
Morocco poised to become a solar superpower with launch of desert mega-project - Turukawa
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/oct/26/morocco-poised-to-become-a-solar-superpower-with-launch-of-desert-mega-project
======
Dinoso
One key motivator for Morocco to seek alternatives to Oil, is it's neighbor
and arch enemy Algeria. Think of it like USA vs Russia and their race to be
the Nr 1. All the advancement in telecommunication, Space, Robotics..etc are
partly due to this race. Algeria actively supports separatists in the Sahara
(Polisario front) for independence. Algeria was a very rich country until the
recent demise of Oil price. Morocco has to compete with a neighbor with a very
big budget and a military that is buying more and more sophisticated equipment
and arsenal. Alternatives had to be found. So for energy, independence is a
must have for Morocco, dictated by a geo-political environment that is not
stable and very volatile.

~~~
adventured
Algeria was not a very rich country before the drop in oil prices, even though
they had certainly climbed a long ways during the ten year oil boom.

Their GDP per capita is around #100 in the world. It ranks below Jamaica,
Serbia, Fiji, Namibia, Angola, Iraq, etc.

Their total GDP, pre oil drop, ranked them around #50 in the world, but
they're #34 in population.

Before the oil drop they were a lower middle nation in terms of wealth,
nowhere near rich.

~~~
Dinoso
Sorry, I didn't mean to say they were a rich country, but had the means to
advance rapidly compared to other third world countries. Algeria had 186B$ of
cash and was debt free. It even lent 5B$ to the IMF[1].

[1] [http://finance.yahoo.com/news/algeria-
contribute-5b-imf-1846...](http://finance.yahoo.com/news/algeria-
contribute-5b-imf-184610740--finance.html)

------
oska
Links to more information:

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

[2]
[http://www.worldbank.org/projects/P131256?lang=en](http://www.worldbank.org/projects/P131256?lang=en)

[3]
[http://www.nrel.gov/csp/solarpaces/project_detail.cfm/projec...](http://www.nrel.gov/csp/solarpaces/project_detail.cfm/projectID=270)

[4] [http://gulfbusiness.com/2015/01/saudis-acwa-power-
wins-1-7bn...](http://gulfbusiness.com/2015/01/saudis-acwa-power-wins-1-7bn-
euro-morocco-solar-power-deal/#.VLJ4byvF_8Z)

[5] [http://www.acwapower.com/project/14/acwa-power-
ouarzazate.ht...](http://www.acwapower.com/project/14/acwa-power-
ouarzazate.html)

~~~
adaml_623
Another link that has ended up at the bottom of the thread due to it's parent
being downvoted (
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10450344](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10450344)
)

[http://www.cspworld.org/cspworldmap](http://www.cspworld.org/cspworldmap)

------
Asbostos
I wonder if the cooling it surely provides to the ground under the reflectors
would make the land retain more water and be hospitable enough for plants to
eventually start growing there.

~~~
geon
It should also provide some protection from wind, so the soil is not blown
away.

------
JDDunn9
Reminds me of Masdar City in Abu Dhabi.

Deserts kick up so much dust, I wonder how often they have to clean the
mirrors.

~~~
threeseed
Given that they are trying to stimulate local economies around the plants I
would imagine they see this as a feature.

~~~
Gravityloss
Yeah, have some people gently brush them after dust events.

~~~
AtlasLion
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XpZA6TMg04Y](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XpZA6TMg04Y)

------
melling
"When they are finished, the four plants at Ouarzazate will occupy a space as
big as Morocco’s capital city, Rabat, and generate 580MW of electricity,
enough to power a million homes"

The other top HN story is about a 1180 megawatt nuclear plant, which outputs
about twice the power in a fraction of the space:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10450171](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10450171)

~~~
illumen
This is in the desert. The nuke is on what was once useful land.

~~~
PietdeVries
True - but if it takes the size of the capital of Morocco to replace half a
nuclear power plant, imagine the size of the installations needed to truely
power the world with solar energy?

~~~
cesarb
As someone who lives in a country (Brazil) which uses lots of hydro, I have a
related question...

