150 million * 592 is a bit more than 8.9 billion $

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.

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.

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.

This panel can put out close to 100 watts ukposts.infoUgkxOqI2yqX0XVrhR2BMJciTWrHJpG8FhJyg 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.

10:33 That is the happiest looking meter I have ever seen.

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.

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..

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.

Beyond the technical and scientific issues, there's also the problem of energy dependence. Giving another country control over your power is insane.

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.

Of course, what you want is a combination of solar thermal, and photovoltaic. Use the PV panels to focus the heat onto the central tower, while also generating electricity.

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

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!

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.

Wow I was totally mistaken about AC versus DC in terms of long term transmission. I actually thought it was the exact opposite, that AC was preferable over long distances. I specifically remember learning that in school as a reason why the US uses AC, the distances are longer. I've been carrying around that possible misconception for like 25 years lol. I'm going to have to look into it now and see if maybe I just misunderstood what they said, if they were wrong outright, or if something has changed since then that rendered what they taught me obsolete

How many Ewan McGregors do they generate per square kilometre?

"watt hours per day" is an ingenious way to unambiguously express the average output despite its varying over the day.

Africa: *exists* Foreign power: *You up*

10:27 - that is the happiest instrument I ever seen!

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.

“My Desert, my Arrakis, my Dune.”

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.

There is also huge problem of politics. Not only these regions are volatile, but Europe just afted this video released learned the hard way how dangerous it is to be energy depended on other country. Though I really like the idea of green energy production potential to be new natural resource which country can sell and turn into wealth

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.

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.

Solar energy in germany also has its problems. The energy output is unstable. Sometimes more, sometimes nothing. We have no possibilities to store the energy and we need to pay other countrys around to take the energy if we are producing too much. And also buy energy from them if the production is too low.

There is also one of these towers close to my hometown in South Africa that has been running since 2016 called the Khi Solar One Power Plant with another one being built soon within the same province.

Rip Scandinavia on that first globe

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.

It's worth taking into account that the Saharan desert has a relation with the rainforests in South America and covering vast amounts of seemingly "useless" sand might result in natural disasters on the other side of the ocean.

In a 1913 issue of Scientific American, there is a story of a solar power plant in Egypt.

As a Moroccan, I really hope for success of local electric production, it would be a gamechanger for the industry.

Nuclear power: "Look what they have to do to mimic a _fraction_ of my power."

Ive never seen such a smooth and effective transition to a sponsor. Also, great video! Thanks

Big oil companies would never agree to this, even if it were possible.

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”).

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.

There is a CSP tower based plant being built in south africa as well, i have been there It only has 100 MW power generating capacity though

We have recently learned how an autocrat thinks he can start a war and get away with it because his country are a key supplier of global energy. We would need significant storage and back-up plans to ensure similar autocrats could never contemplate doing such a thing.

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.

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.

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?

Very well done. This explains why simple "one assumption fits all" thinking so prevalent in US energy policy falls short. Thank you.

*Nuclear talking to Fusion*: “look what they need to do to mimic a fraction of our power“

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?

Algorithms: a couple of my fellow employees were taking a class called "Analysis of Algorithms" . We worked together on some of the algorithms. Both analyzing and deriving using calculus and advanced math. It was quite fascinating.

Two things that are critical in the delivery of reliable electricity is diversity and redundancy. A minimum requirement is N-1 redundancy which means you have to design a system to be capable of maintaining supply even if you lose any single element in that system. So in oversimplified terms this means you need to have roughy double of everything. So the huge quantities spoken of in this video amounts to roughly half of the real requirement. This requirement is not just for protection from equipment failures… you also have to be able to de energize and isolate system elements for repair and maintenance without requiring heinous long outages. So there’s that. Also, it is risky to have all of your eggs in one basket… for obvious reasons. So if Europe were to depend on a single supply from a solar farm in Africa… Europe would not have sufficient diversity of supply sources to be able to survive a disruption… Europe would require a multitude of diverse sources in different locations to have security. Look at the trouble Germany is presently experiencing from becoming dependent on Russian natural gas without first achieving a durable economic and strategic alliance with Russia… this is but one example of too many eggs in one basket. So there’s that. Also solar power is intermittent and can only supply during daytime and favourable weather… therefore it can only support daytime peak loads not base load. So there’s that. People who fantasize about a world powered exclusively by direct solar are living in a utopian dream. Ironically, fossil fuel based power generation is also solar power. The ultimate source of the potential energy stored in fossil fuels is from the sun. This stored solar energy is released as heat energy through combustion. So this idea that you cannot store solar energy is not true. Nature has been doing this for millennia.

