there yet. Small set ups that are easily cleaned and maintained by the direct user seem to be a good option.
don’t underestimate the grasshopper storms in Africa.
The Moroccan coast has winds coming from the Atlantic ocean cool and without much sand.
the heat of the desert causes resistance
arizona native speaking.
That's why we need African emigration to stop and for them to start an industrial revolution, so their citizens could each own a house, with 1.5x + solar panels that they actually need, incentivized by a rebate or pure profit motive....provided that the panels actually work
Would seem like, even if somehow an automated solution can’t be identified, it would be totally economically viable to have a few guys travel around the solar farm wiping off the panels periodically.
As someone who grew up in West Africa, it will come down government officials and how honest they are. Corruption even in the countries that are doing well (Ghana for example) is still present. Ask any Ghanaian about ECG (the Electricity Company of Ghana…also known as “Electricity Come and Go”).
Don't know which part you stay but electricity supply is constantly stable.
if we dont take it we dont deserve it back
@@vervetech9395 East Legon in Accra. Maybe the government/companies have changed their practices since 2005-2012ish, but for a long time, it was 24 hours of electricity, 24 hours off. We spent so much money on fuel for the generator. How can you export power to neighboring countries when sections of your own capital city goes without power?
Dumsor is real. As Ghanaians we need to stop looking at our corrupt government for solutions. The solutions will come from us the people not the politicians.
You will never get a grassroots solar energy buildup no matter what country or government system you use. Solar energy is prohibitively expensive and only exist because of government subsidies and a complete neglect in environmental standards when producing in China. A huge industrial base is needed to make all those panels and a huge investment that can only come from governments is needed to start the projects. Why should any government invest in Africa when the African governments have no safeguards to protect the project?
"watt hours per day" is an ingenious way to unambiguously express the average output despite its varying over the day.
Wait until you hear about kilowatt hours per day per megawatt (of installed capacity). Not sure how prevalent it actually is in literature but i found it funny when i read it before learning about dimensional analysis
would be even better to express it in watt days per day
Would be far better to do by annum, like Giga/Mega/Kilowatt-year. Reason being is seasonal changes in productivity.
It's... a pretty standard type of unit. We use MW•hr/ Day pretty often in my reactor design course
@@leerman22I encounter 'kilowatt-hours per year' frequently in the residential market
It's funny the first "problem" you mention is "How do we transform this to Europe?"
Literally what I thought
Europe is making the investment, and Africa has more solar capacity than it can use
Thank you 😂
Why is this funny? Because you are left as f = intellectual capabilities are below needed to understand basic things?
That what I thought throughout the whole video!
In China they use solar panels in the desert along with planting small plants under the solar panel to fight against desertification. One woman who won the noble peace prize over a decade ago was a Chinese woman living in the desert with her husband. She and many others have found methods to plant in the desert. I'm hoping that with the amount of incredibly skilled and talented innovative brains in this world, can come up with a solution for a greener planet. We may not see them but they exist and are working very hard for a better future.
There was only won nobel peace price ever awarded to a Chinese, that was Liu Xiaobo. He was a dissident scholar and received his Nobel Peace price for human rights work in China - he didn't work on desertification.
Well said, but who buys that stuff in the bad quality? I might as well throw the money out of the window
@@bonito34worst case can be used by farmers for animals? Use the food for homeless shelters etc.
@@Asif24960 and what? Btw 1 ruble= 0,0099 €. Think before y act. Erdogan is not so daft!
@@bonito34 don’t think you quite get it. Clearly you don’t work in finance.
As a Moroccan, I really hope for success of local electric production, it would be a gamechanger for the industry.
For the world
As an Algerian I dont think so
@@sisouhzl5645 why wouldn’t it be? We’re about to become the first car manufacturer in Africa and we’re already number one in the aerospace manufacturing industry, all those industries require a lot of energy.
We’re currently net importer of energy, and that need to shift as the industrialization of Morocco is growing too fast for the current production capabilities
We don’t have petroleum ressources so we need to innovate so
@@sisouhzl5645 my homie do be kinda jealous
Morocco has improved the grid enormously, but the pv idea is not fully feasible, as parts of morocco are too hot and would need more water
The Xlinks Morocco-UK Power Project, as it's known, will cover an area of around 579 square miles (1,500 square kilometers) in Morocco and will be connected exclusively to the UK via 2,361 miles (3,800 km) of HVDC subsea cables. 27 Sep 2021.
Reasons why this project would fail mainly because of the country's background, maintenance, location, distance, geography aren't feasible especially for customers in Europe. They just don't feel safe unless that country is Japan and located next door not separated by sea.
@@jawarakf if you're talking about cost, the plant could easily be scaled and Moroco can maintain them and the costs associated because it's financed by the state.
@@d.h.2509 It's more of trust and safety measures. Western Europe never felt safe with nations that aren't from their factions and influence, more towards political & religion factors. Say in case of war, rising extremism, anything serious such as boycott or sabotage would cause disruption leaving Europe in power outage
@@jawarakf well, how often do you hear about terrorist attacks and political instability in Morocco?
@@d.h.2509 So far it is neutral but European mindset of generalizing for safety precaution is there. It's just they aren't going to depend on country that they are doubtful of.
This panel can put out close to 100 watts th-cam.com/users/postUgkxOqI2yqX0XVrhR2BMJciTWrHJpG8FhJyg when positioned in the appropriate southernly direction, tilted to the optimal angle for your latitude/date, and connected to a higher capacity device than a 500. The built in kickstand angle is a fixed at 50 degrees. Up to 20% more power can be output by selecting the actual date and latitude optimal angle.The 500 will only input 3.5A maximum at 18 volts for 63 watts. Some of the excess power from the panel can be fed into a USB battery bank, charged directly from the panel while also charging a 500. This will allow you to harvest as much as 63 + 15 = 78 watts.If this panel is used to charge a larger device, such as the power station, then its full output potential can be realized.
So what about the claims of 5- 7 kw hours per day compared to your assertions of 100 watts? Or have i misunderstood?
Rip Scandinavia on that first globe
Scandinavia is a myth!! Has anyone actually been there or met a Scandinavian ? There paid actors just like Australia.
Rip Fennoscandia
I just wanna know how they put a globe on a flat screen #TriangleEarthConfirmed
And nothing of value was lost
Eyyyy aspec
There are a couple of points left out, such as temperature, cost of land and intermittency based on location. Temperature is an efficiency factor for PVs and installing them in a desert where temperature goes beyond 45 C is not a very feasible idea. Cost of land in Germany is multiples higher than cost of land in Morocco. Finally, in Germany PVs energy supply will be more intermittent than that of Morocco's.
Just put them in the shade and temperature problem is solved. Easy.
@@lkytmryan Lmao best comment ever
European countries exploited TRILLIONS of dollars out of Africa = It was natural order of the world.
European countries investing back a tiny percentage of that money back = It is TOO RISKY lets forget about it..
Then some ''geniuses'' wonder why exactly refugees and illegal immigrants trying to cross into Europe while it is because they think Europe is the reason why they are refugees and immigrants and they are absolutely right about that...
@@ggoddkkiller1342 Go touch some grass dude
Bravo. All valid points.
“My Desert, my Arrakis, my Dune.”
Bless the Maker and his water.
Hail Shai Hulud
who will be the one...the lisan al gaeeb
Desert power
Bruh I literally just got started on my journey and then sardaukar flew into my town. Needless to say, they denied us the hajj.
Ive never seen such a smooth and effective transition to a sponsor.
Also, great video!
