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112 Comments
- Jugalator, on 12/05/2007, -3/+45Can the African sun power Africa? No wait, who cares about them.
- Rhodamine, on 12/05/2007, -8/+48How about African Sun powering Africa?
It'd be nice to see Africa get to at least keep one of it's natural resources for a change. - AZooYorkMystery, on 12/05/2007, -7/+40Once again, Europe profiting off of Africa. Not that this sounds like something that could get out of hand, but I hope it's handled carefully.
- inactive, on 12/05/2007, -1/+26fta - "The idea is a real win-win -- a vast new renewable power source would be opened up, desert areas that are unsuitable for agriculture would become newly valuable, and the project would be a source of jobs and income for impoverished areas of North Africa. As a bonus, under the current plan the generation process would also serve to produce desalinated sea water for the booming populations of the host nations."
All that in itself is admirable, how's about also providing them with the damn electricity, I didn't see that mentioned! - inactive, on 12/05/2007, -2/+25Anything to get us away from oil is great...
- camiloteram, on 12/05/2007, -0/+15Reminds me of something we are going through now...
- amoro99, on 12/05/2007, -0/+12Well technically it's coming from the sun.
- Aviatrixt, on 12/05/2007, -0/+11I'm glad to see we're taking steps to move away from foreign dependence on energy.
- diggerman32, on 12/05/2007, -3/+12African or European swallow?
- gthiruva, on 12/05/2007, -2/+11"How about African Sun powering Africa?"
There's plenty of space and sunlight in the Sahara to power both Europe, Africa, and perhaps the whole world if you big a big enough solar field. - Ganthiel, on 12/05/2007, -6/+15Hmm. Putting all of Europe's power generation capacity into the hands of Islamic dictatorships. Sounds like a good plan to me.
- KingBunny, on 12/05/2007, -0/+8But what can Africa do for ME?
- squegie, on 12/06/2007, -1/+9These are not solar panels, these are mirrors focusing on a metal tube of water.
RTFA - jmpeagle, on 12/05/2007, -1/+9because black people polulate Northern Africa? It's mostly Arabs and Berbers
- digalphabeta, on 12/05/2007, -1/+8Get of the govertment teet, and go get a job, you loser.
- mojaam, on 12/05/2007, -4/+11Since when did Africa had it's own sun?
- nyx210, on 12/05/2007, -1/+8There's always a catch, of course... Notice how they don't mention how many jobs or how much income those people will actually get...
- amoro99, on 12/05/2007, -0/+7You seriously think that Europe is going to use up all of "Africa's solar energy"? Are you a Miss America candidate, such as?
- declawedpaw, on 12/05/2007, -0/+6Install stationary bicycles with electric generators in African cities. Offer free rides to Africans. Wires to Europe. Win-win!
- inactive, on 12/05/2007, -0/+6It's not for them, it's for Europe.
- outcast23, on 12/05/2007, -0/+6this was on digg before under a different article
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2007/dec/02/ ...
2/3rd of the power genrated would go to Africa, and they get clean water from this, has to be a win/win situation. - Tyr86, on 12/05/2007, -0/+5Yeah, but there are these things in the sky called clouds that Europe gets much more of instead of a place like the Sahara or the Middle East.
It's OK, I used to be scared of the giant orange death ball outside too...
They mostly come at night... mostly... - SilverBlade2k, on 12/05/2007, -0/+5I bet the Middle East oil tycoons will try to stop this...
- Tyr86, on 12/05/2007, -0/+5I guess you haven't seen the problem in Zimbabwe or other areas where the native rebels overthrew the white farmers who were managing to feed everyone in the area and have food leftover to sell to other countries. Now it's famine and bloodshed because the rebels can't run the farm as well as the white farmers did...
But on the other hand, we have the blood diamonds and the diamond cartels controlling the market and jacking up prices. - squegie, on 12/06/2007, -0/+5If you read the "relevant link" http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2007/dec/02/ ... You will see that most of the power is going locally.
"In this way up to 100 billion watts of power could be generated: two thirds of it would be kept for local needs, the rest - around 30 billion watts - would be exported to Europe."
I also like the concept of how they plan to boil sea water to make fresh water. - swab, on 12/05/2007, -0/+5/shrugs , well I dunno... aaaaaarghh!!!
- funknjunk, on 12/05/2007, -5/+9Sounds admirable but how's about Africa get some of that energy... y'know cus that's where it's coming from...
- inactive, on 12/05/2007, -4/+810 tera watts gets generated in Africa. 0.5 tera watts gets to europe after getting transmitted over thousands of miles. Did any of you study high school physics? just because it sounds cool doesnt mean its viable.
- asskey, on 12/05/2007, -0/+4RTFA
- Modiga, on 12/05/2007, -0/+4Firstly the sun isn't as bright in most parts of Europe as it is in the Middle East and Africa. Secondly, if the solar dishes are placed in the deserts then they're not exactly wasting land that can be used for other purposes such as farming.
- inactive, on 12/06/2007, -2/+6Amazing how many physicists and electronics engineers comment on digg
- estacado, on 12/05/2007, -0/+4White man's burden I tell you. We gotta show 'em how to use their sun.