Local infrastructure should always be used locally first. Much more energy efficiency

I have nothing but respect for your honest critique of these over simplified _"easy clean energy"_ ideas.

Does someone know how much photovoltaik in marocco produces in the critical months december, january and february (in comparsion to summer)? In these months in germany, they unfortunately produce almost nothing.

When I learned about Desertec, the big idea for energy transport was hydrogen electrolysis next to the panels in Africa and transport via tanker ship to Europe. I had hoped to hear about that idea aswell as transport via cables.

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

Greetings from Morocco!! I love your content!!

Placing cables between Europe and Africa could be done with the budget of just one Marvel movie / series.

Ive never thought about electrical grids as machines; I really appreciate that perspective.

Generation tends to be the focus, while transmission and storage have enormous engineering challenges as well. But advances for both are coming, too.

As MechE student and Moroccan citizen, this video was soo informative!! Thank you!

What is sad about this report is that it's not talking about power supply to the african continent rather it's only about power from africa into europe and north america.

Heat can be used as energy storage by heating the melted salt to make the station operational at night

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.

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.

This concentrated solar plant looks exactly like one in Sahara movie (2007). But in the movie they used it to super heat and "vaporise" toxic waste, lol.

Combined solar powered hydrogen (electrolysis) and desalination plants could, I think, carry the cost of transmission infrastructure (sea-water to, hydrogen from).

It would be neat to somehow be able to combine water desalination AND power generation in those big towers.

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.

We are actually doing a case study on the noor 3 facility in my first year engineering maths class! Very amused I came across this over breakfast.

The video of the lightning storm @1:17 is AMAZING!!!!

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.

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.

Air is storable, compressing the air with the panels. transfer the energy via pipeline. then generate power with the air pressure. Rivers and streams using a water wheel will compress air. The wind will compress air.

Another factor is the total corruption of the governments. In South Africa, multiple times a year, the government finds new ways to punish those who buy solar, even as they admit they cant create enough power for the country. The grid is blacked out 50% of every day now.

I studied this a few years back. The biggest issue solar companies faced in Africa was crime and sabotage.

it could be practical though to spread probably largely decentralized solar power systems (like for one household or one village) through desert and desert-adjacent inhabited areas to replace wood and charcoal for cooking, and also provide some electricity for electronic devices to aid in education etc.. I hear areas like the sahel have long had a problem with trees being cut down for firewood, when they are desperately needed to hold off desertification and graze goats and such. countering desertification locally by use of solar power probably wouldn't make a difference for the climate, but it would help to reduce the displacement of people in those areas, which is generally going to be a huge worldwide problem in the coming decades. it would also be nice in that it would empower poor people, whereas the plans to export african solar power to europe would as usual benefit corporations and corrupt officials. well, the solar power would probably also be routed to some nearby cities, but certainly not to villages in the middle of nowhere.

imagine putting your only source of energy far away from home in a not so secure and watched region where a single man can cut a wire and its over

Interconnections are usually categorised by how much Voltage they transfer, not MW

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.

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.

I wonder how well just plopping some solar convection towers like they’ve got in nevada and such would work. Fewer reflectors would be needed due to the high heat of the area. I’m not sure what sorts of migratory birds would be affected by that though.

To be fair though, if a developing Africa could just source their own energy from solar generated in the desert, that would be pretty amazing already.

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.

Nice to see a YT channel taking a broader, more realistic view of technological 'solutions' for a change.

Having entire continents depend on one giant source is a terrible idea. One point of failure is incredibly dangerous for such an essential resource. The beauty of modern renewables like photovoltaic and wind energy is the fact that they can be distributed basically everywhere, so a single plant failure or attack doesn't affect the entire grid too much.

If electricity transportation is so troublesome, can we conserve the chemical energy instead? I.e. in hydrogen form. Or synthetic gas, designed to be compatible with existing natural gas infrastructure. Then we gather one or another gas and sell it on the marker, deliver it like ordinary natural gas.

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.

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

Africa should stop trying to supply energy to europe. There's a lot of local developments that need to happen first.

