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DESERT 100 MEGAWATTS PER SQUARE KILOMETRE. HOW CAN WE MOVE IT TO THE UK ??

Solar panels are quite inefficient as the radiation shining on the earth surface is over 1 kW per square metre but we will be lucky at midday to manage to capture 100 Watts. But yet this is a really large amount of energy if we had say a square kilometre of panels. I calculate it to be 100 MWatts at peak. Recently I was Chile in the Atacama desert and took attached photo

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Now there are power lines there but we only saw one block of solar panels during our 1000 km trip. There is no vegetation for animals to eat and no water for trees so the land is just barren a useless waste of space but if used to collect energy a miraculous godsend. Putting solar panels up in England is wasteful of land that can be used for agriculture and anyway we do not receive the full desert heat that the Sahara can supply.

What if UK were to purchase 10km by 10km or 100 square kilometres of desert which at peak gives 10 gigaWatts of power nearly a quarter of our power needs but how to transmit it is a problem that needs solving unless we do a deal with Gibraltar/Spain sort of import/export deal?.

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0 CliveS over 4 years ago

Maurice, Am I right in believing that Desertec never managed to start generation due to political problems in north Africa. I found this rather worrying summary at end of a write-up

" Whether fossil fuelled or renewable, energy schemes that don’t benefit the people where the energy is extracted, that serve to prop up authoritarian and repressive regimes or only enrich a tiny minority of voracious elites and transnationals are scandalous and must be resisted. Advocates for benign-sounding clean energy export projects like Desertec need to be careful they’re not supporting a new ‘renewable energy grab’: after oil, gas, gold, diamonds and cotton, is it now the turn of solar energy to maintain the global imperial dominance of the West over the rest of the planet? "

The idea of just purchasing a 100 square kilometres of desert has obviously been tried already and proved to cause local/national problems; if we are require to pay bribes to obtain planning consents from government officials.

Should we offer a north African country of choice, an interest free overseas aid loan to develop a solar generation plant, photovoltaic or high pressure steam, knowing that it will save that country building the normally cheaper hydrocarbon fuel alternative power stations. This will save CO2 emissions now and please note once we have satisfied the local country demand, it might then be possible to expand the project and export the surplus power overseas; to everyone's benefit.
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0 CliveS over 4 years ago

Maurice, Am I right in believing that Desertec never managed to start generation due to political problems in north Africa. I found this rather worrying summary at end of a write-up

" Whether fossil fuelled or renewable, energy schemes that don’t benefit the people where the energy is extracted, that serve to prop up authoritarian and repressive regimes or only enrich a tiny minority of voracious elites and transnationals are scandalous and must be resisted. Advocates for benign-sounding clean energy export projects like Desertec need to be careful they’re not supporting a new ‘renewable energy grab’: after oil, gas, gold, diamonds and cotton, is it now the turn of solar energy to maintain the global imperial dominance of the West over the rest of the planet? "

The idea of just purchasing a 100 square kilometres of desert has obviously been tried already and proved to cause local/national problems; if we are require to pay bribes to obtain planning consents from government officials.

Should we offer a north African country of choice, an interest free overseas aid loan to develop a solar generation plant, photovoltaic or high pressure steam, knowing that it will save that country building the normally cheaper hydrocarbon fuel alternative power stations. This will save CO2 emissions now and please note once we have satisfied the local country demand, it might then be possible to expand the project and export the surplus power overseas; to everyone's benefit.
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DESERT 100 MEGAWATTS PER SQUARE KILOMETRE. HOW CAN WE MOVE IT TO THE UK ??

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