Solar power plant in Morocco big enough to see from space

The rolling desert hills and fiercely sunny sky of the city of Ouarzazate in Morocco have provided the backdrop for scenes in films like "Lawrence of Arabia" (1962), "The Mummy" (1999), "Gladiator" (2000), and for HBO's "Game of Thrones."

What you may not know is that Ouarzazate is one of the solar energy capitals of the world, thanks to an absolutely massive solar array that officially opened in February 2016.

The country currently depends on imports for 97% of its energy but has plans for the solar plant to provide 38% of its power by 2020.

Not to mention, the plant is cutting hundreds of thousands of tons of carbon emissions while aiming to provide over 1 million people with clean electricity.

http://www.upworthy.com/theres-a-solar-farm-in-morocco-thats-so-big-you-can-see-it-from-space

The need to build more of these bad boys.

There's one in Southern California and another going up in central Texas. I think there are others around the world, and we really can't have enough. Not only good for the environment, but I think the world would be more peaceful if more countries were energy-independent.

Lovely lovely 'green' energy...


In the happy clappy world of the idiot lefties who have absolutely no grasp of reality but live in a dream world of ignorance...


http://spectrum.ieee.org/green-tech/solar/solar-energy-isnt-always-as-green-as-you-think

Ben_Reilly wrote:There's one in Southern California and another going up in central Texas. I think there are others around the world, and we really can't have enough. Not only good for the environment, but I think the world would be more peaceful if more countries were energy-independent.

We have all this at our disposal, the wind, the sun, water - which can all replace oil as an energy source, yet we still fight for oil and send our people out to die for oil.

How stupid man is.

Tommy Monk wrote:


Lovely lovely 'green' energy...


In the happy clappy world of the idiot lefties who have absolutely no grasp of reality but live in a dream world of ignorance...


http://spectrum.ieee.org/green-tech/solar/solar-energy-isnt-always-as-green-as-you-think

and despite the above it is STILL greener than fossil fuel...and one hell of a lot safer than nuclear...

moreover fossil fuels ARE going to run out.......

quote from the begining of the article....

             "Solar panels glimmering in the sun are an icon of all that is green. But while generating electricity through photovoltaics is indeed better for the environment than burning fossil fuels,"

So yes it has its own unique problems.......no doubt about it....BUT even admitting thosde problems...IT IS STILL better....*****and is, (again according to the article) getting BETTER....******

*****see below


The BIGGEST advantage though is...given you have the room and skills to build your own system, it is relatively cheap to end up almost entirely independant of the money grabbing energy producers....

I ONLY draw from the mains when I need to run up an exceptional load...such as my big saw or run the oven/tumble dryer etc........ and when I install a bit more battery back up, a few more panels and a new 5kW inverter.....I wont even need it for that.......

my NEXT experiment though is to gradually replace all the lead acid batteries with lithium ion or lithium gel cells.....

1/10 the weight...1/4 the size and far more capacity....

all run and controlled by arduinos......then the electric supplier can go shove it.....where the sun dont shine  

will then likely replace the gas boiler with a wood fired one....supplied of course from my bit of woodland and any that i can "scrounge" and the gas board can shove it too......    

what you missed......

http://spectrum.ieee.org/energywise/green-tech/solar/thin-film-solar-cell-freed-from-toxic-processing

TOMMY MONK preaching on clean and efficient energy sources ???


THAT'S sounds a bit like Donald Trump lecturing on international diplomacy.

METHINKS the wee little womble must have sucked in too many coal fumes when he was growing up..    

Wolf, do you think we need oil? Or will always need oil?

@ eddie :

SOME form of oil is required for lubrication purposes...
AND petroleum and coal by-products do have important industrial and pharmaceutical uses (though, it must also be pointed out that accounts for less than 10% of production..).

BUT petroleum based oil and petrol has only been widely used as  a major energy and heating source since the 19th century..

MANKIND got along without it for over 99% of its existence.
AND alternative sources of energy, plastics and lubricants are coming onstream by the year..

EVEN without the negative effects of pollution and climate change, the dwindling supplies of crude oil means that petroleum based products will be unaffordable within a few decades...      

So what's the best thing for us to do, which way do we turn? Wind? Water? Sun?

Agreed Wolfie, and cleanly generated electricity is going to HAVE to replace it....for many purposes

and as I said it will come as a REAL shock to the power lords....becasue anyone will be able to put up solar cells and benefit....

I dont see even the most rapacious oil baron being able to claim ownership of sunlight, nor any govt able to tax it....

all 3 have a part to play eddie....

its a case of whats most appropriate in any given circumstance.....

You're right Vic Ive often thought that; how will the powers that be ever tax or capitalise on solar power?