Thanks
The Moltex molten salt nuclear reactor runs continuously while heating the same type of heat storing salt used in solar boilers. The heat is used to fill peaks in demand while the reactor runs continuously. Costs are cheaper than coal and you don’t need all the cabling of solar (any type) to connect the panels.
Need tons of sodium salts
Sure but the estimated cost is around 1.5 billion per gigawatt/h which is more then the cost of the solar panels and undersea cables talked about here. The truth is at this point almost every method of producing energy is cheaper then coal so a comparison to it is kind of redundant.
@@Ar-ye1cr which is incredibly cheap
Also molten salt if I'm not mistaken is highly corrosive and add radioactive to maintenance issues make this a dead dream. That is one of the reasons why the American trial plant was considered not feasible, again if I'm not mistaken.
GTFO with that nuclear BS.
Local infrastructure should always be used locally first.
Much more energy efficiency
This is a worldwide problem. Canada went on a crusade against its own tar sands which resulted in actually importing oil from countries who do things in a far less environmentally responsible way. It's beyond belief.
@@jasondashney California was shipping ethanol made from corn to Brazil and importing ethanol made from sugarcane because it takes less energy to make it from sugarcane.
I guess this is the argument you would get from people on the far right who do admit climate change is an issue that needs to be addressed. "Own solar panels first!" 😂😂
@@jasondashney sounds like California, they buy alot of power from other states so other states try to reduce their power consumption so they can sell it for more to California even though alot is lost to transmission
Right but you understand the issue with that line of thinking right? Noor III in the middle of fucknowhere uninhabitable desert is just fine. It would literally NEVER make economic sense dead centre of London.
Generation tends to be the focus, while transmission and storage have enormous engineering challenges as well. But advances for both are coming, too.
And how many decades before it is cost effective AND makes enough of a difference to go through the trouble of upgrading?
@@scout360pyroz These are kind of open questions, and the geopolitical factors of doing this in the Sahara are probably insurmountable. But costs do keep coming down, and effectiveness of the collectors improves as well, so it's certainly conceivable both of those questions will have a workable answer soon. I hope anyway.
@@justaguy6100 It is not just the cost to build it. It is the cost to maintain and replace critical parts (right down to the cable used) if something breaks or is destroyed.
You also have to bring much if not all of those parts over very long distances (sea or land) from the outside. That means the area's power is completely dependent on outside forces to maintain itself. That is a dangerous position to be in as a nation or group of nations develops and grows and gets rich.
@@scout360pyroz And the same holds true for every means of production. I'm NOT saying putting a grid on the Sahara is a solution, more because of the geopolitical hurdles really, the biggest current factor in thermal plants is fuel costs with the exception of nuclear and those are expensive to build and maintain, too. Add to that the danger and expense of disposal of spent fuel and the other dangers they potentially pose, it becomes difficult to justify, although new technologies have promise to mitigate a lot of those factors.
Whatever the startup costs would be, the fact you're getting the electricity without fuel cost will mean there IS a payback for implementing it at some point. It's at least worth consideration and study, even if doing it in the Sahara doesn't become the ultimate solution. OR we can keep waiting and hoping for that fusion breakthrough that seems permanently 20 years away.
It's not going anywhere without refined propetroleum products.... Still gonna need petroleum with your little solar panel fantasy
They can use the power for desalination plus reforestation. Plus you can put solar panels a bit higher and do some farming underneath and help for dessert animal and plants to get some shade. Multipurposing this idea can save the region and whole world eventually but you need small steps of course. Also reforestation and farming will help with extreme heats which can decrease lifetime of solar panels and increase need for cooling systems.
Did you watch the video?
@@jerbear7952 Yeah I watched the video. Europeans want to exploit Africa again and I proposed a plan that will help both parties. Although they still need to fix energy transmission problem but it is a good thing Eu cant take all of the energy local government can use the leftover chunk themselves instead.
That would eventually doom the Amazon ecosystem…
@@pohkeee We are talking about African dessert. Amazon is pretty far away.
@@exosproudmamabear558bravo mam bravo 👏
I work on solar sites in the northeast us where hundreds of acres of forest are cleared for photovoltaic solar arrays. It’s hard to see a solar array under construction and not think that the environmental cost is worse than the benefit.
That and in West Africa I think sandstorms will be a huge limitor in replace of clouds. Plus the heat variation from sweltering in the day, bad enough for solar panels as is, will be met with freezing cold nights after. Is it really going to last if you did put them there? That sort of temperature fluctuation, even over the course of an hour or two, ought to be detrimental to the electronic components.
Reson y humanity shoud go nuclear
@@UltimRoGuE Exactly! Nuclear is much cheaper in the long run, needs limited fuel input and uses a small amount of land to produce huge amounts of power!
The people running these operations are simply stupid
@@OnlyGrafting that is only a question of targeted research. might be that the western consumer solar panel is not optimized for this or that this is simply not in the market yet.. in large scale i could not imagine that this could be the crucial cause. As an engineer, one thinks like this actually. I the marketing department of course they must strive for the compensation of efforts.
A very important factor to take into account when dealing with African countries is the level of corruption. Those of us who live in Africa know this fact all too well. Politicians line their pockets to such a degree that the country suffers. They don't take 10%, they take 90% and leave the country the rest.
For real, Nigerian here
Seems to be the case in all developing countries😢
Same in other countries. That is why in the US the top 0.1% own almost everything.
Guess you're not aware of the corruption in Western Governments or are you do think it's just "African countries" with corrupt as fuck governments?
Senator Joe Mansion in the US has taken MILLIONS from coal mining and is now blocking Green New Deal policies in the Build Back Better policy.
Boffwit Johnson, UK PM has funnelled £37BILLION to a private company, SERCO, under the leadership of Dido Harding, a Tory party member.
@@RichO1701e Bro you cannot compare compare corruption in developed countries with those in developing countries. I’m Indian, and the corruption here is so bad at all levels. You can avoid corruption in america if you want to; here it is a necessity to get anything done. Yet we don’t even get proper roads because of corruption. Also that developed countries have developed industries and an efficient and fair judicial system so corruption doesn’t hurt as much as it would in developing countries.
As MechE student and Moroccan citizen, this video was soo informative!! Thank you!
10:27 - that is the happiest instrument I ever seen!
My question regarding solar is how long do the panels last, especially given the wind-blown sandy environment, and when the panels require replacing, what happens to the waste? There is a hell of a lot of heavy metals in solar panels. Who pays for the clean-up, or is it left to the poor African countries to deal with?
i read from somewhere that solar efficiency loss is 0.5% to 1% per year. However, this is only apply for our normal solar. Large scale plants like this one would be using a much advance version of solar panels
Take a drink every time Real Engineering says "problematic" to understand :]
Well, normally, the efficiency has depleted considerably by 30 years. Sandstorms badly scratching the panels will probably cut that lifespan down a bit. More expensive panels could be a bit more scratch resistance, but there's a limit to how tough glass can be made and it still conduct light well enough to be useful
No normally panels are still producing 80% of original by year 50. And it’s a lot less waste than disposing of say…an entire power plant or 50 power plants.
@@marthatjarks6047 What are you on, and where can I buy it? That must be a hell of a drug if you think solar panels are still 80% functional after 50 years of use.
The countries of Africa can still use solar for their own power needs. Sure, it may not be able to save Europe's power needs, but at least it means clean renewable energy in poorer countries that tend to have lax environmental regulations and use carbon-based energy.
You missed the part about Europe wanting thr power for themselves.
Africa definitely don’t wanna spend the extra to maintain and build the solar network for now
Most ‘renewable energy’ tech is trash today
Lax environmental regulations, but more naturally sustainable living. Countries with the biggest carbon footprint and waste in general are not in Africa.
