What is Digg?146 Comments
- ironeus, on 08/01/2008, -5/+80This is great in theory; though aside from time (40+ yrs) & money (€450bn) relying on certain unstable northern African countries to supply Europe with power could be the biggest risk.
- dislexicllama, on 07/25/2008, -3/+72And what about the maintenance of such a grid? Can you imagine the damage to a solar farm when a dust storm kicks through?
- dignation, on 07/26/2008, -1/+46Assuming we reach this 0.3% simply by using the potential energy we could generate a given area of land, and given the sahara is 3,500,000 square miles (9,000,000 square km http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sahara ), 0.3% of the Sahara would be 10,300 square miles (27,000 square km). So, we would need to build 10,300 square miles of solar panels in order to capture this energy. In order to put it into perspective, this is the equivalent of 6 and 1/3 Rhode islands or a little under two Connecticut or 6.29% of California COMPLETELY covered in solar panels.
- SillyRabbits, on 07/25/2008, -1/+46Yep, nothing helps solar cell efficiency like sandblasting the optically transparent coating. Not to mention the fact that the desert likes to completely bury things during those storms. This is just another case of a quick "back-of-the-envelope" calculation getting turned into an article without addressing what the real engineering concerns would be.
- randyzaia, on 07/26/2008, -5/+38Digger News Flash: We May Soon Be Able To Satisfy Our Power Needs on Unicorn Fur And Pixie Dust
- lordmike, on 07/26/2008, -0/+24And I suppose relying on Iran, Iraq, and the middle east in general for our oil is more stable?
- xDynaBlade, on 07/26/2008, -1/+21Energy is not produced, only converted to a useful form.
- lump1, on 07/26/2008, -0/+19There was a less polite comment attached to the article itself which sort of makes a similar point:
There’s enough energy in my ass to power Europe for decades. Assume that my ass weighs about 5 kg. and convert that to energy using Einstein’s E=mc^2. You’ll see that the secret to Europe’s energy crisis lies in my ass.
Now you may wonder if it’s feasible or economical to recover all that energy locked up in my ass. But I tell you, those are just bookkeeping details. Furthermore, the plan to exploit my ass for energy has a distinct advantage because unlike the Sahara desert, my ass is in Europe already. - wisam, on 07/25/2008, -6/+24Unstable North African countries?
Egypt, Libya, Morocco, Tunisia are more "stable" that you could even imagine.
Mubarak of Egypt has been ruling for 27 years!
Qaddafi of Libya has been ruling for 39 years!
The Alaouite's of Morocco have been ruling for centuries.
Tunisia is the only Arab country with a past president who's still living and wasn't overthrown. - Yonson, on 07/26/2008, -0/+18And Capital Letters.
- KireGoTI, on 07/26/2008, -1/+17Twenty-seven thousand square kilometers. That's how much area we would have to harness.
Excuse me, but this seems like a ludicrously impossible proposal. To build and maintain such a structure will probably far exceed in cost even the estimates, and may not even be feasible, no matter how many resources we put behind it. Just to put it into perspective, that's a power grid half the size of New York state.
Also, can anybody think of the environmental impact of such a manmade structure? Human civilization has never built anything remotely of this scale. It dwarfs cities. Who knows what damage we could do with this behemoth?
Lastly, anyone who expects energy consumption to really fall over time is off his rocker. We may be able to raise the efficiency of technology that is already in place, but for civilization to move forward we will certainly need something to drive it. And civilization will move forward, to the beat of overpopulation and new machines and urbanization. If we were to build this thing, what if by the time it were built it no longer served its function? What if, with electric cars finally in place, we needed fifty times the energy of this grid? Surely, that would prove an impossible obstacle to mount. And what about the rest of the world? Surely China and the Caucuses will make up for whatever energy Europe manages to save.
People keep forgetting that we already have a very clean, very safe form of energy available: nuclear power. The only problem is the disposal of nuclear waste. If instead of coming up with crazy theories on how to harness energy we took these resources and put them into perfecting the energy we have already, then we would have something: power plants that produced hundreds of times more energy than we would need at the point of their construction, capable of powering everyone and everything at virtually no cost. The energy problem would be solved for the rest of time, locally and globally. - bman1984, on 07/26/2008, -3/+18That is great, except the Sahara Desert is not in Europe.
