There had been a lot of debates on ‘Why don’t we cover the entire Sahara desert with Solar Panels?’
Most of us do ask persistent questions, like ‘Why do we need to install Solar PV plants on our rooftops, as we have deserts available to generate solar energy at scale?’ ‘What if the entire deserts say SAHARA or THAR gets covered with Solar panels to power the planet?’
It’s a good thought to conduct reasoning over the same, however, there are some facts due to which this thought becomes inefficient in its practical implication. Let’s learn more about the same.
It would take 51.4 billion 350 W solar panels covering an area of 115,625 square miles to provide enough solar energy to power the entire world. It may sound like a lot, but that's only 3.27% of the United States and is only slightly smaller than the state of Mexico. It's still a large area, but you need somewhere sunny to catch the sun. Sahara seems like the best choice. Being in the desert and on the equator, there is a lot of sun and very few clouds can be seen! Sahara spans 3.6 million square miles, so our giant solar farm only occupies 3.25% of that.
It will cost you $210 to $450 to install a 350W solar panel in your home. In order to Install it in the desert it will definitely cost more. You have to build module mounting structures for the solar panels, move them nowhere, and carve out new electrical infrastructure in dunes and rocky ground. Let's take a rough estimate of what it would cost to set up in the Sahara Desert. Let's say $450 for panels and shipping, $300 for infrastructure, and $250 for mechanical structure and installation. This is a bulk price of $1,000 for the panel.
Our solar farm will cost $514 trillion, or about 23 times the cost of the US economy. Even if my estimate of the cost of solar panels is wrong, it shows the sheer cost of such a tremendous project and perhaps why no one has ever done it before.
Cost can be a big issue, but it doesn't matter. We're trying to save the world, but we're thinking with blue eyes! What if we had infinite money? Should we still do this?
Even if we could build this, we would have to spread this energy around the world. And countries like Australia will need power even when the Sahara is dark. Both problems are relatively easy to solve.
A huge battery pack is needed to store the energy generated during the day and power the farm at night. By building such a battery pack under the solar panel, you can avoid taking up any more space. Each solar panel has its own small battery to keep it powered day and night.
Approximately 4.2 kWh of storage battery should be added to each panel (12 hours at 350 W output). This adds about $900 to the cost of each panel. That's almost double the total cost! But the budget is unlimited, so let's do it anyway!
So 51.4 billion solar panels and he has 215.9 billion kWh (215.9 TWh) batteries. I wonder how much of our carbon footprint went into manufacturing. Let's not think about it yet. We must first get power from the Sahara.
So does it make sense to run power cables from the Sahara Desert to Sindei? About 90,000 km.
Today the longest power line is 1,580 miles. Use very high voltages to limit the amount of electrical resistance. The higher the voltage, the lower the resistance. This means less current loss per km of cable. Long power lines can be expected to lose the performance of about 4% or more, as the upper limit for power line losses is about 4% or more, which no longer makes economic sense. Estimating 9,000 miles results in a 22.8% drop in performance.
But do you understand the picture? Storing and transporting energy around the world is inefficient. But we have unlimited money, baby! Spend your money. Not efficient, but saves the planet. right?
Yeah, you might want to stick your horse to it as long as it's climate-friendly. Because our dream project has a pretty big meaning besides taking the desert.
These solar panels will change the weather across the Sahara Desert and have a global impact. Half the reason the Sahara is a desert is the perfect atmospheric heater. Harvesting the sun's rays and converting them into electricity can effectively cool the desert. This means that the rain can return to the area and allow the plants to grow again. This has a domino effect, as plants cool the desert in the same way solar panels do, causing a snowball effect of vegetation, so the desert slowly turns greener.
Great, more vegetation! Oddly enough, however, many of the larger and more complex ecosystems depend on the barren desert of the Sahara. The Amazon is fertilized by dust blown across the Atlantic from the Sahara, and the heat of Sarahan rains incessantly through the Atlantic winds of my mediation. Clear the air of dust and cool the Sahara and you can beat the Amazon!
The Atlantic Ocean is also fertilized by dust from the Sahara Desert. Its nutrient-rich sand fuels giant algal blooms. These flowering events produce much of the Earth's oxygen, so we may also see a drop in oxygen levels! Cyclones and hurricanes are increasing. This will devastate the population of all of America! Imagine Hurricane Katrina occurring every few years. It's so harmful.
The most striking effect, however, is the counter-intuitive increase in surface temperature.
Behold, water vapour (clouds) is a powerful greenhouse gas, far superior to CO². When rain falls on equatorial regions like the Amazon, the greening of the Sahara makes the rest of the world wetter and cloudier. This traps heat and warms the earth.
But global warming will lead to the loss of ice caps that disrupt ocean currents, which in turn will cause a huge collapse in biodiversity around the world. prize. Methane and carbon dioxide trapped in Arctic sea ice would be released, causing massive climate change and a mass extinction that could cost humans.
So if we want to fight climate change, it's important to realize that we live on one planet. All ecosystems are connected by the global web. None of them is isolated. Once you start messing with one of them, it will have a domino effect on the others. Concentrating our global influence in one place is like pulling a Jenga block out from the bottom. This is a bad idea, in other words. Instead, you need to make tactical decisions about where to get your energy from in order to minimize your global impact. Like testing the tower blocks to see which ones are already loose, and not all fall out when you tear them apart.
There's one final reason you might not want to do this, and I haven't dissuaded you from thinking about it just yet. Although the Sahara looks like a vast wilderness to conquer, it is not. This country has been robbed and the African people and their governments own their resources. Europeans, Americans, and Asians all plundered Africa at some point in history for resources such as minerals, slaves, and land. Nothing more needs to be said, except that such barbaric acts must never be repeated. African countries have a right to this land and its energy. No other part of the world would try to take it away from them without the cooperation and fair payment. Countries like Libya and Egypt, which own a lot of land in the Sahara Desert, do not have stable enough governments to undertake such international projects. Do you spend hundreds of trillions of dollars on projects that may fail or be cancelled by the government that took the land from under you?
That's a terrible idea!
But there is something beautiful hidden here. A relatively small amount of solar panels can power the entire world. On Earth, he has 57.27 million square miles of land, of which only 0.2% needs to be converted into solar energy and can be completely self-powered. To give perspective, it is estimated that 1% of his land is built and inhabited (cities and towns, not agricultural land). In other words, if we could convert 20% of the world's urban areas to solar power, we would be fully self-generating.
Sahara is not our answer. Our cities, villages and roads are. We have the technology to turn our civilization into a unique carbon-neutral power plant, regardless of global weather patterns or deserts.
This is great! But it also shows that we need to be careful with how we treat renewable energy. Poorly managed carbon-neutral energy can be as devastating as fossil fuels.
WAAREE RTL (WRTL) is Waaree Energies’ EPC arm which is also a listed company in India. It has an experience of more than 600MWp of Solar power plant installations across several countries including projects like ‘50MW in 100 Days – Vietnam’, while embarking on a successful competence in Ground mounted, Rooftop and Floating Solar power projects. WRTL has helped numerous clients with their transition to clean energy and helped reduce their carbon footprint with SOLAR POWER. Step on to your cleaner journey by contacting us at 18002121321 or mail us at waaree@waaree.com