Algeria is very best for energy
@@abzigwe3656 1st world countries caused all the damage and now want to put the blame and demand regulations on developing countries.
Nuclear power: "Look what they have to do to mimic a _fraction_ of my power."
@@abdellahsbaa3751 but muh chernobyl
@@seafoam6119 But that’s not likely too happen any more as safety has Increased tremendously
@@therandomradonium1629 don't worry, he's just meming.
The amount of people I know who just call me a fallout fanboy when I mention that nuclear power is the future of our power grid is absurd
@@TG-Th3-T3rribl3 shut up fallout fanboy
How about keeping energy from Africa in Africa
Maybe because Germans were paying for it?
It'd be nice if we could keep Africans in Africa too.
@@MrSaywutnow sorry I don’t support racist and Xenophobic comments
And it would be even nicer if you kept your opinions and your vision for yourself
@@abanobgerges9399 nope if you got a problem with it then that’s on you. 🤷🏾♀️ don’t get mad that I’m for Africa being able to keep their resources rather than getting exploited from racist countries
This is all fascinating. On the surface if someone said to me "let's turn the Sahara into a giant solar plant" I would think it's a good idea. You bring up a lot of good points.
Which, if you know what you're talking about, are all nonsense.
The idea isn’t to literally use the Sahara to power the entire world, but just to show that using PV cells, you’d only need a small surface area compared to the earth to power the entire civilization. Most of these PV installations will be very local, mostly on top of roofs of houses and buildings, and the remaining can come from wind.
Really? My first thought with that idea is always: yeah, good luck stabilizing that geopolitical hellhole.
@@hebl47 I agree how many half wit goons would it take to strip all of that equipment only to cluck it off for a few hookah hits 🤨
Watch: The Connections (2021) [short documentary] 💖
We should be careful about the operating cost of PV. I worked in the KSA for a year and although skies are clear, there's a lot of dust in the air and there's an issue with water needed to keep the panels clean so they can maintain their efficiency
The wind coming from the Atlantic ocean is pretty clear from dust.
@@karstenschuhmann8334 alot of dust and various minerals have been known to make it across the Atlantic from South America. (basically stuff from the Amazons) pretty incredible when I heard about it. I have not idea how much salt is in the air
@@darwinjina Sure, that is true. And in every region without rainfall, some cleaning of panels will be needed.
But it is a big difference if you need to clean once an hour or once a year.
@@karstenschuhmann8334 did it become that frequent in Africa? I guess that with lack of water was unsustainable. I found even with raining season I need to do some cleaning.
@@darwinjina I would guess it depends on where in Africa you are. You have all kinds of weather in Africa. But here we compared the center of a desert with the Moroccan coastline.
Decentralize. Any other option will screw the consumer with inflated prices and lack of innovation.
Put panels on your home coupled with battery storage. Preferably in the form of an electric vehicle. Selling to consumers drives competition. The capacity goes up and the price goes down. Recent drops in panel cost are a real world example. Not an estimate.
Decentralization is also a strategic move for national defense. An attack on the grid is ineffective if most people are not on the grid.
Absolutely right , from the middle of nowhere in Thailand rice fields. 4 panels 4 battery's 5 years of grid 😇🙏😘 inverter 2k. My home in the avatar.
nailed it. especially the lack of innovation, as no central authority would want to scrap that which they spent a fortune on, and bet the farm on
if u install 1 solar panel the energy companies will add what you saved to your bill
I'm all for decentralization in principle, but how would you handle the infrastructure and storage? Infrastructure by definition cannot be decentralized, and many storage solutions benefit from economy of scale. So either you skip infrastructure, which means self-contained systems and a lot of wasted power production when you yourself are converting it inefficiently, or you need a central organisation to manage the powerlines and converters.
Whos gonna control the current, you?
On the winter solstice, the solar power in Algeria is about 277.9 watts per square meter in Algeria. Adjusting for capacity-factor, on that day in Algeria, a square meter would net about 1.3 kwh in a day.
So what about Chile's massive potential of energy production in the Atacama desert (photovoltaic) and Patagonia (eolic)? Maybe the low local demand of energy may be a benefit for exporting stacked energy in the shape of hydrogen from water desalination electrolysis plants, specially considering that every in Chile is close to the coast. It's just the perfect industry for my country
A quick search shows that Chile's natural energy reserves are massively underdeveloped. Along with the deserts where cloudy days simply don't exist, you have all that coast line along some of the world's stormiest seas, which is perfect for offshore windfarms. Also, it looks like you have a huge amount of geothermal energy that is untapped. Looking at it, with the right investment Chile certainly could become the main producer and exporter of renewable energy in South America, and practically almost eliminate its need for fossil fuels.
We have Infinite Potentiality, and that's what I'm focusing my energy on
A lot of the southern 2/3rds of the country also get a ton of rainfall. Seems like it would be fairly cheap for Chile to nearly achieve energy independence through hydroelectric alone with enough investment, especially with droughts being fairly rare.
One of the issues he didn't address is the problems with the falloff of the efficacy of photovoltaics outside of +/- 30 degrees latitude from the equator caused by the increasingly indirect nature of sunlight in those areas. Atacama may be too far south and in sunlight that is too indirect to be as cost-effective as it needs to be there. It may be OK as a supplemental source, though.
I need to look into what Germany is doing, as they should be having some issues with this. The USA will learn this the hard way over the next few decades too... I worry it will hurt the reputation of Solar overall, which is not a bad technology. It just has limited use and is not the panacea those looking to solve the Climate/Energy issues hope it to be.
Honestly, we need to get solar panels into space where they are unobstructed and transmit the power back to ground stations on Earth via microwave, but that's probably about another 50 years off.
@@phoenix042x7 Atacama desert is within tropical or subtropical latitudes. It's also a mostly high altitude desert so sunlight will be less attenuated by the atmosphere.
Rather than relying in transmission lines, why not use the electricity locally for something that is energy intensive (Mining and Refining, Magnesium via electrolysis, Methane via Sabatier Process, etc.) then transport the products.
Hydrogen production as well?
Because the local country may lack sufficient infrastructure, educated population, economic and political stability to support an industry that consumes such amount of electricity efficiently. Very few countries around the world can. Look around the world, very rarely do large electricity producers and consumers to be in close proximity of each other.
@@ericchen5744 "less educated"
More like room temperature IQ
@@constantinethecataphract5949 Wooo boy
@@lazergurka-smerlin6561 its true tho
I have nothing but respect for your honest critique of these over simplified _"easy clean energy"_ ideas.
He is still not telling us the truth its africa why can't they use that energy the same reason it's not safe to build there
Agreed. He's clearly concerned about global warming, but he's not afraid of it to the point of overriding his analytical attitude and clinging to every purported solution to it.
Interestingly, the math errors that I've seen commenters call him out on all happen to make the green energy idea in question seem _more_ plausible, not less. (e.g. by underestimating the cost of transmission by a factor of 10) I think this demonstrates just how well the rest of his analysis is put together--he's still convincingly making his case despite occasionally shooting himself in the foot.
@@jackjhonson5757 No genius, third world countries such as the North African ones don't have the technology/engineering and finance to build such plants. Have you considered that?
These "ideas" are still cleaner and more sustainable alternatives than fossil fuels-based energy. Just because there are challenges doesn't mean we shouldn't convert.