- mentol, on 07/25/2008, -4/+19That's certainly a beautiful idea, but I don't think Europe is really interested.
- natthew, on 07/26/2008, -2/+15The cost for this is less than that of the Iraq war. Imagine what would have happened...
- KJ83, on 07/26/2008, -0/+11Put the panels on the roof! Your roof my roof and every roof in all the land!
- grapesofbaath, on 07/26/2008, -2/+13Yes, I sure hope they don't steal sunlight from the desert people.
- spyd3rweb, on 07/26/2008, -1/+12Being totally dependent on foreign nations for anything is a bad idea.
- MikeFallopian, on 07/26/2008, -3/+13And the coal plant that generates your electricity is not in your backyard. This may shock you, but electricity can be moved from one place to another using devices known as "wires".
- fatjoe, on 07/26/2008, -0/+9Don't forget
Saddam of Iraq ruling for 24 years!
Oh wait....... - FairDinkumMate, on 07/26/2008, -1/+10The day you can produce coal or oil based energy & keep the resultant pollutants within only your own breathable air with ZERO emmisions impacting on others is when it's viable.....until then it's a fantasy fuelled by ignorance & arrogance!
- HappyScrappy, on 07/26/2008, -1/+9It doesn't have to be our only power source in order to make a difference.
We use hydroelectric power even though it can't supply the whole country either. - Idiggapony, on 07/26/2008, -2/+10Could we maybe cover 9.3% of Nevada instead of 0.3% of the Sahara? I recognize that the power cord running from Nevada to Europe would be a lot longer than the one running from the Sahara. But I don't think we should all be in a big hurry to put the civilized world's next major energy source in the hands of hostile people, like the current one is.
- randyzaia, on 07/26/2008, -0/+8duly noted
- FairDinkumMate, on 07/26/2008, -0/+7It's a shame that more people like you SillyRabbits don't comprehend that the "costs" of oil, coal & nuclear power are largely unknown due to the long term environmental consequences & the potential cost of repairing the damage these sources of power do.
I'll give you an example you might understand. Newcastle in Australia is a city & region built predominantly on coal mining and the subsequent steel making. For more than 50 years the region has been mined. Around Newcastle city alone, more than $6 BILLION of coal has been produced. Excellent - right?
Except, in 1996 Newcastle suffered an earthquake that caused $8 BILLION worth of damage & it has since been proven that the cause of this, the largest earthquake ever to hit a populated area of Australia was caused by(you guessed it!) - 50 years of COAL MINING throught the structure of the land!
It is quite probable that future generations will look back on the use of "fossil fuels" as unbelievably expensive, short sighted, naive & self-centred. - MikeFallopian, on 07/26/2008, -0/+6Right now, the best option is high-voltage direct current (HVDC) cables. They have relatively low losses over long distances (3% power loss over every 1000 km). Large offshore wind farms use HVDC to transmit power back to shore.
- sk11, on 07/26/2008, -0/+6The day that a computer never crashes, has hardware faults, has any bugs, errors, security issues and can run all day long, forever is when they become viable...until then they are nothing but a fantasy?
/idiocy - MikeFallopian, on 07/26/2008, -0/+6The idea of using Saharan solar farms to supply Europe with power is a great idea that has been studied at length. One proposed implementation that's been around for years is called DESERTEC. If you're interested in reading about this technology, they have a lot of details and white papers on their website:
www.desertec.org
Hopefully the recent conference mentioned in the article will spur a renewal of interest in the idea. All of the technology for power generation and transmission exists; by the time it reaches the European grid, it could actually be much cheaper than the current price of electricity. Of course, the initial investment in infrastructure and the political deals with African countries will be the sticking point. - ctrlfreak13, on 07/26/2008, -0/+6Ummm, why wouldn't we just use the power from solar panels in Nevada for ourselves? We could use the electricity too and it makes more sense than loosing mass amounts of it trying to get it to Europe using a non-existent cable.
- Justice101, on 07/26/2008, -0/+5Nope, your just converting the energy from whats holding the nuclear material together.
