posted by
martyb
on Tuesday November 24 2015, @04:27AM
from the good-reflection-on-the-country dept.
from the good-reflection-on-the-country dept.
The BBC reports that Morocco has built a large parabolic trough solar thermal plant in Ouarzazate, between the Atlas mountains and the Sahara desert.
Presumably real-estate prices in this province are not very high, and there's lots of sunlight.
This plant is designed to deliver electricity to Morocco in the early evening. After this phase of the project is completed and tested, the plan is to expand its capacity in order to sell electricity to Europe.
Here's another link (in French): http://lnt.ma/complexe-solaire-de-ouarzazate-le-maroc-sur-le-point-de-marquer-lhistoire-banque-mondiale/ (picture doesn't match the type of solar plant that this is).
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Morocco Builds Solar Thermal Power Plant
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(Score: 3, Informative) by frojack on Tuesday November 24 2015, @05:09AM
Google Maps [goo.gl] with data and copyright dates of 2015 shows just about nothing there, other than some sloppily laid out plowed roads, and now it's done already?
The Summary seems to jump the gun by a few years.
Carefully reading the translated French in the Moroccan web site (the last link) you find that:
"This national project is the establishment in 2020, Seven sites have been identified for this project, namely the sites of Ouarzazate, Ain Bni Mathar, Foum Al Oued, Boujdour, Sebkhat Tah, Midelt and Tata."
Then, paying closer attention to the BBC article, you find that nothing is really built yet.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by fritsd on Tuesday November 24 2015, @11:37AM
Maybe somebody nicked it, and sold them as "distorting mirrors" to fancy fairs :-)
I think you're right. I should have written "Morocco has begun construction" instead of "Morocco has built" :-(
I did think the original article was a bit .. gushing .. with its
but I wish them good luck in actually building it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 24 2015, @06:20PM
> Google Maps with data and copyright dates of 2015 shows just about nothing there,
Copyright dates don't mean jack on google maps - they are always the present year. Some versions of google maps will have a history slider that lets you view previous imagery along with the explicit dates. For whatever reason that area does not seem to have a history slider available. Or maybe google just fucked with their UI yet again so I can't find it.
But if you had clicked on the pink tear-drop for the "Centrale solaire Noor Ouarzazate 1" on the page you linked to you would have seen photos taken in August of 2014 [goo.gl] that do show the plant to be half-way constructed - assuming all of the cleared space was intended for the solar plant and not prep for future expansion.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Wednesday November 25 2015, @01:14AM
data and copyright dates of 2015
Note that I said data AND copyright dates. The data is the imagery data date, and is quite reliable regardless of the copyright.
We actually don't know if the picture on the BBC site is from this region at all. It could well be that the Saudis trucked in a convoy of pre-assembled panels and slapped it together very quickly.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 27 2015, @09:06PM
Show me were the data dates are displayed for something that does not say 2015.
Also why do you think I am talking about the BBC pictures? Do I need to go back and bold my own words for you? I said the pictures on the map you linked to. Don't be an ass.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Tuesday November 24 2015, @08:08PM
You don't have to pay that close attention to notice the first line of text in the first linked article:
A giant plant using energy from the Sun to power a Moroccan city at night will open next month.
Considering they have pictures of the plant in that article as well, I'm gonna go with the Beeb on this one.
(Score: 2) by TheLink on Tuesday November 24 2015, @06:52AM
If it really ends up the size of a city would it affect the atmospheric conditions enough to make stuff like dust devils/tornados more likely?
All that hotter air in one large area compared to surrounding areas...
Even just a small whirlwind might cause problems: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AxRT60-kw78 [youtube.com]
(Score: 2) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Tuesday November 24 2015, @09:55AM
Maybe. Perhaps all that hot air constantly rising up would pull in cooler air below, creating winds from the coast to the desert. Maybe this could be a way to create more rainfall in the Sahara?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 24 2015, @04:47PM
Solar concentrators work on a smaller scale, the city-size area itself is still getting just the same amount of solar energy it always had, it is just concentrating it into pipes.
The macro-level temperature change should be minimal, just as running steam through an exposed pipe doesn't change the weather (much).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 25 2015, @07:41AM
Solar concentrators work on a smaller scale, the city-size area itself is still getting just the same amount of solar energy it always had, it is just concentrating it into pipes.
While the energy shining on it is the same, the energy reflected and absorbed is not the same.
Otherwise the heat island effect wouldn't be as strong: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_heat_island [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2, Insightful) by WalksOnDirt on Tuesday November 24 2015, @09:27AM
From the BBC, a quote from Thierry Lepercq:
Solar will get you very little electricity in winter in London, due to both short days and cloudy weather. In summer you can do ok, but how do you fill the winter hole without fossil fuels? There isn't enough pumped storage available, and batteries are way too expensive.
Morocco, being well to the south, can handle the winter demand with solar. The UK should stick with nuclear and wind for what they don't import.
(Score: 2) by fritsd on Tuesday November 24 2015, @10:47AM
Great Britain is famous for its wet and windy climate, and it has an extremely long north-south shoreline, one on the North Sea (not very deep continental flat), and one on the (smallish) Irish Sea with bits of Scotland sticking out into the Atlantic Ocean. I think it can catch everything blowing South-West over the Atlantic that isn't caught by (flat) Ireland.
I don't think you can get much more windy than that.
Why they haven't completely filled it up with wind turbines is beyond me. Compare the UK with nearby but much smaller Denmark and Netherlands. Denmark is bristling with wind turbines, and it's on the "leeward side" of the UK.
(Score: 2) by isostatic on Tuesday November 24 2015, @06:43PM
Why they haven't completely filled it up with wind turbines is beyond me
NIMBYs
(Not in my back yard)
Everywhere someone wants to put some windmills up, there's a local group to protest it. Their reasoning goes "they're brilliant, we should have lots, but $THIS_VILLAGE is a special case".
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 24 2015, @04:58PM
with so little sun i wonder how some countries got so fat if food doenst grow?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 25 2015, @01:21PM
They grow food that's especially high in calories [wikipedia.org]
(joking!)