One thing Tommy missed is that plants like this one in Morocco don't even use solar panels; they use mirrors that concentrate the sun's heat on a quantity of liquid, which creates high-pressure steam used to spin turbines.

It's essentially the same method coal-powered plants use, except the sun provides the heat instead of burning coal.

The sunlight heats up the fluid to over 700 degrees Fahrenheit, combines it with water, and the resulting steam helps spin nearby turbines — generating energy. The plant even keeps going past daylight hours by using molten salt, which is great at retaining and transporting large amounts of heat.

That is so clever, and so simple!

And yeah, even if traditional solar cells create pollution, it's only during the phases in which they're manufactured and when they're discarded -- they don't continuously create pollution like fossil fuels do.

eddie wrote:That is so clever, and so simple!

Yep! People already do this on a small scale to bake things like bread

Lord Foul wrote:
Agreed Wolfie, and cleanly generated electricity is going to HAVE to replace it....for many purposes

and as I said it will come as a REAL shock to the power lords....becasue anyone will be able to put up solar cells and benefit....

I dont see even the most rapacious oil baron being able to claim ownership of sunlight, nor any govt able to tax it....

AS WITH the Tobacco companies before them, many of the "money men" behind the various oil, gas and mining corporations have realised that "the writing is on the wall" in regards to the long-term futures for their industries.

THAT'S WHY many of them have been diversifying their investments into the Pharmaceutical, Agribusiness, Food Processing, Construction and Engineering sectors in recent decades..
REDUCING their risks and 'downsides'...

The energy companies still have a big advantage in that they have all the infrastructure. Sure, some people will put up their own clean-energy systems and hook them up to their houses, but most will still want to pay a power bill every month for the convenience of not having to engineer it or maintain it themselves.

Notice nobody ever talks about eliminating emissions? Simply put, we can't fly airplanes or push big freight ships across the ocean with electrical power, at least not yet and probably not for a long time. There will still be a market for fossil fuels, and part of that will also be standby fuel for power plants when greener methods aren't meeting demand. The best option for that would be nuclear, but the public still needs a lot of convincing on that front.

But despite the technological limitations, there are things being done to reduce emissions that are just flat-out clever, and a lot of them rely on things we used before fossil fuels. My favorite example is this:



It's a towing kite for a cargo ship -- essentially a sail -- and it produces about 2,000 KW of thrust

2000kW of thrust....pfffft......I can do better than that on 3 pints of best bitter on a saturday night...ask the missus....

Lord Foul wrote:2000kW of thrust....pfffft......I can do better than that on 3 pints of best bitter on a saturday night...ask the missus....

Beer gives me gas too.

Ben_Reilly wrote:

Lord Foul wrote:2000kW of thrust....pfffft......I can do better than that on 3 pints of best bitter on a saturday night...ask the missus....

Beer gives me gas too.

Lord Foul wrote:

Tommy Monk wrote:


Lovely lovely 'green' energy...


In the happy clappy world of the idiot lefties who have absolutely no grasp of reality but live in a dream world of ignorance...


http://spectrum.ieee.org/green-tech/solar/solar-energy-isnt-always-as-green-as-you-think

and despite the above it is STILL greener than fossil fuel...and one hell of a lot safer than nuclear...

moreover fossil fuels ARE going to run out.......

quote from the begining of the article....

             "Solar panels glimmering in the sun are an icon of all that is green. But while generating electricity through photovoltaics is indeed better for the environment than burning fossil fuels,"

So yes it has its own unique problems.......no doubt about it....BUT even admitting thosde problems...IT IS STILL better....*****and is, (again according to the article) getting BETTER....******

*****see below


The BIGGEST advantage though is...given you have the room and skills to build your own system, it is relatively cheap to end up almost entirely independant of the money grabbing energy producers....

I ONLY draw from the mains when I need to run up an exceptional load...such as my big saw or run the oven/tumble dryer etc........ and when I install a bit more battery back up, a few more panels and a new 5kW inverter.....I wont even need it for that.......

my NEXT experiment though is to gradually replace all the lead acid batteries with lithium ion or lithium gel cells.....

1/10 the weight...1/4 the size and far more capacity....

all run and controlled by arduinos......then the electric supplier can go shove it.....where the sun dont shine  

will then likely replace the gas boiler with a wood fired one....supplied of course from my bit of woodland and any that i can "scrounge" and the gas board can shove it too......    

Yes... that is indeed the first part of the first line of text of the article... but it goes on to say...


