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Desert Sun: Acciona Wants in on Desertec Solar Project

Europe’s plan to tap the Sahara sun for clean electricity may still be just a notion—but it’s an increasingly attractive one for some companies.


Desertec’s clean-energy vision

Spain’s Acciona, a big clean-energy player, said yesterday it wants to get into the Desertec Industrial Initiative, a $500 billion project to put solar- and wind-power plants in North Africa to brings lots of clean energy to Europe.

Clean Tech Insight reports: “‘We are holding the first talks in order to get on board as soon as possible,’ Acciona Chairman Juan Manuel Entrecanales said Monday. ‘It’s an ambitious project, but possible in the mid- and long-term.’”

Most of the companies in the consortium are German, including Siemens, Munich Re, and RWE. Spain’s Abengoa is a founding member of the group. But Acciona’s interest is understandable: It has been plowing into concentrated solar power lately, the centerpiece of the Desertec idea. On Monday, Acciona unveiled its first concentrated solar project in Spain; it has operated another solar plant in Nevada for two years.

The Sahara’s appeal as a possible home for the new solar technology is easy to see: The desert is wide open, and concentrated solar thermal requires lots of space. Acciona’s new Spanish plant, for instance, requires 321 acres for a 50 megawatt plant. In contrast, a 1,000 megawatt nuclear plant needs about 25 acres.

Then there are the costs. Concentrated solar power has an advantage compared to other renewable energies, including wind power, because the electricity can be stored.

But it’s not cheap: The World Resources Institute estimates that concentrated solar power can compete with coal when carbon prices hit $115 a ton—an eight-fold increase over current prices for carbon permits in Europe.

Image credit: DESERTEC Foundation.

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    • Ron and nosf37, thanks for the info.

    • In addition to HVDC benefits mentioned by Anonimous and Ron, it allows connection of power systems that do not operate in synchronis.

      The following is the link describing the longest HVDC cable in operation (between Norway and Netherlands):

      From there you can find more links describing the HVDC technology.

    • Those transmission projects rely on HVDC technology That has been around for many years. Over long distance DC lines have fewer losses. In case of underwater cable it is the only alternative to transmit any significant power even over a short distance. For an AC current the cable is a capacitor, a long transmission line is a capacitor or a short cable is a capacitor. AC transmission has losses trough the capacitor and resistor of the line. A DC transmission has only the resistor losses. The price is a converter station at each end or mulit-iterminal are possible to tap power along the line. The advantage of the converter station the amount of power the line transmits can be set.

    • The second comment is a nice PR news release but it doesn’t say much about how the technology works. Hydra’s comment at least starts to address my questions. The link provided is more informative than the press release.

      The issue Tesla and Edison faced was the resistance of copper to conduct electricity effeciently over seveal miles. The last “breakthrough” I heard of a couple of years ago was encasing a higher effeciency power line (copper mixed with other metals) in a pipe filled with liquide nitrogen to travel a few miles from a sub-station to a city center. It was going to be expensive to build, operate, and was prone to leaking.

      To add to Hydra’s comment, I think what makes undersea power cables possible is the water cools the cable insulation so it doesn’t melt like it sometimes does underground (with dramatic results!). Underground cables sometimes are encased in oil filled pipes for cooling. Chicago and New York City have had a few of these cable/pipes explode during hot summers at peak usage hours.

      The project sending electricity from Africa to Europe is sending much more current much farther than existing undersea cables. How will they do it? The link Anonomous provided says it’s possible but I haven’t yet located info on how it works or how efficient it is. One of the big problems with plain copper cables is they aren’t effient. The huge number of Euro’s estimated for the project suggest the transmission cable won’t be any more efficient than existing power lines.

      Electrical engineerig comments or educational links welcome.

    • Isn’t th eproblem that high voltage AC is hard to transmit underground? We use the insulating capability of air when we transmit AC high voltage on above ground power lines. That is why we see those (very long) ceramic insulators to keep the power line away from the tower.

      I think DC produces a lot less EMF and therefore needs less insulaton and is less prone to arcing. This makes underground transmission of DC easier, but this is offset by the cost of converting to and from DC at each end of the transmission. This sis something the anonymous hvDC promoter fails to mention and it is not an insignificant cost.

      Some engineer please correct me.

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