
Egypt’S 1.8 Gigawatt Benban Solar Park Nears Completion - jonbaer
https://spectrum.ieee.org/energywise/energy/renewables/egypts-massive-18gw-benban-solar-park-nears-completion
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tyfon
I wonder if having areas of the desert under permanent shade will influence
the local ecology in some way. I suspect insects and such will start to gather
there to get out of the sun to begin with at least.

If there are any changes they are probably for the better though.

~~~
joshvm
There is some recent research that shows you can do some nice companion
farming with solar, in very arid places. The plants get enough light, but also
get shade and have reduced irrigation requirements.

[https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-019-0364-5](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-019-0364-5)

~~~
londons_explore
The logistics of planting and harvesting plants under solar panels sounds
tricky though.

If the panels are high enough up to be able to fit a tractor/harvester under
them, the cost of foundations and pillars is going to get high, plus the extra
complexity of 'working at height' to install and maintain them.

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24gttghh
That place is absolutely massive! For a simple comparison, add about 6,500
more solar parks of that size, and we would generate enough electricity* for
the entire planet. That would cover an area of 242,000 square km (which
granted, is about the size of the UK, or a bit smaller than Texas). 2,500
solar parks of that size would replace all coal plants globally. 1,500 would
replace all natural gas plants. So that is 4,000 of those to replace all
fossil fuel plants that now exist.

Of course things like base load generation and you know...night time need to
be taken into consideration, but I think it really puts it all into
perspective. A few more years at their current growth, and renewables will be
generating more electricity than coal globally. Coal is also decreasing which
helps.

I used some data from here to make rough estimates:

[https://www.iea.org/statistics/electricity/](https://www.iea.org/statistics/electricity/)

I did this to make myself a little less depressed about global warming. Fight
for renewables in your towns!

edit: oh yah, that would cost $26 Trillion...but that's for ONLY solar panels
which isn't practical.

~~~
foobiekr
global energy use is unfortunately growing quickly so the most likely outcome
is that we continue the trend where new power sources don't replace dirty
older sources, they live on beside them.

~~~
Obi_Juan_Kenobi
Renewable and natural gas generation is approaching or undercutting the
marginal cost of operating coal plants in many areas. This isn't accounting
for amortized costs of coal plant construction, simply the fuel and operations
cost. So coal is well on it's way out. China and India have all but stopped
planning new plants.

Natural gas is some ways away from being overtaken by renewables, but trends
need only hold for a fairly short period for that crossover to occur.

The future isn't all rainbows yet, but things do seem to be headed in the
right direction. Economics strongly disfavor the carbon economy going forward.

~~~
woodandsteel
Fossil fuels in general are on their way out. If someone doesn't believe it,
they should do a google search on stranded assets.

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Pfhreak
I wonder if we'll see a shift in energy politics as equatorial countries
become sites for significant energy generation.

The cynic in me says no, we'll just see existing players exploit those
countries, but the optimist in me says there's a chance that many communities
could see an economic boost or even transformation if they can get sufficient
energy exports set up.

~~~
frankbreetz
The middle east has done pretty well for themselves fiscally speaking, it is
still not very politically stable, but they have a lot of money now from
significant energy generation.

If we could place a huge solar farm in the Sahara and find a way to transport
this energy worldwide, I think it would be great for them. They wouldn't have
to transport directly, they could create some sort of fuel that could easily
be transported all over the world.

There are hundreds of ways forward to a sustainable future and the technology
already exists, and the political landscape is getting better every day.
People aren't just going to give up, they are going to keep complaining until
something is done. The majority of the world seems to know what is going on
and they are upset about it. They aren't going to calm done until we are on
the right path.

~~~
londons_explore
Aluminium is nicknamed "Solid Electricity" because from a cost point of view,
it is almost entirely electricity, and is very transportable.

If carbon prices became very high, Iron/Steel would be the same (although with
high carbon prices, aluminium would replace many uses of steel).

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_Microft
Not awarding the project as a whole to a single contractor seems like a good
way to derisk it. There might be problems with one or the other contractor but
a complete failure seems more unlikely because of that. Is my intuition
correct here?

~~~
beat
It also reduces the capital requirements for any single contractor.

~~~
Analemma_
As yet another bonus, it seems like a good way to head off corruption
(assuming they had a maximum number of plots per contractor): you can only
bribe your way up to a ceiling number of plots.

~~~
londons_explore
Set up new company, receive new allowance of plots...

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thekid314
Electricity is power, and Sisi knows this. His predecessor lost support during
a few hot summer months of rolling power-cuts. It was rumored that those power
cuts were the product of sabotage by electricity ministry managers. But since
Sisi came to power he payed Siemens a small fortune to import power stations
and stabilize electricity production.

~~~
baud147258
Regarding the energy situation, I've also heard that Egypt is also rushing to
get their new gas field in the Eastern Mediterranean sea up and running as
fast as possible.

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salty_biscuits
Almost as much peak capacity as the aswan dam, pretty amazing!

~~~
seren
This seems to be at about 20 km from the dam, to use the same grid
infrastructure probably.

