Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
The BBC, that bastion of slanted reportage on all things green, has an article about a new solar power plant entitled “The Colossal African Solar Plant That Could Power Europe“. It’s full of all kinds of interesting information about the plant, located in Ouarzazate, Morocco. Man, how come Africa gets all the great place names, that one just reeks of mystery, “Ouar-za-za-te”, makes me want to go visit … but I digress. It’s called the “Noor” power plant, from the Arabic word for “light”.
The reporter talks about a variety of things, including the fact that on the day the reporter visited it was overcast … but somehow, despite hyperventilating about just how awesome and gosh-dang wonderful the plant is and the difference this will make to the planet, the reporter never got around to talking about the cost. Funny, that.
Being a congenial sort of fellow, at least on a good day with a following wind, I figured I’d give them a hand. The relevant numbers are available at the Wikipedia page—the plant cost $3.9 billion dollars US ($3.9E+9, much of it a gift from hard-pressed European taxpayers diverted by guilty CO2-obsessed European liberals), and it produces 370 gigawatt-hours per year (370E+9 watt-hrs).
Now, in the US a power plant typically sells its product for something like six cents US per kilowatt-hour. Multiplying that by 370 GWhr/year gives us an annual value of the energy produced of about $22,000,000 dollars per year.
And at twenty-two mega-bucks per year, how long will it take to pay back the $3.9 billion dollar cost of the plant?
Er … um … breakeven time is a hundred and seventy-seven years … but only if there are zero maintenance costs … and if there is no interest on any borrowed funds … and if you don’t count avoided income available from investing the four giga-bucks elsewhere for a century … ooogh.
However, I do note that on the Wikipedia page it says that they are selling the electricity wholesale at US$ 0.19 per kilowatt-hour. Not good news for poor people in Morocco. This brings the breakeven time down to a mere fifty-six years … again if there are no maintenance costs, no interest costs, and no avoided income.
You know, people keep selling these plants on the basis of saving the world, but at that horrendous cost and huge breakeven time, I’m not sure we can afford to keep saving the poor thing time after time …
Further research, however, elucidates the conundrum. It turns out that this is not just an energy generation plant. It’s a moral lesson for the world and a harbinger of the future and will save CO2 and serve as a template for really big money wasting projects and … hang on, that’s my interpretation. Let me get the actual claims, curiously from a Freedom of Information Act document. To start with, it says:
Both cost-effectiveness analysis and cost-benefit analysis indicate that the project is not economically justified under prevailing economic conditions.
Ya think???
However, the plant is supposed to provide the following intangible benefits:
- Climate change mitigation
- Increase in factors of production (physical capital, human capital, and natural capital)
- Accelerated innovation, through correction of market failures in knowledge
- Enhanced efficiency, through correction of non-environmental market failures
- Increased resilience to natural disasters, commodity price volatility, and economic crises
- Job creation and poverty reduction
My favorite? “Correction of non-environmental market failures”. That’s got to be worth big bucks.
So all you have to do is to put numbers on those intangibles, make the values large enough, and suddenly this money-losing proposition will be ready to “power Europe” … at three times the market cost of electricity … not counting significant transmission costs … as soon as the multibillion dollar high voltage high ampacity DC undersea power cable gets funded and designed and laid across the Mediterranean from Morocco to Europe …
Another beautiful green dream ship wrecked on a reef of hard economics. It least it seems no US taxpayer money is going into this debacle. That’s good news, because we need it to line Elon Musk’s pockets …
w.
Por favor, if you disagree with someone please QUOTE THE EXACT WORDS YOU DISAGREE WITH. I can defend my own words, but only if I know which ones you are referring to.
The overriding question is: Where did this idea that intermittent power from solar or wind would ever be economical come from? Isn’t obvious that when the intermittent power stops, then a fossil or nuclear power plant must come on line to make up the decrease? And since 80%+ of the cost of power is capital and labor, then the cost of the power plants sitting idle is enormous! The intermittent power is worth the avoided energy cost or less then 2 cents/kilowatt hr.
John Maulden, a really smart economist and commentator, was recently lauding the morocco solar plant! It’s like the elite of our counry can do simple calculations with a pencil and paper.
“The overriding question is: Where did this idea that intermittent power from solar or wind would ever be economical come from?”
Yeah, who thought this was a good idea? How many more billions of dollars will they spend before they figure out wind and solar thermal are deadends?
