Solar Deserts

Solar in the desert

I was speaking to a friend who lives in Germany about some of the interesting alternative energy projects she has read and heard about. Germany has some highly acclaimed passive solar designed homes and has earned a reputation in the last few decades as being a leader in conservation and alternative energy.

My friend told me about an interesting initiative that a number of European companies have taken called “Desertec” — a huge solar thermal power plant in the Sahara desert to provide energy to European customers. The image on the right is from an article on Treehugger called “Solar Thermal Power – Not Forgotten” by Tim McGee.

Michael Scott Moore also wrote about this project in his article entitled “The New Wave of Solar Thermal Energy. Basically the idea is to build solar thermal collectors that concentrate the heat into steam, and from steam into electricity. The plan includes huge solar storage tanks (filled with sand) to store heat during the day so the electrical generation can continue all night.

I think the biggest obstacle is getting the electricity across the Mediterranean Sea to European customers. But none of the individual parts of this project are ‘rocket science’ — they’ve all been done before. It had to become cost effective for people to consider this as an alternative to fossil fuels. Actually, it probably isn’t cost effective yet, but the realization that fossil fuels are a finite resource and that we have to reduce carbon emissions quickly and by a lot, is what has helped to re-focus on large-scale renewable energy solutions.

My house renovation on Main St, Enfield, is a small scale version of this. We are creating a large water/sand based storage tank; heating it up whenever the sun is shining with solar thermal collectors; and then using it both day and night to heat the house. I’m not generating steam and electricity with the heat — I’m using it directly to heat the house. Otherwise it is the same. All of the components are proven technologies. It’s just that it didn’t make financial sense in the past to build this system. Now it does. And the rebates don’t hurt!