How much space does it take, compared to a hydro plant of equivalent power?
Hydro is also relatively clean, and is also known for taking massive amounts
of space.

~~~
WildUtah
_Hydro is also relatively clean_

Hydro is the most environmentally destructive source of power. It ruins more
natural habitat than strip mining coal, clearcutting forests, solar PV in
virgin land, or any other kind of generation. And the river bottoms and
canyons it destroys are among the most biodiverse habitats in the world before
their destruction.

~~~
PhantomGremlin
It's all relative. From Wikipedia[1]:

    
    
       In 2013 the plant generated a record 98.6 TWh,
       supplying approximately 75% of the electricity
       consumed by Paraguay and 17% of that consumed
       by Brazil.
    

I'm sure that most of the citizens of Paraguay and Brazil will gladly accept
this inexpensive hydro power, even at the loss of a few flooded canyons.

It's nice to sit in ivory towers and criticize. In the real world, many many
people's lives are made much easier and more productive by harnessing this
inexpensive hydro power.

You want to solve some _real_ problems in Brazil, figure out how to stop the
destruction of the Amazon rain forest. That, there, is a world scale tragedy.
Not so the beautiful Itaipu Dam, which I've toured, and which helps so many
Brazilians.

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

------
wayanon
"Spain has itself prohibited new solar projects because of a lack of
interconnectors to transmit the energy to France"

\- I'd like to know more about this.

~~~
adaml_623
That's a really crazy thing to read.

Also "The EU has set a target of ensuring that 10% of each member country’s
power can be transported abroad by cable by 2020." Is that all?

The governments of this world all seem to suffer from such blinkered short
term visions. They can spend billions on a sporting event but a robust Europe
wide electricity grid sourcing power from a sunny south...

~~~
luch
There is the issue of cascading failures also here : several of my friends
working for majors European power grid suppliers still have nightmares from
the 2006 power outage.

A vessel ship cut a power line in Germany, which triggered a domino-like power
outage throughout all Europe (up to Portugal IIRC) making 15 millions of home
go dark for several hours.

Solar (and worse, Wind) power is not constant : it adds a source of
unstability in the mix.

~~~
biehl
_it adds a source of unstability in the mix_

Because thermal plants never trip??

~~~
msandford
They'll trip very infrequently, sure, but they're not forcing constant re-
balancing minute by minute or hour by hour.

~~~
biehl
Since the risk is there you need backup capacity anyway, and even if thermal
production is very stable, usage over the day is not. So you need balancing no
matter what. You do need to improve balancing to integrate lots of wind/solar
- however with land-wind being so cheap, there is money to spend on balancing.

~~~
msandford
Land is cheap, sure, but the transmission capacity to take it from generation
to consumption sure isn't.

Europe had electrical grids that were perfectly capable of distributing the
"ancient, horrible" thermal generation quite acceptably. Now there's a lot of
renewables installed the grid is starting to look like the bottleneck. Who
pays for the grid upgrades so that it's not the bottleneck? The renewable
people say the grid people should, and the grid people say that the renewable
people should.

If there was so, so much money in the renewables market then why are they
balking at paying for installing more long haul transmission lines? Probably
because they're very expensive; if they were just 1% of the cost of the
renewable facility nobody would really care. But they're probably on par with
or perhaps even more expensive than the total plant installation. Which takes
these projects from profitable versus thermal to non-profitable versus thermal
I'd suspect. Hence the bickering.

So thermal balancing is a well understood art that's going on 100 years old
now. Renewable balancing is not as well understood and is perhaps only 5-10
years old at any kind of scale. That's why grid batteries are such a big deal,
because balancing is hard and batteries tend to have little/no latency so they
can react faster than natural gas peaker plants.

I'm not saying that moving to renewables is a bad idea and that we should just
stick with coal or anything; renewables are obviously the future. But there
are definite, real problems associated with their roll-out that aren't easily
or cheaply solved. I think one thing that will make a huge difference is
exposing the time-variable pricing of electricity to everyone. It'll create a
huge market for demand smoothing and consumer grade (and scale!) load
smoothing devices like inverter A/C units, peak shaving batteries (1kWh
battery with a 3kW inverter/charger), people putting 500-1000W of solar on
their own roofs, etc.

