
Vast solar power plant at the Moroccan desert - oori
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20161129-the-colossal-african-solar-farm-that-could-power-europe
======
Animats
160MW peak. 42MW average over a year. That ranks about 25th in the world for
solar power installations. Typical nuke or coal plant is about 1000MW per unit
peak, and average is slightly less. Three Gorges Dam, 22,000MW peak. This
thing is not going to "power Europe".

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ouarzazate_Solar_Power_Station](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ouarzazate_Solar_Power_Station)

~~~
liotier
Hyperbole aside, the Sahara does have such humongous solar potential that
supplying Europe is a possibility... But I never hear anyone mention the
mightily expensive necessary upgrades to the electricity grid - and more
specifically the extremely long HVDC power transmission lines to the consumer
regions...

~~~
dogma1138
There is no need, Europe is getting on average the same amount of daylight
hours as the Sahara.

Temperature isn't a factor, even overcast isn't that much of a factor,
especially for residential installations.

Thermal is more affected by overcast due to the light being more diffused but
still doable, southern Europe will be good for thermal solar, all of Europe
will be good for PV, and central and northern Europe is very good for hydro
and wind (anything on the golf stream is excellent for wind)

There is very little need to import electricity from across the med, the loss
in transmission alone not to mention the instability in the region makes this
entire deal pretty silly.

If nothing else there is no reason to replace one type of mono-economy that
keeps oppressive regimes in power and forces the west to balance the region on
the head of a pin more often than not through coercion with another one.

~~~
mikeyouse
There are a few things that aren't quite right here.. Primarily that Europe
and the Sahara have equal sunlight availability.

The Moroccan plant is in Ouarzazate, which has an average annual irradiance of
~2,200 kWh/sq. meter.[1] Southern Spain is the sunniest part of Europe and the
best locations there are closer to 1,800 kWh/sq. meter.[2] That's over 20%
more solar energy in Morocco.

The other bit that's not really accurate is about Transmission losses. It's
about 400 miles from Ouarzazate to Gilbatrar. Modern HVDC lines have losses of
~3.5% over 1,000km, so call it 3% for this project.[3] That's extremely
reasonable for an energy project.

[1] -
[https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6d/SolarGIS...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6d/SolarGIS-
Solar-map-Morocco-en.png)

[2] - [http://www.mappery.com/maps/Solar-Radiation-Map-of-
Spain.png](http://www.mappery.com/maps/Solar-Radiation-Map-of-Spain.png)

[3] - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-
voltage_direct_current#Ad...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-
voltage_direct_current#Advantages_of_HVDC_over_AC_transmission)

~~~
dogma1138
You are off by about a factor of 1000 unless you are on mercury and even there
I'm not sure it gets to 2 megawatt per square meter.

20% isn't really an issue especially for thermal.

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philipkglass
_Of course, on the day I visit the sky is covered in clouds. “No electricity
will be produced today,“ says Rachid Bayed at the Moroccan Agency for Solar
Energy (Masen), which is responsible for implementing the flagship project._

This is a big problem with concentrating thermal solar power: it requires
intense direct normal irradiance to work and performance falls off
catastrophically when skies aren't clear. A conventional non-concentrating PV
module can deliver about 10% of its rated output if it is illuminated at 10%
of standard test conditions, e.g. sun through light cloud cover. Performance
falls off almost linearly with decreasing illumination until very low levels.
Concentrating solar thermal performance falls off a cliff with insufficient
and/or diffused light.

You can see this effect in the EIA's data about US solar farms here:
[https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.cf...](https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.cfm?t=epmt_6_07_b)

In the summer months, PV and concentrating solar thermal plants have
comparable capacity factors. In the winter months, PV plant capacity factor
falls off by less than half while thermal plant performance tumbles by ~80%
(June 2016: 33.6% and 33.5%, January 2016: 17.9% and 6.8%).

A decade or so ago, solar thermal was justifiable because PV was so much more
expensive. Even after PV matched and then beat solar thermal costs for
instantaneous generation, thermal still had a value proposition for after-
sunset operation via thermal storage (like this Moroccan plant has with molten
salts). But as costs of PV and alternate forms of storage continue to fall,
while solar thermal costs barely budge, I expect that solar thermal
electricity is going to become obsolete even for the very sunniest regions.

------
ChuckMcM
Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) is a pretty interesting, but I chuckled at this
phrasing, _" The hot oil is used to produce high-pressure water vapour that
drives a turbine-powered generator."_ Seriously? Why not just call them steam
turbines?

Because I was going to college in LA and my parents lived in Las Vegas, I
drove that route a lot and got to watch them build Solar One[1], and toured it
after it was operational.

