Europe to invest in solar power?
Wednesday, July 30th, 2008 | Author: News Team
Speaking at the Euroscience Open Forum in Barcelona, a scientist representing the European commission’s Institute for Energy, claims that it would only require the capture of just 0.3% of the light falling on the Sahara and Middle East deserts to meet all of Europe’s energy needs. It is therefore perhaps no surprise that scientists are calling for the creation of huge arrays of solar farms - generating electricity either through photovoltaic cells, or by concentrating the sun’s heat to boil water and drive turbines.
It is further believed that a massive new direct current (DC) supergrid could transmit electricity along high voltage direct current cables to allow countries such as the UK and Denmark to export wind energy generated electricity at times of surplus supply, as well as to import electricity from other green sources. With energy losses on DC lines being far lower than on the traditional AC ones, transmission of energy over long distances is not only feasible but economic.
The grid proposal, which has won political support from a number of European leaders, answers the perennial criticism that renewable power will never be economic because the weather is not sufficiently predictable. However, its supporters argue that even if the wind is not blowing hard enough in the North Sea, it will be blowing hard enough somewhere else in Europe, or the sun will be shining on a solar farm somewhere.
Interestingly scientists also claim that harnessing the Saharan sun would be particularly effective because the sunlight in this area allows for around three times the electricity generation capability - compared with similar panels in northern Europe.And, to state the obvious, there are far fewer cloudy days in the Saharan area than in northern Europe!
It is also claimed that much of the cost would come in developing the public grid networks of connecting countries in the southern Mediterranean, which do not currently have the spare capacity to carry the electricity that the north African solar farms could generate. Even if high voltage cables between North Africa and Italy would be built or the existing cable between Morocco and Spain would be used, the infrastructure of the transfer countries such as Italy and Spain or Greece or Turkey also needs a major re-structuring.
The idea, of course, is not new and a number of southern Mediterranean countries - including Portugal and Spain - have already invested heavily in solar energy. In addition, Algeria has begun work on a vast combined solar and natural gas plant which will begin producing energy in 2010 - leading to that country being able to export 6,000 megawatts of solar-generated power to Europe by 2020.
Saturday, 2. August 2008
OUR TROUBLED COUNTRY: WE LACK A STRATEGIC ENERGY POLICY
Yet all this pales into insignificance compared with the real energy crisis roaring down on Britain with the speed of a bullet train as, within six or seven years, we stand to lose 40 per cent of all our existing electricity-generating capacity.
Thanks to decades of neglect and wishful thinking by successive governments - and now the devastating impact of a directive from Brussels - we are about to see 17 of our major power stations forced to close, leaving us with a massive shortfall.
Even after 2010, the experts say our power stations cannot be guaranteed to provide us with a continuous supply, meaning that we face the possibility of power cuts far worse than those which recently - largely unreported - blacked out half-a-million homes.”
The British Parliament stumbles and bumbles into the future without a clue or a concept of a “National Strategic Energy Policy.”
Read more from Liberty:
http://uktabloid.co.uk/Liberty.html