@@SHVRWK and why is that look at Vietnam and Malaysia its clearly not religioun
Also I'd be careful calling deserts barren, yes even the Sahara. Deserts are huge carbon sinks in ways that arent fully understood by scientists. Its not just the underwater basins but also these huge crusts of bacteria that grow on the surface of deserts. Building huge projects like this destories those crusts. Theyre extremely understudied and theres definitely ways they interact with desert ecosystems that we just do not understand at all yet. I know the discovery of these systems is recent, but the way everyone describes deserts as barren is really troubling. Theres still an ecosystem there and ignoring that to treat it as empty land could lead to huge losses we dont fully understand the consequences of.
who paid you?
Ok this was new and i agree with you. Medelling too much with forests and water etc without knowing about them properly got us in the issue of global warming in the first place. Better be careful this time around.
@@fenris4760Not entirely true, industry has been knowingly destroying this planet for decades if not longer, ignorance was not the issue.
@@ojogbaneamedu2501 I agree. Its still going on. But it started unknowingly. Now profits are hard to part with, so they keep on going knowingly.
Jesus, people will find any reason to object to solar. Wont someone think of the sand??!
It would be neat to somehow be able to combine water desalination AND power generation in those big towers.
Diablo Canyon already does this, and has been for decades.
Why bother. Separate facilities are more efficient. As long as you have cheap power from the one it is better to place a desalination plant where it is needed. It is easier to move electricity then salt water. Trying to make facilities to do both will just result in inefficient facilities to do either.
th-cam.com/video/KdFIHecZDfc/w-d-xo.html&ab_channel=TerraMater
@@logdog6762 Mind if i recommend you some
science-channel and general-education-youtuber?
Just because the learning shall never end and for no other reason?
@@nenmaster5218 .
*Nuclear talking to Fusion*: “look what they need to do to mimic a fraction of our power“
*laughs in mutant*
Laughs in fusion always being 30 years away before it's viable.
Solar is just fusion from 93 million miles away.
Fusion doesn't even exist, nuclear talking a lone
Nuclear is the way to go!
I think we learned that relying on energy from people who view us unfavorably did not work out the first time. And the distribution of the energy was much easier.
Do north africans view the west unfavorably ?
Russian moment
europeans have yet to learn this lesson. europe still thinks ravaging Africa will continue to work in their favor. watching this backfire like the "Russian incident" should be an entertaining spectacle to say the lease.
It's more a question of relying on energy from a single country. I doubt that Europe would have to make fewer concessions by importing energy from Australia or the US, compared to Qatar or Saudi-Arabia, or in this case Morocco or Algeria.
Few countries can thrive without relying on global trade. Self-reliance can be very costly, and interconnectivity makes wars less attractive. But relying on any one single player is a bad idea, no matter how favourably they view you at the moment.
@@poondaddy9992 yea isee this and think "dont africans need this power also? and its their country, funny how these anti immigrants dont want people in their countries whilst stealing the resources from the very same unwelcome people. leave africas power to the africans, who's making the profit from this? does it go to africans? doubt it.
Thanks!
General gist is that we need a total comprehensive solution that combines not just the energy resources itself, but also energy storage, transmissions and smart grids.
Correct. The solution? Fossil fuels and nuclear energy.
It seems dodgy to place such fragile systems so far from home and something ain't right to place them over green grass, the more I see this type of video the more I believe in the nuclear option. I just wish MSR's were viable
In many places the grass is green because of the panels, they offer shade and allow moisture to condense on the back and run down
solar is cheaper and safe wtf anyone dissing solar is a crackpot
@@travis938 cheaper ? no. safer ? sure. nuclear is way cheaper, but its way too dangerous to use, until we have fusion technology, we shall use solar only.
@@DrakyHRT Molten salt reactors and thorium reactors are some of the safest nuclear reactors around, they leave almost no waste and fuel behind and can not be used for making weapons. People forget the supply chain for the manufacture of solar panels (and lesser extent wind turbines) is fairly polluting often requiring a lot of energy from their manufacture and the strip mining needed for the heavy metals that make them work.
@@travis938 nonsense - there are solid reasons to support other systems. Only an ideologue would claim every competing systems is supported by "crackpots." I would love to see variable localized systems.
Greetings from Morocco!! I love your content!!
Been wanting to visit Morocco for a long time. I will get there once this pandemic has blown over more. Gorgeous country and lovely people
You're most welcome!!
@@RealEngineering You're very welcome
@@RealEngineering Would be great if you did the insane engineering of Al Boraq while you're at it (the cheapest hsr in the world I think).
@@chunchunmaru3644 It's a TGV train.
indeed many of these points could be just termed as colonial thinking.
> use some energy for water pumping and greenify some of the desert.
> locally use the energy. you can go quite far with 500kv/hvdc transmission lines.
> you could also become a great place to do high energy production of things like aluminium.
> thermal solar could be used for many industrial processes. Oil refining being one that comes to mind right away.
I see a really awesome game like Factorio or a mod that focuses on electricity generation and distribution in a more complex and realistic way. This is fascinating stuff. Enough so that I feel I chose the wrong career.
Wil you be applying for another degree next year then? Do it! It's almost always possible to make time.
just replace
Dyson Sphere Program
The joke is Factorio teaches you solar is pretty lame even if it's artificially easier in the game.
You need to cover half the map with solar, and a quarter with batteries - even though nights are shorter in Factorio. Meanwhile, nuclear power gets you there with 1/50th of your base..
@@0thPAg Nuclear requires fluid calculations, so if you go big with nuclear you're going to slow down your game a lot
The thing is: Spain has enough desert / dry areas to power all of Europe. Gobi desert has enough space to power all of Asia. Morocco / Algeria has enough desert space to power Africa. Australia has enough dry space to power themselves and NZ. The task is much easier and cheaper if we look at it on a continent-wide instead of a worldwide scale.
That plan sounds beneficial for a large reforestation effort in Africa that I've heard about.
Morocco / Algeria are at the very top of Africa. You'd have similar distance problems sending power south. First of all - the Sahel is pretty politically unstable so transmission lines would be vulnerable - second, the distances in Africa are huuuge. Many countries in Africa dwarf even the largest european countries (Russia not included).
Best to avoid the one size fits all approach or idea, we love falling into such a simplistic thought process.
Diversification is key in generation and storage. Reliable, consistent solar generation of the desert will be critical going forward, but should not be considered a monopoly.
Agreed, and I like your DH Comet profile picture. 😎
Just like financial investments :)
Generating hydrogen with modular, mass-producible setups might make more sense in these areas. When you have energy to spare, it's not so bad to waste it in the conversion.
I guess just pumping large amounts of water from Mediterranean would be a challenge there, hence why it also makes more sense to do that closer to the Mediterranean.
Agreed. Use hydrogen to power the pumps. Hydrogen can also power ships to deliver hydrogen around the globe.
Making cheap hydrogen using solarcells is a great idea. You make it from sea water. Transported by pipe would be cost efficient and would allow amazing amounts of storage inside the piping system. But yes, the country needs to be stabile for it ever to happend. Probably it will happend first in europe and then piping will expand at closest neighbours at first.
Water is not an easy resource to come by and your going to be left with a fuck ton of brine. It's not great if you put that back into the ocean.
isnt it that it takes more electricity to produce hydrogen than the hydrogen can generate more electricity itself?
3:05 let's not forget about economy of scale and the fact that each interconnection could be scalled up. The UK has 6 GW connections to france, and a new 1.4 GW interconnection to Norway that measures 720km and required €1.4bln to build.
True that's what i was thinking about . Specially if you let them do the work . Cause it is a lot lot cheaper .