These days with better thermoelectric generation capability[2] you can extract
even more of the energy out of the heat difference than just steam turbines
(which have a Carnot efficiency of about 50%) mostly because they can work
down to lower differentials in heat.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_plants_in_the_Moja...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_plants_in_the_Mojave_Desert#Solar_One_and_Solar_Two)

[2] [https://www.technologyreview.com/s/531526/an-industrial-
size...](https://www.technologyreview.com/s/531526/an-industrial-size-
generator-that-runs-on-waste-heat-using-no-fuel/)

------
oori
"Hundreds of curved mirrors, each as big as a bus, are ranked in rows covering
1,400,000 sq m (15m sq ft) of desert, an area the size of 200 football
fields."

"The plant keeps generating energy after sunset, when electricity demands
peak. Some of the day’s energy is stored in reservoirs of superhot molten
salts made of sodium and potassium nitrates, which keeps production going for
up to three hours. In the next phase of the plant, production will continue
for up to eight hours after sunset."

~~~
frandroid
They could modulate the use of the molten salts according to the weather
forecast or electricity grid prices/demand. I'm assuming Morocco doesn't have
grid-level dynamic pricing but if they're forecasting clouds the day after
sunlight they could maybe hang on to the hot salts over night and push the
heat to the steam-generator the next day when demand spikes again.

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noobermin
Tangentially related side note, as a plasma physicist, every time I see
advances like this, I worry a little bit for my future career[0]. It turns out
there's a fusion reactor at the center of this solar system that's been
dumping energy on us for billions of years. Of course, eventually all energy
sources on earth were solar originally.

Not that doing fusion won't be interesting from a scientific point of view,
but if we develop solar and batteries further, we could really require no
other energy revolution than this.

[0] tongue-in-cheek, there's always stuff to research.

~~~
pm90
We would still need fusion for interstellar travel.

~~~
dermotbrennan
Or even for ships and planes. Whats more likely in the long term, that cargo
ships will be powered by batteries or that they could be powered by a compact
fusion reactor?

~~~
dx034
With the right batteries, why not? You can pack them in 40ft containers and
swap them at the port to charge them on land when energy is cheapest. That way
it could probably be even possible to retrofit old container ships.

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andyjohnson0
It looks pretty impressive in satellite imagery [1]. Does anyone know what the
black and green rectangles at the southern end are? Heat storage?

Also, there is what appears to be more land immediately to the north that has
been leveled - presumably for more arrays.

[1]
[https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/Centrale+solaire+Noor+1+...](https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/Centrale+solaire+Noor+1+Ouarzazate/@31.0088322,-6.8681505,2811m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x0:0x6df7ea01fb587594!8m2!3d31.0092101!4d-6.8623352)

~~~
sooper
It looks like they're water storage ponds. Cut from the Wiki[1] article "Water
consumption for the Ouarzazate Noor complex is estimated at 2.5 to 3 million
m3 per year for one wet- cooling project (Noor I) and two dry – cooling
projects (Noor II and III) and due to the need to regularly clean the
reflectors."

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ouarzazate_Solar_Power_Station](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ouarzazate_Solar_Power_Station)

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georgecmu
The following NREL page provides information on Ouarzazate (Phase I), a
concentrating solar power (CSP) project, with data organized by background,
participants, and power plant configuration:

[http://www.nrel.gov/csp/solarpaces/project_detail.cfm/projec...](http://www.nrel.gov/csp/solarpaces/project_detail.cfm/projectID=270)

    
    
      Solar Resource:	2,635 kWh/m2/yr
      Break Ground:	        May 10, 2013
      Start Production:	December 1, 2015
      Cost (approx):	1,042 € million
      PPA/Tariff Date:	November 19, 2012
      PPA/Tariff Rate:	1.62 Dirhams per kWh
      PPA/Tariff Period:	25 years
      PPA/Tariff Information: US$ cents 18.9 per kWh
      Project Type:	        Commercial

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snowwindwaves
nice to see a solar thermal plant that doesn't set fire to birds.
Unfortunately they are considering the eye of sauron design for the third
phase of the project. Maybe there are no birds there.

While it may only average 42 MW year round, 35 days of the year it produces
nothing and it probably takes some time in the morning for things to heat up
before any energy can be produced, so say 12 hours of darkness a day it
produces nothing and the three hours of heat storage and three hours of
morning start up time cancel out. Then it averages 92 MW when it is actually
generating.

I wonder what types of adjustments have to be made to the design of the plant
to endure being thermally cycled every day.

