Not everyone can win the solar lottery. The world has many sunny places. But, only some where the sun blasts away all year at high intensity. They are places like North Africa. Southern Spain. The Middle East of course. And then, California.
Below is a false-color map of southern California, (colored) to show concentration of the sun’s power–as measured in kilowatt hours (kWh), per square meter, per day. The places in the world where solar power has its greatest opportunity are where the sun hits the earth at and above 6.0 kWh/sq.meter per day. As you can see in the notation, concentrating-solar-power plants have already found their way to the right spots, in the US southwest.
Historically, solar power has been able to capture up to 12%, 14% and even 15% of those natural kilowatt levels. But CSP (concentrating solar power) with its parabolic troughs that heat fluid to run a turbine approach 20% capture. Furthermore, when combined with Salt Tanks, there is the ability to store energy for release overnight, and this adds versatility.
The DESERTEC foundation, which composed this graphic, has been formed to deal with the problems of power generation and also desalination. Interestingly, the two issues come together nicely. Not only in terms of human need, in places like the Southern Mediterranean, North Africa, and Mid-East. But also in the dovetailing of technology. There are apparently rather juicy possibilities in both co-generation and double-functioning in the Solar-Desalination process. There has been alot of work done in this area, and one can either read technical papers on the subject–or–follow the conversation on Twitter.
There is no question that industrial strength solar is hugely expensive to build. But what’s intriguing about Solar in contrast to Wind Power, for example, is the long-life profile and the much reduced number of moving parts. Some of the CSP (also SEGS–solar energy generating systems) located in California were first constructed over 20 years ago. A potential analytical failure now, in the prospective use of Solar on a wide scale, is the assumption that the price of power generation from current sources–coal, natural gas, and nuclear–will not escalate sharply in the next ten years. That is exactly the kind of wrong turn made in the present, that creates enormous opportunity.
-Gregor
Graphic: Desertec Australia.
Further Viewing: North American solar strength map.
See also: Proposed California Large Solar Energy Projects w/Map.