------
skbohra123
The article talks about total capacity of plants being 580MW. If that would
make Morocco a solar superpower, I am sure India and many other countries
already have solar capacity more than that.

~~~
sslnx
While India has to sacrifice arable land that can be used in a lot of
different ways to build a solar plant, Morocco has only gains from such
projects.

~~~
ganwar
This is factually incorrect.

The reason that solar power projects have been executed without any major
controversy (otherwise all so visible in India in relation to any big project)
has mainly been possible because India has a huge chunk of arid/non-arable
land in the West and center of India. All of the major solar project so far
and all of the planned one's have come up in these areas.

~~~
oska
India has also been experimenting [1] with putting solar panels over the
(extensive system of) canals in the state of Gujarat. The panels provide the
added benefit of reducing the rate of evaporation from the open canals.

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

------
vegabook
So.... if solar can power the world, as seems increasingly within the realm of
not-being-crazy, does that mean that since we're using energy that is already
under the ozone layer, that we'll also solve global warming?

This is just harvesting energy that's already here, in real time, right? It's
not releasing energy that was created over millions of years in one
concentrated burst as per carbon-based energy?

Or is much of this energy usually bounced back into space, yet with solar
we'll be keeping it on terra firms?

~~~
kaybe
The energy is converted to electric energy, but when you use it it gets
eventually turned back into thermal energy.

In the extreme case you make it worse since the solar radiation that would
have been bounced back by the 'white' desert is now absorbed by the 'black'
solar panels, which convert some of it to heat and some of it to electricity
which in the end also gets turned into heat.

------
JoeAltmaier
Anywhere else but the desert, and the ecological impact would stop such
projects. Its ironic, since the desert is a more fragile environment that most
others. This project would likely exterminate many species and sterilize all
the land under the mirrors. If anything thrived there, it would be completely
unlike what is there now, causing an incalculable rippling ecological impact
elsewhere.

But desert projects get a pass on all this for some reason. I guess because,
people don't like to live there. Same reason fuzzy mammals get protected
status, while lizards and worms get nothing - human preference.

~~~
bpodgursky
Not all deserts are equal. The Sahara desert is truly immense -- 99.99% of it
is not at risk of construction. And unless you are building on top of
something with a natural water source, you're probably not endangering any
life; the parts without water sources are essentially lifeless.

Frankly, after the initial setup, the shelter the panels provide will probably
support more life than the open sand. Same as why environmentalists are ok
sinking ships to provide a foundation for artificial reefs -- nature does not
magically optimize for the most life-dense environment; it just is the way it
is.

~~~
Avshalom
Immense and growing despite efforts to stop it.

If there is one environment on the planet not in risk it's the Sahara. A lot
of Egypt, Northern Africa, Iraq/Palestine would have looked like the American
Midwest back when they were empires.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
True its a man-made desert (despite some published nonsense about 'shifts in
the earth's axis' causing weather changes). So are most of the ecosystems on
the planet, by now. The issue is, changing relatively stable ecosystems is
done at our peril. I just want to point out how little we really care about
this stuff - to the point we enthusiastically endorse mega projects that
amount to terraforming, with so little discussion.

------
awjr
So is the issue here of delivering a European Supergrid (Ultra High DC)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_super_grid](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_super_grid)
? This would enable the development of a continental "green" energy grid.

------
the_rosentotter
Sounds like a typical IMF scheme.

~~~
jjoe
Why the downvotes? I think it's a very lucid observation! This is just one
"loan" out of many that the IMF has granted to third world countries like
Morocco. IMF knows it won't get its loan plus interest back for many decades
to come. It's the carrot and stick it needs to inject its own political
agenda.

~~~
IkmoIkmo
> Why the downvotes?

Because it's not an IMF loan?

~~~
jjoe
The IMF tied Morocco's $6.2bln precautionary loan line (coming directly from
the IMF) to its energy dependence. This solar project is being hurried up so
the loan can be unlocked. All of this is in a timetable from 2012.

~~~
IkmoIkmo
Do you have any sources? As far as I know, this project is funded by the
Germans, French, African Development Bank, EU and World Bank, without any
funding from the IMF necessary, nor is there an IMF loan to be unlocked by
this project.