Purely in terms of financial cost, it's really not much compared with other infrastructure costs. And once built, it's RELATIVELY cheap to maintain, compared with roads, railways, mines, oil processing plants etc with huge returns in terms of material transport costs (coal, oil, gas), less air & ground pollution.
The ONLY real problem is greed, politics, religion and the aggression between countries... humans just don't like each other! 🤔
China is building HVDC lines to the tune of a dozen GW. Achieving the same thing in Europe is difficult due to narrowminded NIMBYism.
CRUDE OIL PRICE IS VERY MUCH HIGH.IT SHOULD FALL TO 65$ TO 55$.......
@@dragon.fromindia3235 but at any price, the Oil industry has had $Billions in Govt Tax Subsidies every year for decades, plus the on going cost of environmental & health damage. Oil, has been GREAT, we depend on it, but it's time to see it's true cost to us, not just the cost at the pump. (and yes, renewables are being subsitied too, now, as it's still being developed.)
Solar’s main advantage is that it’s super easy to connect locally.
Locally produced, locally used.
It’s like having a water source in your backyard: it’s super easy to use that water, but it would be very difficult to transport it
A water well is a good analogy, a power well
@Sleeper 1
That’s a good analogy.
@Sleeper 1 😂 do you have any idea how big the batteries would have to be? Literally bigger than the cities they powered 👍🏻
@@fioredeutchmark If you look at systems for powering single homes, it is possible to extrapolate. For a large home, you might be looking at something the size of a small closet (think Powerwall).
Wells don't break down every 5 to 10 years and require routine maintenence
Morocco use this plans to use it locally as main goal, minimizing the cost of importing oil by 50% or more is the objectif, there is also wind energy. I think they did a good job.
Great point. Also, the transfer of wealth from urban renewables consumers to rural renewables producers is an underreported story.
I love your honesty when it came to the geoplotical nature of these projects. It takes an honest person to admit these things.
i've been watching you for years !! watching a video from you about our country means a lot !!
"lots of love from Morocco !!!"
I studied this a few years back. The biggest issue solar companies faced in Africa was crime and sabotage.
cant expect that to be mentioned in a video where the last 1/3 is a lecture about energy justice lol
Yes. If copper wire is stolen in very wealthy countries, why not poor ones?
@@choreomaniac theft of copper conductors in South Africa and general corruption has caused the implementation of stage 6 loadshedding
@@geraldarnie4034
Well, that and people in the power company being appointed based on racism rather than skill. If you reject a quality engineer because he happens to be white and instead and get some ANC gang twat who barely finished highschool, only speaks xhosa and steals money from all projects you're not getting anything done.
@@cqwiii Based
correct me if im wrong but i heard somewhere that generating energy is not as big a problem as storing and transporting generated energy where theyre needed.
Your Right, for example the German energy system is basically split into north and South, it bottlenecks in the Middle meaning the North sells of it's excess energy to Denmark at a heavy discount Because we can't move it far enough down South.
Maybe we should fry a few more fields of kettle to work out wireless energy transmission...
Enjoyed the narrative and video. But wouldn’t the total costs also need to include disposal, or recycling costs of the solar and wind equipment after it meets its economic life?
That transition into the ad at the end was SUPER smooth lolol great vid!
almost fell for it xD
Indeed pretty brilliant!
Kinda behind the curve on this, these North Africa projects are back on the agenda.
X links Morocco to U.K. HVDC link 7GW PV 3.5GW wind being just one. There’s also a lot of multi Gigawatt plants in planning most coupled to Hydrogen production at the large scale with a mix of H2 and Battery to provide baseloads
£18b - is it funded?
@@shaundubai8941 if not signed already it’s very close, I know some of the suppliers who expecting orders v soon
Yes was thinking the same. I assume this only came up on my feed because I was looking up about X links yesterday.
When X link has been running for a couple of years we will see what crops up. Unfortunately politics is unpredictable. The western Sahara is hardly an oasis of calm.
And he’s making it sound like a cable across the Mediterranean is a big deal...
I understand that for long-haul energy transmission it's more efficient to use the electricity to split water to hydrogen and then pipe the hydrogen to the destination. There is already a gas pipeline between Sicily and Tunisia - it could be used to send the gas back instead. The best source would be seawater, distillation (which does not require filters that have to be replaced) and electrolysis - not dams of rain or ground water.
No! You lose more than half the energy when you convert electricity to hydrogen! It makes no sense at all
@@kevikiruWhere do you get your figures from for "you lose more than half of the energy"?
I have found online "With current tech, electrolysis generally produces hydrogen at about 75 per cent efficiency. So to create a kilo of pure hydrogen fuel, which holds about 39.4kWh of energy, it takes 52.5kWh."
Anyway, if you have more energy than you can use locally and you're not consuming a finite fuel source, but generating it from an endless supply of free renewable energy and converting it enables you to get it to wherever you need to use it, including places you couldn't transport it via power lines because the line losses over that distance would be too great, or because you need to transport it over large bodies of water, and you can supply it cheaper and cleaner at the destination than any other fuel, who cares if you have to generate twice what you can use to get it there? How does that not make sense?
@@kevikiru I suppose there is enough sunlight there all year round (whereas in Europe there isn't) , so even if you lose half of the energy the system may still be feasible.
Problem is that hydrogen is notoriously difficult to work with because the atoms are such a small particle that they can leak out of containment easily, and of course they’re also highly flammable. Large scale hydrogen pipelines would be an engineering and security nightmare
Pipes designed for low-pressure long-chain hydrocarbon gas are not going to work with high-pressure H2 whose molecules are so small they can leak out of the fittings.
We barely brushed on it but maintenance for these are going to be HELL, especially with all the sand
And for PVCs, another huge problem other than storage, heat, etc is LIFETIME
After ten-twenty years, you'll have to replace the ENTIRE thing
It's just so much easier to do things locally
Love how he first says that solar power in Africa could be life changing for them. Then goes on about how we can create connections that supply Europe lmao
Yeah, sub saharien country would sell electricity to Europe, duh
@Matt Mann Yeah, that's a... bad thing. That's the problem. Africa is insanely exploited as is. Oil, mining, farming, etc. are already exploited a lot, with any profits being made going to private companies instead of the actual countries. Solar energy powering the whole world would be great from Africa, but even Africa being powered by solar energy would be good.
There is a simple solution to the expensive long cable problem. A way to bypass it completely. You only need to think outside the box. Get rid of the cable, and carry the energy over in ships and trucks. 😁 OK. Here's the secret to my plan.
First, you build lots of giant solar farms in the desert. And next to them, you build factories that turns these sand into ... solar panels. We will use all the energy from the solar panels, to build ... more solar panels ... which would drive down the cost of solar panels ... until they get so cheap that they become cheaper than regular roofing material.
Imagine that these panels becomes cheaper than regular construction materials. A conventional house without solar panels costs $50,000 to build (excluding cost of land). A house where the roof and walls are all solar panels, costs $40,000. We don't have to do anything. Everything would be covered in solar panels in just a few years.
And the factories in the Sahara will continue to churn out solar panels that get ever cheaper.
In life you only get rich by enriching others. Europe is experiencing massive shortage in energy. We could sit on the energy or sell ut fir a higher markup.
Nothing wrong with helping Europe. Don't take shit personal if they can pay let's produce the energy nit worry about that neo colonialism rhetoric
@@midnight4685 I'm sure the rich oil states of the Gulf disagree with your view of them being "exploited".
I really appreciate bringing up the impact on the people that actually live there, something that has been sorely missing from all of these discussions.
The problem is that noone lives there and consequently there is no infrastructure to support maintenance, repair, transmission and security.
