The Problem with Solar Energy in Africa on HackerTube: recommended by 4 Hacker News commenters across 4 separate months, 2021–2024.
explainer · evergreen
Real Engineering looks at why Africa's abundant solar potential is hard to turn into usable power, especially for Europe. It covers the transmission, infrastructure and economic obstacles, and the pivot from concentrated solar to photovoltaics.
Linked whenever commenters ask whether Sahara solar could power Europe, as a clear explanation of why it is impractical.
“A very good video from Real Engineering explains that no, not really”
10 Hacker News comments link this video. Each one links back to its thread.
> Can we do the same in Europe and put massive solar panels in the desert of North Africa and import the energy northwards ? (I realize this is a super naive approach, and the main problem is energy storage rather than generation) A very good video from Real Engineering explains that no, not really: ▶ this video
in “Singapore OKs 4,300km subsea cable for importing electricity from Australia” · View on HN
> we learned in geography class, that one could power the whole EU, if we occupied some area of the Sahara desert with solar panels I sometimes hear that too. The YouTube channel "Real Engineering" did a video about the idea: [1] The TLDR is: the Sahara definitely gets enough sun, but transmitting the power into Europe would be hard. [1]: ▶ this video
in “One-night stands will be illegal at the 2022 World Cup in Qatar” · View on HN
> why there's so much interest in nuclear when low-tech concentrated solar in the desert can get the job done and scaling it up (and ensuring it's 100% safe) isn't a matter of R&D but just basic manufacturing. Solar is dependent on the time of day (as the sister comments pointed out) and also on weather. Plus, you need to get the energy from the desert to wherever it's needed - this is non-trivial for densely populated areas far from the equator. You also need to maintain the solar panels; sand can be quite bad for their efficiency. Lastly, the areas that do have the space and solar power might be politically unstable, which makes the massive investments needed to get this going quite risky. Real engineering has a good video about this: ▶ this video
in “ThorCon: Cheap, reliable, CO2-free electric power” · View on HN
Here's a great video from Real Engineering [0] that goes into the pros and problems with that approach, and where and how it is currently being tried. For example, via undersea transmission cable under the Strait of Gibraltar. [0] ▶ this video
in “Colorado 'solar garden' is a farm under solar panels” · View on HN
How do you transport the electricity from the desert to where it's actually needed? Transmission losses and infrastructure costs make that cost prohibitive: ▶ this video
in “54% of Portugal’s electricity is now generated by renewable energy” · View on HN
What If We Covered the Sahara With Solar Panels? - [link] The Problem with Solar Energy in Africa - ▶ this video One of the difficult problems with extremely large solar projects is the infrastructure to move the power. In a lot of these cases, the space to build solar is large areas of land that no one uses... which means that there's not much infrastructure to build the solar power plants, and then not much infrastructure to move that power back to places where people live. Yes, there's a lot of land that could be used for solar. Moving the enough power to power all of Spain (or all of Europe) based on solar requires some very impressive transmission lines.
in “Overhyping hydrogen as a fuel” · View on HN
> Speaking about solutions - until significant part of Sahara desert and the likes aren't covered by solar panels, i wouldn't believe that anybody (who matters) is taking the climate change seriously I think it is harder than we think, at least for the goals that Europe wants: ▶ this video The caveat about population control, is different than how we, humans, do with all other wild-life on planet earth, we cannot reduce the available food and habitat to lower the carrying capacity, compensate for the missing predators by killing individuals in the population, or slow the population's ability to reproduce.. We have to come up with a ethic solution. But people cannot put 3-5 kids or more on earth and don't have the means to raise them accordingly.
in “Rising groundwater caused by climate change could devastate coastal communities” · View on HN
> I think it is harder than we think, at least for the goals that Europe wants: ▶ this video it seems that the main issue is that some invested in concentrated solar while photovoltaics energy cost fell from being 2x expensive to being 4x cheaper of the concentrated and just beating everything out at $0.03/KWh. As i said - cover the desert in solar panels. Transmission is only 7% loss to Berlin. Instead Europe is building gas pipelines from Russia and others. Again, money talk, and that clearly shows that nobody takes climate change seriously.
in “Rising groundwater caused by climate change could devastate coastal communities” · View on HN
Energy consumption is not an environmental problem (whatever you use said energy for, be it Bitcoin mining, heating your home or powering your massage chair), and all policies that try to limit energy consumption are basically building on quicksand and doomed to fail: the world has and will continue to consume increasing amounts of energy by capita. And anyone who's being an activist towards reducing energy consumption is completely deluded: energy consumption is strongly correlated with technical progress and civilization progress. Good luck putting an end to that short of reverting to the stone age. Energy production is what needs to be fixed, specifically energy production that results in environmental damage, e.g.fossil fuel. For reference, this video : ▶ this video claims that a million square km of the Sahara desert receives enough energy from the sun to power the entire human civilization needs in 2020. Solve the technical problems associated with solar energy production and you'll solve global warming. Infinite clean solar energy lets you filter CO2 out of the atmosphere back into carbon using technology, something plants have been doing to aeons.
in “Swedish government agencies say energy-intensive crypto mining should be banned” · View on HN
Interesting.. i thought it wasn't a good idea, based on this video (The Problem with Solar Energy in Africa, ▶ this video ) where is stated that Europe failed to do something similar connecting the North of Africa (Morocco and Algeria) to Europe (south of Spain).
in “Chile wants to export solar energy to Asia via 15,000km submarine cable” · View on HN