"Solar panels glimmering in the sun are an icon of all that is green. But while generating electricity through photovoltaics is indeed better for the environment than burning fossil fuels, several incidents have linked the manufacture of these shining symbols of environmental virtue to a trail of chemical pollution. And it turns out that the time it takes to compensate for the energy used and the greenhouse gases emitted in photovoltaic panel production varies substantially by technology and geography."


Then it goes on to list all the costs of the heavy industry and chemicals and energy needed to produce them!!!


Turns out this 'green' energy is not so 'green' after all...




And Ben... the op claimed the solar panel installation... I'm just replying to the misguided belief that it is all lovely and green...

true tommy...Its not as "green as we are led to beleive...BUT it IS still greener than fossil fuels.....and as the article I linked to shows...getting greener.....

No... the article linked was talking mostly about the use of a particularly hazardous chemical in some solar panels... and from what I could see... was only talking about the possibility of swapping some of it with a magnesium based compound but still using in conjunction with the incredibly toxic cadmium based one...


And still just talk isn't it...?



And you say "Its not as 'green' as we are led to beleive...BUT it IS still greener than fossil fuels"...

Thst is presuming that fossil fuels are as bad as we are led to believe...!!!



And presuming that the only choice is fossil or solar...which it isn't...

solar is "better" in as much it takes the power out of the hands of the powerful.....

wind and water are in some ways better

and ...the toxicity of the cadmium based tech should not be that much of an issue IF it is handled correctly and disposed of correctly at the end of its useful life.....christ on a bike....a LOT of metalwork used to be coated with a cadmium rust proof layer...it was only a problem if heated to welding temps.....there are still millions of ni cad batteries about....

the issue isnt the tech...but its handling and production....

and yes tommy ...fossil fuels ARE dirty and polluting.....

Tommy Monk wrote:And Ben... the op claimed the solar panel installation...

No it didn't, the word "panel" doesn't appear in the OP at all. You just can't read very well.

Easy mistake to make... but I have been talking about photovoltaics... and the facts remain .

Tommy Monk wrote:

Easy mistake to make... but I have been talking about photovoltaics... and the facts remain  .

There's very little people can do that doesn't disrupt nature in one way or another ... photovoltaics are still much cleaner than fossil fuels, and that's a fact, Tommy.

Not a fact at all...


As I have shown...

TOMMY and his fellow like minded knuckle-dragging pre-neanderthal goons are nothing more than the gullible and willing unpaid mouthpieces for the likes of the Koch Bros. and that fat mincing turd Un_Lord Christopher Monckton...      

IF ONLY Tommy had any self-pride left in his spineless little  grub's body, he would be demanding payment from those Oil and Mining cartels, rather being their sockpuppet mouthpiece for free  !!!

And once again we have flea keeper launching yet another personal attack and adding nothing of relevance to the topic in hand.

.
.

I rest my case...

Tommy Monk wrote:Not a fact at all...


As I have shown...

You mean with that article you linked to, which says:

generating electricity through photovoltaics is indeed better for the environment than burning fossil fuels,

???

And then it says this as part of the same sentence..


'... several incidents have linked the manufacture of these shining symbols of environmental virtue to a trail of chemical pollution. And it turns out that the time it takes to compensate for the energy used and the greenhouse gases emitted in photovoltaic panel production varies substantially by technology and geography."


Then it goes on to list all the costs of the heavy industry and chemicals and energy needed to produce them!!!


Turns out this 'green' energy is not so 'green' after all...

however its STILL better than fossil fuels......thats the part you miss.......

Didn't miss anything... just pointing out that they are not as green as some seem to think...

Okay, Tommy, I said:

There's very little people can do that doesn't disrupt nature in one way or another ... photovoltaics are still much cleaner than fossil fuels, and that's a fact, Tommy.

You replied:

Not a fact at all...


As I have shown...

I pointed to the part of your article which flatly declares:

generating electricity through photovoltaics is indeed better for the environment than burning fossil fuels

So yeah, you were obviously trying to make it out as though solar panels cause more pollution than burning fossil fuels, which is obviously wrong and refuted by your own source.

Having read the thread that is the way it came across Tommy tbf

Ben_Reilly wrote:Okay, Tommy, I said:

There's very little people can do that doesn't disrupt nature in one way or another ... photovoltaics are still much cleaner than fossil fuels, and that's a fact, Tommy.

You replied:

Not a fact at all...


As I have shown...

I pointed to the part of your article which flatly declares:

generating electricity through photovoltaics is indeed better for the environment than burning fossil fuels

So yeah, you were obviously trying to make it out as though solar panels cause more pollution than burning fossil fuels, which is obviously wrong and refuted by your own source.

The direct generation of electricity through pv is indeed better for the environment than burning some things... but when you take into account the costs in energy and heavy industry and the toxic chemicals involved to produce them then the case is not so clear cut...