- mecharabbit, on 07/26/2008, -1/+6What North Africa needs most is a little instability. The nations of the West only coalesced into functioning democracies after centuries of rebellions, civil wars, and revolutions. The will of the people will always be done, if given some time. The US is doing North Africa no favors by propping up corrupt regimes like Mubarak's.
- TheMachine1, on 07/26/2008, -0/+5Most demand is during daytime.
- hipswiggle, on 07/26/2008, -2/+6It'd be nice if our current infrastructure could power factories, towns and cities without interruption 24/7 365 with zero downtime AND ramp up to meet demand instantly.
Why should renewable resources be held to higher standards than our current resources? - Xehoz, on 07/26/2008, -2/+6Did they actually considered the power loss that exists with such great distances? How much of that power generated in the desert would be lost, until it reaches, say, Sweden or Norway?
- thegreatgazoo, on 07/26/2008, -0/+4Exactly. Even without dust storms, they will still have to be cleaned/dusted. Also, the heat is attrocious (50+C), acidic and abrasive sand, plus it would get into all of the connectors and wiring. Not to question if there is enough raw materials to build that much solar panels.
Plus, how do you get power across the Mediterranean? Have a huge freaking wire across the straits of Gibralter? - sporg, on 07/26/2008, -0/+4Unfortunately true but for solar power to become more competitive it must be widely used, invested in and experimented with to develop more efficient panels. There are several new solar technologies rolling out that will make solar able to compete with coal. One of the promising ones is NanoSolar http://www.nanosolar.com/.
- FairDinkumMate, on 07/26/2008, -3/+7Because the scientists that drew up the proposal, worked out the returns while taking into account transmission loss, comparable European local systems, average amounts of sunlight, costs of equipment & myriad other issues would obviously have never thought that their might be a sandstorm!
If you want to knock an article or idea, at least apply commonsense to your comments.... - Idiggapony, on 07/26/2008, -0/+4Simpsons did it.
Sort of.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_Shot_Mr._Burns%3F ... - mecharabbit, on 07/26/2008, -2/+5Not to mention the herds of nomadic tribesman roaming about on their camels, armed with baseball (err..cricket?) bats, just looking for something to smash.
- lordmike, on 07/26/2008, -2/+5Shhh... next thing you know, Bush will invade Africa! No blood for sun!!! ;-)
- booper13, on 07/26/2008, -0/+3isnt there like 1 state u could pick instead of 2 tiny ones multiplied or a small percentage of a huge one?
- rationalist, on 07/26/2008, -0/+3Why would we import energy all the way from the Saharan System when we have good 'ol Sol right here in our backyard?
- foxhound009, on 07/26/2008, -0/+3yhm it sounds great but! :
1. who will maintain such enormous structure and what will it cost to maintain.
2. what if say.... someone decides it would be funny to screw those things up?
whole europe without energy :D ?
it would have to be really secure.. and how exactly do you secure thing that BIG! ? - LoCoPyRo, on 07/26/2008, -0/+3.... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservation_of_energ ...
- Grummond, on 07/26/2008, -0/+3Most european countries have already invested heavily in wind mills anyway. Some of them get 20% of their power from wind mills, and that number is growing.
Solar energy might be a nice compliment though, since wind isn't totally constant either. - inactive, on 07/26/2008, -0/+3What a crock. Who on Earth over the age of 10 hasn't had the thought of covering the deserts with solar cells?
- Azerael, on 07/26/2008, -1/+3When you build the panels, you can use them to power the production of more panels, ad infinitum.
- mousky, on 07/26/2008, -0/+2I guess you haven't heard of underwater cables then?
- MMaster23, on 07/26/2008, -1/+3what kind of naive ***** wrote this? The only reason why we aren't on solar yet is because solar panels aren't that easy to build, are quite expensive en coal/gas is still dead cheap. Seeing as we rather buy useless crap like iPhones and Playstations as suppose to buying mills and panels...
- inactive, on 07/26/2008, -0/+2Citing the equation YOU posted, energy and mass are one in the same, while the ratio isn't 1:1, energy more or less is mass, and visa versa. Therefore you cannot really create either, simply "convert to a useful form"
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