European countries exploited TRILLIONS of dollars out of Africa = It was natural order of the world.
European countries investing back a tiny percentage of that money back = It is TOO RISKY lets forget about it..
Then some ''geniuses'' wonder why exactly refugees and illegal immigrants trying to cross into Europe while it is because they think Europe is the reason why they are refugees and immigrants and they are absolutely right about that...
I hate that discussion is all about powering Europe, not Africa. Like LOL, even if that happens can you imagine the brutality of invasions and colonizations by Europeans for 200 more years to "protect" their "interests"?
@@iwatchwithnoads7480 I would tend to believe there would be far more battles from African nations in order to control the flow of energy.
Now imagine what the Arabs did between the 8th and 18th centuries. Around 1000 years of colonisation and repression of the Imazighen.
Your transition to a sponsored advertisement is unparalleled.
I can never get over how smooth it is. I usually skip ads but i just can't help it when you find yourself in the ad without knowing you started it.
You guys are seriously complimenting it? Or did I miss the sarcasm? I felt just like I was watching a GM truck on a Transformers movie. This and the apocalyptic scenario painted for solar power (not substantiated by anything in the video, by the way), made me realize that decentralized programming won't necessarily fix the problems we had with network TVs, radio and newspapers. The video is titled "The Problem with Solar Energy in Africa", but after you watch the video, you realize there isn't much of a problem after all. When he bitches about US$150 million to connect Morocco with Spain, I was almost completely sure whoever wrote this video works for Shell or Texaco. Hell - we lose much more money if a Saudi billionaire is on a bad mood and decides to either increase or decrease oil production. I'm sorry to the people behind this video - I really do appreciate your effort to promote science. But I've just had enough of all this talk about the cost of solar power. We don't have to dig 5km down the planet's crust to get solar power. We don't have to build marine-life-extinguishing tankers to move solar power around. Concentrated solar was a bad idea to begin with, and one that could only come from the minds of fossil fuel addicts who are unable to grasp the simplicity and cleanliness of photovoltaic. Your sponsor seems like an ally on the fight for a better world. Unfortunately, your video does look like a knee-jerk appeal to Big Oil's sensitivities. Also... what's the deal about the tone when speaking about the potential political problems within North Africa's countries? What year is this - 1910? It's still OK to talk like an imperialistic dipshit in 2021? I've written too much already. Bitching about this is as useless as trying to make regular people understand why oil is killing us all. So let's just all fucking die while we complain that "solar power isn't as reliable" as dinosaur juice.
I reported this YT as "Spam and Misleading" Everyone should do it to take it off.
@@brenobacci Why'd you take it so much to heart man? If you disagree with the content I think there's a much better way to communicate your argument. I'm not going into whether you're right or wrong here but if you were, you think thats the way that's going to convince anyone?
@@brenobacci People like you paired with the unreliability of solar on its own are part of why green energy fails. The only real green power is nuclear and in the end, yes, you still need to dig because they all need batteries to store the power at the consumer level. Thorium breeders are the bridge to fusion that can meet the need in the near future. Oil helps meet the need now. EROEI. The sky isn't falling.
Placing cables between Europe and Africa could be done with the budget of just one Marvel movie / series.
But who would watch them 😂
@@kaushalsuvarna5156😂😂😂😅
Just a comment here about the DC and AC comparison. The break-even point between DC and AC lines is as you said in the video. However, for underground and submarine cables (such as the ones you refer to in the video e.g. Italy-Tunisia, etc.), it is much earlier at 40-120 km depending on the cable design.
I have to use bigger wires for 12v dc
Additionally, Solar panels produce DC, so converting it to AC than back to DC doesnt make sense.
Greentards: Solar panels in the African desert are super efficient!
Everyone: So you admit that solar panels are inefficient in Germany or Canada, where people actually live, and what happens when the sun sets?
Greentards: Fascist!
@@bMcgu894 Solar panels produce DC indeed but to go from 36 Volts DC to 10 kV DC you'd need the 36 V DC to first become 24 V AC to xform that, since you cannot transform DC to DC. The system is so feeble that losses are imminent.
The best option would be to hydrolize water in the dessert to form hydrogen and transport that to elsewhere... Yes, now you have a new problem: How to find these amounts of water in the driest place on earth.
The real problem is over population.
@@r00kiet80 How are you going to heat your house when there's no wind at night? You need nuclear. Or emigrate to the dessert.
Where I thought the video would go was to discussion of the reduced infrastructure and electrification within not just Morocco but across Africa. After all the sensible thing for electrical generation and transmission absent knowing anything else about the regions would be for plants in the Sahara to power Morocco itself and the countries nearby, transmitting across land, not across ocean, which is terribly inefficient. One might imagine that building power plants in Morocco and transmitting the electricity, for example, to Mali, south, might make some sense. But there are grid problems, security and infrastructure problems, and there are also poverty problems. Mali is one of the 25 poorest countries in the world per capita. Only half the population has access to electricity. So if a profit-driven corporation examined the idea of transmitting from Morocco to Mali, it would not only ask what the electricity challenges are. It would ask: "Who exactly is going to pay us?" Until that sort of problem is resolved socially, the fanciest and largest plants in the world won't make sense.
Electrification is at 100% in Morocco and there are electric lines between the country and Algeria and another one under construction with Mauritania.
Morocco? Check the stats from trusted sources like world bank, Morocco has 99 percent electricity coverage.
@@IntellectOnly Yes I'm not disputing that. My example was Mali which has 50% coverage.
Mali is not a stable country
Solution? :
Step 1: start a plant by choosing a place near the Sea
Step 2: do water desalination
Step 3: USE SOLAR POWER TO MAKE HYDROLYSIS with sweet-water
Step 4: send hydrogen through pipes to europe
Step 5 iterate again while sending salt water to desalination further away from the sea as plants grow with energy that is produced by leftover hydrogen
Result:
- cheap sending to europe
- easy to store energy
- no need of fossile fuel to keep plant going (all runs on hydrogen)
Thought this myself, love the idea. But, it turns out not as grand as it sounds.
First, H2 molecule is tiny compared to the CH4 molecule of Natural Gas (mostly methane in there). So, leakage, is a big problem, the hydrogen can escape easier than materials we can make.
Second, hydrogen transport by pipe isn’t that easy to do and damages pipes.
So...these are new engineering feats to tackle. But, I’m with you, I like the plan/idea.
Desalination is expensive
Step 1: Bill gates stops giving "charity" to sterilize black people.
Step 2: Invests, not donates, the money into solar powered desalination in Africa.
Step 3: Bottle the water.
Step 4: Sell water.
If a box is pressed slowly by some arm , inside heat can rise because of pressed air inside and if the arm stop pressing so that the box dont break, box being locked whit brackets so that it remain pressed , heat from walls could be used to heat water or air and produce energy
I remembering hearing about the potential of a small area of the Sahara being able to theoretically supply the world's energy in the 1970s.The falling cost of photovoltaic panels seems to offer a ray of hope for developing countries faced with rising energy costs. Even if storing the energy is troublesome, desalination, water pumping and other processes could be carried out mainly during the day.
Desalination is a junk technology compared to distillation. Why fight to diminish dissolved solids when you can just get fresh water by evaporating and cooling, just like clouds?
Slingshot. We need it yesterday.
@@normanclatcher ... Desalination works by boiling the water then recollecting it.
@@normanclatcher
Multistage desalination evaporates and recondensates the steam after it passes through a demister up to 40 stages in large desalination plants in Saudi Arabia.