The loan you describe is separate, as you say, a precautionary loan as a
safeguard for oil price increases, indeed granted in 2012. Of course the
opposite has happened, the price of oil dropped very sharply and so it makes
no sense for the IMF loan to have been put into use on these grounds. Which is
why it hasn't been, the $6.2b line of credit with the IMF expired in August
2014, without having been used at all. In July of that year, a new similar
(this time, $5b) loan was negotiated, again precautionary as an insurance
policy, and that, too, hasn't been used yet and that too isn't tied to any
solar project. So I still don't see where you get the fact they're either 1)
building this project with IMF money or 2) unlocking an IMF loan with this
project, the facts suggest the IMF loan is unrelated, precautionary, not-used
and the one you refer to specifically even expired already, how it could be
unlocked after it expired is beyond me but you seem adamant. There's no IMF
scheme here. Does the IMF have a relationship with Morocco? Absolutely, but
it's not part of this project as far as I know, not indirectly either.

~~~
pdeuchler
>> "Germans, French, African Development Bank, EU and World Bank, without any
funding from the IMF necessary"

a rose by any other name...

------
Bouncingsoul1
Is it a concept or is it an actual project(are the still talking or actually
building). Because I've heard ideas like this before(
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desertec](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desertec)
) which abandoned quickly. IMO Decentralization is the answer not
MEGAProjects.

~~~
chillax
From the article: "When the full complex is complete, it will be the largest
concentrated solar power (CSP) plant in the world , and the first phase,
called Noor 1, will go live next month."

"When they are finished, the four plants at Ouarzazate will occupy a space as
big as Morocco’s capital city, Rabat, and generate 580MW of electricity,
enough to power a million homes. Noor 1 itself has a generating capacity of
160MW."

~~~
aerique
How many homes are there in Morocco's capital city? I'm curious whether (with
current technology) we need more or less space than one home in solar panels
to power one home.

~~~
icebraining
Wikipedia provides the answer: about 150k.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabat#Subdivisions](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabat#Subdivisions)

~~~
IkmoIkmo
The number is likely much higher than that, Moroccans all know the official
demographic numbers (for big cities) are vastly understated because they're
not based on a census like in say the US, but rather based on a registry of
every single person like in most of Europe, only there are millions of
internal migrants who don't register when they move to the city, and there's
significant semi-homelessness and shanty towns which aren't reflected in the
official numbers. For Casablanca it's usually a really really big difference,
with official numbers at 3 million and some, and locals approximating it
topping 6 million. The official numbers in Rabat aren't as inaccurate but 150k
households at least feels much lower than my personal experiences.

------
snambi
Very nice story. Wish it becomes very successful.

------
r721
I wonder at which point solar energy gathering will significantly influence
local climate. As I understand right now we are far from that, but what about
future trends?

~~~
adaml_623
You should read about the urban solar effects. Cities are warmer than the
surrounding areas. Are you more worried about that than CO2 in the atmosphere?

------
venomsnake
Can we please ban from humanity any journalist that writes "will be able to
power X homes" ...

Just give GW, it would be enough If you want to put to scale use something
else (will provide the output of 1/2 hoover dams, will be able to supply 0.1%
of US electricity or power 5000000 tumble dryers or 3 ATI cards) Homes just
don't need electricity to exist ...

~~~
TeMPOraL
To those replying that people don't know what GWs are - it's pretty sad,
really. One would hope that in the XXI century, especially in a technological
civilization of the west, every self-respecting human would know what a watt
is. As it is now, even journalists don't expect anything from their audience
anymore.

If you look at the economics of journalism, it's understandable why they write
this way (the economics view explains most of the ways modern journalism is
crap), but it's disheartening that nobody minds writing about "calories"
(which should be kcal), or "horsepower", but watts need a "X homes"
explanation.

~~~
adrianN
I know what a Watt is and I understand the Giga-prefix. I still like an
analogy with my GW numbers, because in my daily life I don't encounter these
things very often and have a hard time imagining how much that exactly is. I
would have to Google some other representative values, like the output of a
typical coal plant to get an idea what the number means.

This is not the case with calories (I know that what I eat daily has about
2500 of those) or horsepower (I know that my car used to have 60).

~~~
tajen
Once nuclear core = a bit less than 1GW. France has 58 of them, producing 74%
of its electricity.

In total France produces 63GW, with 70Mhab = about 1KW per inhabitant _in
average_.