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jordache
so they are not storing the energy produced there.. That is a huge fluctuating
energy source in their grid huh?

~~~
swarnie_
Its the Egyption Desert, i assumed the sunlight would create quite a
consistent curve throughout the day almost every day?

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yuft
And at night?

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tempguy9999
> And at night?

It gets dark.

Source: I used to live in a middle eastern country.

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xorfish
What does visible from space mean?

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seren
Google map link :

[https://www.google.com/maps/place/%D9%85%D8%AD%D8%B7%D8%A9+%...](https://www.google.com/maps/place/%D9%85%D8%AD%D8%B7%D8%A9+%D8%A8%D9%86%D8%A8%D8%A7%D9%86+%D9%84%D9%84%D8%B7%D8%A7%D9%82%D8%A9+%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%B4%D9%85%D8%B3%D9%8A%D8%A9%E2%80%AD/@24.4202124,32.7157651,7769m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x14363fd9d7a4b311:0xfd82d50b893da021!8m2!3d24.449192!4d32.7170983)

Actually if you zoom out enough, it disappears...

~~~
gruturo
This is actually a somewhat normal occurrence and you encounter it frequently
enough. Different zoom levels sometimes correspond to different sources of
imagery, sometimes months or years apart.

My home still disappears at certain zoom levels, and I see the construction
site instead - it was built in 2016.

~~~
Faark
I understand new high resolution data not being available for all areas. But
generally I would have expected them to default to either the newer or a
downscaled higher resolution source.

The zoomed-out levels also have a ©2019 and not showing any signs of solar,
while first modules went online spring 2018 [0]. Probably no big deal for
google maps, but there might not have gone everything as intended, either.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benban_Solar_Park](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benban_Solar_Park)

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srathi
Would have been nice if it was exactly 1.21 Gigawatt!

~~~
commandlinefan
What the hell is a gigawatt?

~~~
DanBC
A watt is a measure of power. It measures the power at that instant of time.

A watt-hour is a measure of energy. It measures the power used over time.

Giga is an SI prefix. 1 gigawatt is 1*10^9 watts.

It's normal to measure the output of power plants in megawatts or gigawatts.

~~~
SupersonicScrub
Great Scott, it's a Back to the Future reference, not a serious question.

~~~
TheGallopedHigh
Jokes are generally frowned upon here, and are often asked to be kept on
Twitter or Reddit. This keeps the comment quality high here.

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PhantomGremlin
Sigh. The recent drone attacks on infrastructure in Saudi Arabia have
dramatically changed things. A single drone dispensing small cluster sub-
munitions could destroy a large swath of solar panels.

I fear that large-scale asymmetric warfare will become more common, especially
in the volatile Middle East.

~~~
smaddox
Maybe... But a single drone could much more easily put a coal, oil, or natural
gas power plant out of commission. How is this relevant?

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SamBam
I mean, seriously, it sounds like the opposite. The events in Saudi Arabia
have shown how much _more_ vulnerable oil is, with the production pipeline
going through much smaller (in terms of m^2) bottlenecks.

You could wipe out millions of gallons/day of production with a well-placed
strike, affecting the entire global market, while solar farms are much bigger
(a hit will wipe out a smaller percentage) and the effects are more localized.

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HillaryBriss
It would be too easy for electro-terrorists to stop production at the solar
park: four drones (one on each corner) could simply airlift a rectangular 3x4
mile opaque tarp from Sudan or outer space and drop it over the panels.
Probably only take 15 minutes. Drones and tarps are available for a low price
on Amazon. This is a scary possibility. Egypt must fund anti-drone defenses
today!

~~~
schoen
At the risk of spoiling the joke, just curious about how powerful the drones
will have to be...

[https://www.tarpsplus.com/blue-poly-tarp-sold-
individually.h...](https://www.tarpsplus.com/blue-poly-tarp-sold-
individually.html)

"3.5 oz. Per Square Yrd."

    
    
      You have: 3 mi 4 mi 3.5 oz/yd^2
      You want: kg
       * 3688250.3
    

So each drone should be able to lift about a gigagram.

(Also, this plastic doesn't have enough tensile strength to support its own
weight when lifted from the corners.)

~~~
HillaryBriss
Good point! The plan needs refinement.

I guess they could break the job down: use one team of 4 drones to lift
multiple 1 square yard tarps.

Let's see, 12 square miles is roughly 37 million square yards. Multiplying by
four they would only need about 150 million drones. Quite affordable for
today's well-funded terrorist with an Amazon Prime account (as long as they
choose 3-5 business day shipping instead of overnight).

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sgt
Apparently there's talks about covering the pyramids with solar panels too,
since tourism has been declining in the last few years. Now with this new
Solar Park, I doubt it will be necessary anymore.

~~~
some1else
There is also speculation a single face of the pyramids would remain revealed,
so that it would be possible to create an artifical snow-slope during the cold
desert nights, increasing demand for Egypts famous ski-mittens.

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saalweachter
You just need a lot of borax for summer skiing.

(Source:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joppenbergh_Mountain](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joppenbergh_Mountain))