There are other similar systems operating by the evaporation salt separation principle such as vapor compression, which requires power, as reverse osmosis does. (For brackish water)
The answer is to not use photovoltaic panels - use solar-thermal concentrating panels to heat a steam boiler.
@@joelvoss1226
Right, We did just that in Bari, Italy, on a demonstration unit, now located in Lampedusa. We used long, tracking parabolic polished aluminium concentrating reflectors heating tubes to drive a ten stage flash desalination system, requiring about 80 kcal per kg product water. The collection efficiency was, to my recollection ~ 45%. All collectors were protected by a glass cover.
Using concentrated solar probably makes a lot more sense than PV for large solar projects from an environmental point of view. It doesn’t use rare earth materials like PV does and most of the facility would be recyclable at the end of it’s life.
I sometimes play a game in my head where I try to guess where exactly the transition to the sponsored segment starts. It's usually at some point when the narration starts rattling on about knowledge in general. I miss the time before sponsors where so deeply integrated into the video itself.
Thanks for the idea, I'll try this too!
Try using the -> key to zip past what bothers you.
@@johnsmith1474 or even the L key, if you're feeling courageous
Alllaahhhhh Africa
Mad warlords, UN corruption!!!!!
STAY AWAY!!!!!!!!!
@@lucasrem1870 Libië was doing fine before the USA and Europe started bombing. And electricity is easily transportable as H2
The ad slide in around 16:50 was so fluent I actually enjoyed it
0:10 this map displays the British weather perfectly
Not quite correct the video, but it gives a good overlook. Germany finalized a Hydrogen Project with the African States just earlier this year, the project is going strong currently. The Hydrogen we need for our industry can't really be produced here within the Timeframe we have (20years), they will rather use ships to ship the Hydrogen to us, with the cheaper electricity in Africa. The Project is called "h2atlas".
I was wondering about this. I've never really seen the point of "hydrogen" as a future fuel. But perhaps it's a cheaper way of moving large amounts of energy long distances, given that it can reuse some of our fossil fuel infrastructure (ports, maybe gas containers and pipelines)
@MegaStephie2010 Why do you think this is a pipe dream or bad ?
Germany truly is overrated. Worst mistake they made was dismantle nuclear. Not only does Germany pollute more but it also needs to buy energy from France...
@@iliveinyourwalls5193 All European countrys buy Energy from eachother, it even has a name: ENTSO-E, the European Network of Transmission System Operators.
Overall Germany did export 52,3 TWh and Imported 33,7 TWh in 2020. That means, Germany did export alot more than they actually needed.
For pollution, Germany is about double from what France makes. There are just two things to keep track of: 1) Germany has about 25 million more people and 2) France does alot of Nuclear without any place to store the waste yet or how to process it, they just started building that in a village called "Bure".
@@Sw4lley Nuclear is the way. Using coal causes more pollution and radiation. If they had continued nuclear they would have not bought as much energy. It was a huge mistake on their part and they're paying the price.
This video is brilliant - thank you for explaining the high voltage AC and DC vs distance cost comparison and PV vs solar thermal costs.
European countries exploited TRILLIONS of dollars out of Africa = It was natural order of the world.
European countries investing back a tiny percentage of that money back = It is TOO RISKY lets forget about it..
Then some ''geniuses'' wonder why exactly refugees and illegal immigrants trying to cross into Europe while it is because they think Europe is the reason why they are refugees and immigrants and they are absolutely right about that...
It is not brilliant, it is you who are silly.
Instead of transmission, we should look into using that energy to produce energy-intensive products like hydrogen or efuels.
Don't forget that spain has PS10 solar power plant that was opened in 2007, and also Gemasolar Thermosolar Plant that Stores the Heat in Molten Salt.
I had 5 years ago some Business with a startet from germany.. they convert shipping Containers into solar farms.. you just put them where is space, you unfold the system and connect the village or whatever usage you have.. they cost around 150 000 Euro per piece only.. but its a local solution..
Man I wonder how you get into business doing that. Sounds like a great gig
scam
@@buckhunt6832 just some other dude in a shared Office space.. he later got some federal funding for it..
We really, really need high temperature super conductors. That would solve so many problems.
We do have high temp superconductors, although these operate under impractical high pressure…
You could have a global grid instead of renewable storage! Because it's always -happy hour- sunny somewhere ;)
XD
@@kerbodynamicx472 while superconductivity at 15° would be fantastic for sea floor cables, needing 2.6 million bar is a major issue, unless that can be brought closer to the pressure of the surrounding sea it won"t be a reliable system
But... how would it solve the cost-the same problem that made the entire "let's use North Africa to power Europe" plan go under? Are you expecting superconducting cables to be cheaper to build than the ones currently used?
But it just moves the storage problem to somewhere else. Solar electricity has to be converted into a medium that can be efficiently stored else you need to back up 'every' solar plant with a fossil fuel plant.
The statements about interconnections breakeven points applies to overhead lines. Subsea HVDC vs. HVAC is well below 100k where HVDC becomes the cheaper option. But the part about CSP vs PV and global energy market elopements was very interesting and informative.
It should be noted that centralized power generation will always be a terror target. That is not unique to northern Africa. Not only terror attacks, but also weather events. Decentralization increases robustness of the system, though it brings with it concerns of complexity and increased costs. Even so, I believe decentralized power generation will become the norm in the medium to distant future. In a way, when considered from a wider perspective the US power grid is already decentralized. Each plant being interconnected with other plants reduces outage time and frequency. Imagine if it became economical to decentralize to the extent that if your neighbor's power generation went out, the rest of the neighborhood could power the house until repairs could be made.
Wrong. There are huge nuclear power plants, never were attacked. Huge hydroelectric power plants with enormous dams, they're not attacked. But in shithole countries, it's a different story, they have conflict over nothing.
@@sevencolours5014 These are within these specific countries - now imagine entire EU relies on power coming from Africa and some political conflict etc rises and entire power gets cut off or you get charged 100x more for the power. And you can't do anything - you rely on that energy from thousands of km away.
If you really want a robust system, you need to allow for downtime. I.e. we should put more effort into controlling consumption than production.
My respect for you increased once I heard you stood up to big corporations that tried to guide you away from producing these good videos.
I just finished watching two full ads for your video. You deserve it. Keep pumping out these well researched, unbiased videos 👍🏻
I can't imagine how a creator who instead of making a video on renewables like this, instead decides to take money from oil companies and spit out propoganda. So more power to you for taking a stand
"...instead decides to take money from oil companies and spit out propaganda" reminds me of Ben Shapiro and PragerUrine.
I remember watching a video on a brand new hydrogen paste that might be useful. I could see those massive solar facilities relevant directly powering countries instead being used to produce fuels as a method of storage that would be more efficient than batteries.
Look into hydrogen paste more. It will always be stupidly expensive.
@@toomanymarys7355 Expense can be relative. Is the high cost due to the heat required for the chemical reaction or the production costs of Ester? I don't see heat in the Sahara Desert being a problem; construct some solar furnaces nearby the panels and contain the production to one site. Esther and ionised-water could be an imported materials carried on the same shipping lanes which are exporting the paste.
"Powerpaste is made by combining magnesium powder with hydrogen in a process conducted at 350 °C (662 °F) and five to six times atmospheric pressure to form magnesium hydride. An ester and a metal salt are then added to make the finished Powerpaste."
putting glass around the solar panels could maybe help?
I don't think you even need to get terribly exotic with what form your hydrogen takes. Storing your excessive solar energy in the form of plain old hydrogen gas seems like it could be a concept.