I assume your last line meant to say “can’t do.”
Roger
If not “can’t do.” – it needs a big /SNARKO SQUARED
Auto
… much of it a gift from guilty CO2-obsessed European liberals)…
Now, why do I doubt that? Why do I think that a gift from hard-pressed European tax-payers, diverted to Africans by guilt-obsessed liberals (after taking their cut) is much more likely?
Same thing. The gift from European Liberals statement just left out the obvious that NO Liberal ever spends his OWN money – See above quote attributed to Margaret Thatcher about running out of other peoples money.
Indeed, dodgy, your description is more accurate … I stole it and put it into the head post.
w.
Thought I recognized that type. Is a concentrating solar plant (CSP) from Abengoa. The hopeless economics of same were detailed in Climate Etc. Guest Post Grid Solar. Note that Abengoa is in Spanish bankruptcy. Its US affiliate is in bankruptcy dissolution proceedings, with the US gov trying to recover $165 milliion of the $2.2 billion in grants and subsidies Abengoa received from the US.
iF the recovery succeeds, what a great deal for US taxpayers, NOT.
There are lots of places where photovoltaic (PV) makes sense. My favourite example is the parking ticket dispensers in our nearby metropolis. They are right downtown where there are lots of electric lines. The thing is that hooking up to the grid would cost >$500 for each dispenser. The PV array is about a foot by a foot and it plus a battery and circuitry probably cost a couple of hundred bucks.
Having said the above, please note that there are zero solar panels on my house. If I lived three miles from the nearest grid connection, there would be. Solar has its place.
I was going to put solar panels on my house too but I couldn’t find the night side.
Yup, lots of these powering emergency phones along the (one) highway in rural oz. Best place for em.
If there’s no nearby grid, it’s ironic that solar’s place is where the sun don’t shine.
Where there IS a nearby grid…
What’s a parking meter?
Ever notice how goverment can justify spending tax dollars to collect more tax dollars.
If you lived off grid you would have an ICE driven generator. Changed oil and filters on our 6.5 kw propane generator.
It is easy to live without electricity. Billions do it everyday.
It really is worse than we thought….
“That’s good news, because we need it to line Elon Musk’s pockets …” Elon gets a lot more than $3.9B and returns nothing. $22M/y is at least something even with 150years of payback. I hope this doesn’t look like approve of the solar plant!
Gary, of those $22M they have to buy oil for turbine preheat for at least $10M/y and I am sure there is use for those $12M/y in that station.
It was stressed in atricle that the payback is merely theoretical.
By the way, this Norwegain-Germany cable project power loss on 1400 MW max power is about 100 MW just in copper.
It is twice the total power of the Moroccon project.
How much does it cost to back up that facility with fossil fuels?
But think of the great value of all that virtue signalling!
Interesting the difference in CSP plant costs when building in Morroco.
The prototype Accione CSP design (Nevada Solar One in 2007) cost $266MM and produces134MMkWh annually.
Noor is another Accione project, but done without American assistance, completed at a reported $3900MM and produces 370MMkWh.
Must be a lot of room under that table.
Baksheesh accounts for much of the difference.
Willis
What’s your source for “Now, in the US a power plant typically sells its product for something like six cents US per kilowatt-hour. Multiplying that by 370 GWhr/year gives us an annual value of the energy produced of about $22,000,000 dollars per year.”?
Your quoted 6 cents/kWh is roughly 50% the numbers I find with a couple quick web searches (https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.cfm?t=epmt_5_6_a and http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2011/10/27/141766341/the-price-of-electricity-in-your-state)
Assuming 12-13 cents is correct, that’s $44,000,000/year – a material change, but no where near enough to impact your 100% correct conclusion of an unbelievably stupid economic investment (my words…).
Javert Chip:
Both those tables are end-user rates. The power generating plant sells to the grid operator at wholesale rates. And both tables list rates for Georgia that are higher than actual. Here are standard Georgia Power residential rates. Highest rate during winter months is $0.047641 / kWH; in the summer it’s $0.097273. GP is obviously paying less than that to the generation facility.
I know that one summer the power system that I worked at was making money in large amounts selling power to some states that had their local units offline for repairs. We were selling it at $50/MW-hr or $0.05/KW-hr. We sold it locally at much lower rates. The left coast and the NE all pay a lot more for their power, all those regulations drive costs up.