- gthiruva, on 12/05/2007, -1/+5And also on the topic of avoiding exploitation of Africa, think of the One Laptop Per Child project. If you want to buy a laptop for your child, they actually make you buy two - one for your kid and one for a poor kid you don't know.
The same model can be applied here to solar power in Africa - for every kWh developed for export to Europe, one kWh must be developed for domestic African use. - grumpyrain, on 12/06/2007, -0/+4Transmission losses are certainly a consideration, but your figures seem off to me. Presumably they would use HVDC ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HVDC ) for transmission lines, where loses account for about 3% per 1000km. From the northern tip of Africa, 3000km will get you nearly everywhere in Europe. If you are collecting 10 TW, over 9TW should survive even 3000km.
I agree with your assertion that cool != viable, and I am not arguing this is necessarily feasible, but where are you getting your 95% transmission loss from? - Bukowsky, on 12/05/2007, -0/+3no this hasn't been posted 2 or 3 times already.... maybe a similar story from a different site.
but it's not a dup. - bdub92, on 12/05/2007, -2/+5No, but the African people can!
- amoro99, on 12/05/2007, -0/+3FTA: Still, if this or a similar project doesn't happen now, in 30 years or so energy shortages may make it impossibly expensive to build.
An often neglected scenario. We run out of cheap oil and end up spending much more money than it costs now. - jmpeagle, on 12/05/2007, -4/+7europe is an awesome country
- nnssa, on 12/05/2007, -1/+4wow...do you just...fart excellence?
- tehmark, on 12/05/2007, -0/+3Oh Snap! :D
- s0crates82, on 12/06/2007, -1/+4Interesting. All of the money the US has spent on Iraq could have been used to build immense government-owned solar farms in the deserts of the southwest to significantly reduce America's dependence on, and overuse of, fossil fuels.
- reisyboy, on 12/05/2007, -0/+3Well you may say they do need energy, but DURR they don't need 1/6th of the power the entire of the EU needs. Its a win for them lots of money money, they can make their own solar power plants then provide their own power. Or even use some of the energy produced by these and send the excess off to Europe. They would not need 1/6th of the EU power, it may require the EU only geting 1/7th of its power need, but that is HUGE. We are not just talking about one country this is the entire EU.
- darny, on 12/06/2007, -0/+3or 3 days in iraq
- AdrewMc3, on 12/06/2007, -0/+2Good idea... One problem thought it won't work! Okay maybe for some of Europe it may actually work, like Italy, or places relatively close. Here's the problem, electricity can't travel that far. You can't just say, I'll make a power plant here and power you way over there, it simply won't get there with enough power. Sure we have ways to make it go farther than we used to but this isn't indefinite. See this is part of the problem that no one sees, that there are three parts to electricity, obviously consumers, and producers, but there is distributors people and devices that move the electricity from the producer to the consumer, this maxes out at about 4000km which may seem long until you realize that you have to connect it to places, meaning the lines zig zag all over the place in order to power and when you realize that you still lose power at the end of 4000km, making it more expensive, and finally you realize that the zig zagging not only takes power by making the lines longer but taker power by connecting it to people who use it. Not to mention the cost of building the plant, the batteries (which makes more problems), the power lines, the transformers, and paying the people to build it, Africa can't afford it they should just mine their coal. Don't give me coal is bad, before we try and make Africa not use coal we should at least cut our own coal use down to something less than most of our power generation. Let the African's have power and who knows they might develop and solve the problem for us. Why couldn't an African have a smart idea no one thought of to solve this, if we let them?
- SuperCujo, on 12/06/2007, -0/+2Some people are just too stupid to realise that solar power does not mean just using solar cells to generate power. My personal preference is to start using more solar furnaces with molten sodium chloride as the liquid being heated. And they look cool too.
- Scynet, on 12/05/2007, -0/+2Oh, and we still suck at transferring power along long distances, the loss is pretty big which doesn't make it economically good. Until that's sorted out, there will be places on Earth where solar energy isn't an option. Well, unless you place the solar panels in space and beam the rays down directly.
- Scynet, on 12/05/2007, -0/+2Sunlight scatters more in north, that's why it's cold there (duh).
Test it yourself: take a ball or any curved surface, a piece of paper will do if you bend it. Now shine a light on it through a hole, such as the one in the middle of a CD / DVD ROM. First shine the light on an area that's closest to the hole: the area that's lit up will be quite round. Now shine the light on a bent area, and you'll get an elliptical and larger illuminated area. The same amount of light spreads out more in far north or south, while it's very concentrated near the eguator.
Conclusion: Not very effective in Europe. And yeah, there are clouds here too. - inactive, on 12/06/2007, -1/+3The Europeans might as well get some use out of the real estate; the locals sure aren't doing anything worthwhile with it.
- jongos, on 12/06/2007, -0/+2Dammit, Africa. Don't let them do it! For every plant that powers a European city, make them agree to build an identical one to power one of your own. That would be the smartest way to profit off your resources. While you're at it, stop selling off diamonds for money that your own corrupt governments will just steal. Instead, why don't you trade diamonds to improve the infrastructure of your countries or land development.
In short, stop chumping yourselves out of your own natural resources. - Bukowsky, on 12/05/2007, -2/+4wow. you really are a moron aren't you ?
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