This is a really interesting video, though I was expecting it to be about why solar energy isn't being used to provide clean and affordable energy for Africans. Of course, "the problem with using solar power in Africa to provide energy to Europe" isn't the catchiest title. I'm really glad you addressed the ethical concerns and the echoes of imperialism, problems which many fellow scientists and engineers tend to overlook.

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.

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 transition into the Brilliant sales pitch was too smooth

As someone wise used to say: "don't put all your eggs in one basket" and nowhere is this more true than this case of covering the Sahara desert with solar panels. There're problems with trying to power the entire world with the solar energy in the Sahara desert. The biggest concern here will be the power losses over distance. Imagine trying to transport that power in Africa to some country tens of thousands of kilometers away. At that point, the power losses will be so great that it makes more sense to just install solar panels in your local area. In the case of Europe/Africa this makes a bit more sense due to their close proximity to each other. 0:36 That's not entirely true. This 6kWh is merely the amount of solar irradiance that falls on that one square meter per day. Since solar panels is only 20% efficient. We would only get 1/5 of that. How do I know this? Because in 0:14 you mentioned that a one kilowatt size solar system can generate 6kWh of energy per day (which is consistent with online maps). Such a system would actually take up 5 square meters. Since we know that solar panels are about 200 watt per square meter. 1000 watt of them would take up 5 square meters. So one square meter of this would only generate 1/5 of 6kWh. 2:57 150M * 592 is not 8.9B more like 88.8B And although 88.8B may sound like a lot. It's really not the problem here. A solar array powerful enough to generate 7 terawatt-hour of energy per day is going to be 1.4 terawatt in size capacity. Such solar array (assume 1 dollar per watt cost) will cost 1.4 trillion dollars. If you want to tell people that cost is the problem, you're looking at the wrong thing. Because the solar array alone will cost 15.8 times more than the cable. As for the concentrated solar power part. Man, where do I begin? 1. Machines with few moving parts last longer than machines with many. So pv solar + chemical batteries wins out in this regard 2. CSP actually takes pretty long to ramp up their power. A few minutes with CSP while pv solar + chemical batteries are capable of ramping up near instantaneously. Batteries are capable of ramping up their charging to absorb excess pv solar energy or ramping up the discharge rate to meet demand of consumption. 3. Storing molten salt isn't actually very efficient. The biggest problem is the heat slowly leaking to the environment. Energy losses that cannot be recovered. And they actually leak energy pretty quickly while chemical batteries on the other hand have a fairly low self discharge rate. Maybe 1% per month. 4. 10:04 Even if we did account for chemical battery storage, it would still be cheaper. A pv solar array that is capable of generating the same amount of energy per day would be 800MW in size and cost around 800 million dollars (assuming 1 dollar per watt). The chemical batteries on the other hand. If we generate 4GWh of energy per day and we store 80% of that in chemical batteries. We would need 3GWh of battery storage. An 848 million dollar chemical battery array from Tesla would be approximately 3GWh in size. The two costs combined would only cost 1.6 billion dollars. Still cheaper than the Quarzazate CSP station at 2.5 billion dollars + all the benefits I covered earlier. 11:16 Due to the proximity of Europe and Africa I mentioned earlier. It might still be beneficial to build solar farms in Africa then deliver the energy to Germany. Despite the power losses. We'll still get more energy this way. Think about it, a one kilowatt solar array in Germany would only generate 3kWh per day while a solar array in Africa can generate 5kWh per day. Even if we account for the losses through AC transmission. We'll still get 4kWh by the time it arrives at Germany through the transmission line. 11:30 Idk but I'm not going to let politics and wars get in the way of our transition away from fossil fuel energy. F**k them, just build it anyway. 12:40 That depends really. The plant operators at the end of the day only care about money. The higher the rate they can sell the electricity, the better. So as long as Europe pays the electricity at a higher price than Africa then all the electricity will be sold to Europe rather than the natives. They'd make more money that way.

"watt-hour/day" hmmm... if only there was a standard measure for power...

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.

For the distribution of elctricity, can the power be microwaved up to satalites and from there down to recieving stations around the globe?

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

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

They should be all over roads and canals. Think road usually means house or something using electricity and canals loose water were already trying to move somewhere to evaporation but if we cover or float panels on the canals it reduces evaporation.

Any concern that sandstorms will degrade the surface of the solar panels/mirrors?

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.