First of all : I have to wonder WTF a "Political Stability Index" (15:00 min) means and HOW this calculated??🤔🧐🤔
Next: I also have to say that I'm glad the point was mentioned that investing in the local energy-grid is far more cost-effective. Of course this would also be a break from the imperialistic tradition of extraction valeuable resources that belong to foreign countries for the benefit of Europe.
Too bad that these subjects didn't get more attention but this channel is dedicated to accuretly analyzing Science & Engineering of course and NOT to international politics. Still 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻.
This was really really interesting. I’ve never heard of concentrated solar, sounded like an awesome concept until you explained the pitfalls. This is one thing, regardless of the environmental benefits that I like about the switch to renewables, because it gives the opportunities for much more countries to have their own energy independence and not rely on energy that comes from other parts of the world just for basic power needs which have primarily been the driver of wars and conflict. The entire world shouldn’t have to crap itself because a 30 mile wide body of water in the Middle East is being fought over by the United States and whoever.
If you believe its that simple, you have not been paying attention. Follow the Money and the Power. Its all about Control . Be careful of what you wish for. Do you have any idea how much the USA tax payer money has been sent to these countries to help them. Yet, nothing has changed. Figure it out people before its too late. This current administration is a joke and does everything to destroy us. Good Luck Ya’ll !
CRUDE OIL PRICE IS VERY MUCH HIGH.IT SHOULD FALL TO 65$ TO 55$......
@Ehbfunbcc Whjfhbhjxf On the topic of waste, uranium-235 decays into thorium during its fission, meaning it generates more fuel for other types of reactors. And, not all of the uranium gets "depleted", a rather low amount does, but it's too much for most active reactors. The good news on that, is that the remaining "spent" rods can be used in starting reactors and sustaining them until new full rods can be put in.
And even after that, the depleted uranium is used in a lot of military things, like penetrators and armor.
The total true waste produced in USA from the moment that we started research is extremely small, with a volume of only a football field size hole, roughly 2.5 meters deep.
Water is the next war.
@Ehbfunbcc Whjfhbhjxf Their have been several close calls in France only. They will actually denuclearise in the next decades, because they can't build new reactors fast enough to replace the old ones, so they will develop much more renewable energy. Another problem is France gets it's uranium from Niger, with very few care of the locals, or Niger itself (there has been some scandals recently). There is better ways to be energy independant.
I feel like it's also worth considering whether it's even wise to generate virtually all of Europe's power in one or two North African countries as well. It gives those countries immense leverage over the EU and it's not hard to imagine some future geopolitical crisis involving cutting power to all of Europe. While I think the solar Sahara project is of value I wouldn't go all in on that alone.
A small price to pay for salvation
The same argument about buying so much natural gas from Russia. I think Europeans are more worried about Russia than Tunisia or Morocco but it is a valid point.
North African countries are not on friendly terms with each other.
NO ONE is suggesting buying anything CLOSE to all of Europe's electricity there. What an utterly ridiculous lie. Did you only watch the first minute to find an excuse to disparage it?
Of course I did, calm down. As pointed out in the video it's not possible meet Europe's power demand 100% due to the lack of cables across the Med for HVAC/DC transmission and just the lack of power available from a few concentrated solar systems and one regular one. But outside of this video you can find no shortage of suggestions of making large solar installations across the Sahara and using them to power Europe or more which are ridiculously impractical from a tech perspective as pointed out in the video. Additionally such a large installation would also create major geopolitical issues and potential areas of conflict, as I pointed out, though it should really be obvious to anyone that thinks about the potential issues for more than 3 seconds.
0:37 solar insolation at the Earth’s surface is 1000W per sq meter. Solar panels are only about 25% efficient. So that’s about 250W/sq m. 5-7kWh per day would require 20 to 28 hours of full face noon sunlight per day. Even the best 30% panels would need 16 to 23 hours of noon time sunlight.
At 0:42 video mentions on avg 1 m sq. Can generate 5 to 7 kWh each day. Most of panels I see available online are larger 2 m * 1 m with 550 w capacity. These panels would need to work at full capacity for 18 to 20 hours to achieve that yield.
could you also discuss what happens to the solar panels at end of life?
Thats indeed an ecological disaster and so is the manufacturing of these panels
@@genobohez6374 It is best not to talk about these PV solar and wind turbine life cycles, the parasitic CO2 emission during manufacture, the mining of rare earth materials, the cost of copper for the transmission systems, the recycling issues, the use of water to clean the panels, the massive environmental of extremely large scale Lithium-ion cells, the problem of producing Green H2 in large quantities not to mention the inefficiency involved, the water required and so on because all this would ruin the virtue signalling and the CC change alarmism of politicians using taxpayers' money to fund all this without considering the fact that electricity storage technology at the scale required is not available yet and that PV solar and wind is does not provide energy if the sun doesn't shine.
@@Ernst12 100%🎯👌
@@Ernst12 now do a break down of all the emissions and pollution it takes to produce fossil fuels. Then add the emissions of the fossil fuel themselves. Maybe consider that as innovation continues efficiently will increase. Or are you only interested in the stats that support your belief?
@@supchefofficial Yes of course. The same could be said for all the CO3 billions of people on earth breathe out. Yes there is a carbon neutrality if the vegetables and the meat could be consumed without adding parasitic CO2 for processing, transport, storage and so on.
Starting on a thesis related to this topic in 2 weeks. Let's say we have different ideas to transport energy in other forms than electricity that do not require enormous power grid infrastructure or storage facilities.
Well? We're listening.
Tesla already accomplished this long ago
But every time you convert energy you lose efficiency. Plus you'd still need to transport that converted energy and store it until it is able to be transported. And once at the source you then need to convert it AGAIN.
@@GeorgeMonet Power-To-X is a thing. And making synthetic methane when you have basically unlimited power the efficiency loss gets negligible.
@@GeorgeMonet Yes, very very true. BUT, for our current energy mix we already do this (oil, gas, coal) so it is not anything new. On top of that, storing fuel is way easier than storing electricity. As far as the efficiency goes, also, very very true. But again, IF (note: IF) it is viable to gather energy from e.g. the sahara, the amount of energy you could extract there is virtually limitless, so efficiency losses are not the biggest thing to worry about. And if you were to transport the electricity directly, this will also result in significant losses. The point being, that all different ideas have pros and cons. There is no ''one best solution'', but more like ''one least shitty solution''. I think the only thing we can (almost) all agree on is the problem, which is energy security and availability. We have to tackle these problems at some point, so why not start now?
The Australia-Asia Power Link is still a go as far as I know. Power to be supplied to Singapore and later Indonesia via the world's largest solar plant, the world's largest battery, and the world's longest submarine power cable. 20 gigawatts to be delivered for a cost of AU$30 billion by 2027.
An update... the project has gone bust as of early 2023. They haven't even decided where exactly to put the solar farm, never mind installing a single panel. The liquidators are now trying to sell off the project...
All that is actually required is for the metal in a few feet of your cables, transmission-level or local, to be more valuable than the average income in the surrounding area for a month, and sociopolitically, your plan is toast. If you understand Africa, you know that such a project will never withstand such basic economic calculations and actions taken accordingly. If a tribal leader or the populous finds it advantageous to tear the project components to pieces for short-term gain, it will always be torn to pieces. There's the first "pie-in-the-sky" calculation problem.
A sad but realistic insight. Thank you.
Automatic machine gun turrets could solve that.
@@thehighground3630 I'm sure those would have great acceptance politically there...right? But what else could go wrong?
@@thehighground3630 You need to stop playing video games if you think that's a legitimate solution
@@MegaDragon1974 haven't had time to play video games in a looooong time.