You are too kind, Mr. Willis. This Potemkin village of a power plant does not fail because of meany harsh economics. It fails because of physics.
Nameplate capacity 160MW, expected avg capacity 42.24MW, for a load factor of 26.4%. At a cost comparable with a nuclear power plant with nameplate capacity of ~1GW and load factor of ~99%.
And as for supplying _all_ of Europe’s power need, I guess if “all of Europe” is approximately 80,000 small homes or a dozen small factories, that’s almost accurate. 🙂
I am glad that enormous fossil fuel reserves, enough for centuries, now unlocked with new technologies, will bridge us through to the rapidly coming, clean, inexhaustible, Fusion Energy freedom,
Oh come on, the greens will find something wrong with fusion. They are all glass half empty people.
The left need poverty to be relevant. What is the good to the left of a well fed, housed, educated, and healthy populace? Environmentalism is just one excuse for the state to keep us poor and, as an added benefit, to virtue-police all aspects of life.
Fusion is the green’s worst nightmare, and standard fission nuclear power generation their next-worst. Fracking third, oil and gas fourth. The only power sources that are acceptable are those that don’t work.
Mark, how true are your words. I never cease to be amazed that, despite many of the left loonies having a first-class university education, their brains all seem to turn to mush when faced with reality. I know it’s more to do with ‘faith’ than anything realistic, but it’s still almost incomprehensible that they seem to never be able to see the bottom line.
Mark can you just imagine if all the money spend ( and will be spend in the future) on these projects would have been spend on drilling water wells and improving agriculture in these countries on a local scale? Add in a few schools, hospitals and generators for running small scale electrical grids? This whole solar scheme is a sick, twisted vision by people that have no clue of economics and are truly destroying livelihoods of tens of millions of people.
Socialism is the most dangerous “philosophy” on the planet.
What happened to the Drax power plant in the UK is also a travesty, Changing it from a coal fired plant to a wood pellet plant that needs to be imported from the USA using bunker oil burning ( the worst ) ships and then moving it via train , lorries etc should be investigated and the people responsible should be convicted, jailed and fined heavily. When I talk with family in the EU they have not got a clue what I am talking about. The MSM should be prosecuted as well as far as I am concerned ( sorry about the rant)
Fusion also leaves trail of radioactive elements behind. The greens will object.
And, after all, the highest deaths from radiation induced cancer are down to one fusion reactor.
Its called ‘the sun’….
Indeed. lppfusion.com
How much energy went into materials and construction of the plant
Thanks again for a good post.
Glad you like it.
w.
1st Develop dispatchable solar to be cheaper than coal/gas/nuclear
This is why we need hard nosed life cycle costing with RD&D focus on making dispatchable solar power cheaper than coal, gas and nuclear, regardless of fuzzy climate projections. See recommendations by Bjorn Lomborg and Copenhagen Consensus as the most cost effective investment – NOT subsidies for current uncompetitive systems like this in Morocco.
Make it cheaper to go green
Making it cheaper does not solve the intermittency problem. Neither solar nor wind can be made into base load power. There is one green power source that makes sense and that is nuclear. If we poured that money in building prototype nuke plants with the new designs we would be spending it wisely. Maybe the thorium cycle plants can be made to work.
James Kramer False. Read what I wrote. “Develop DISPATCHABLE solar”. That implies cheap thermal storage sufficient to provide base load regional realiability. Nuclear is an alternative option. Fund both and let the best win. Maybe a some mix of the two.
How can it work as base load power when it vanishes when the sky is overcast or even when a cloud crosses the sun?! Or in the case of wind power when the wind isn’t blowing or is blowing too much. Neither will be reliable unless you are assuming weather control. I have to say that solar in Morocco makes a lot more sense than solar in cloudy Germany. And the sun angle is obviously somewhat better than it is in northern Europe. But remember that even Morocco isn’t that far south. New York City is on the same latitude as Madrid Spain.
James Kramer Think, Search and Study! Solar thermal storage does NOT “vanish when . . . a cloud crosses the sun”. Go read up on Solar thermal storage Thermal storage now buffers say 8 hours but could buffer 3 days by reducing costs and improving insulation. At least study enough physics and mechanical engineering to understand the issues rather than dismissing what you do not understand.
“Making it cheaper does not solve the intermittency problem.”
Making it cheaper doesn’t solve the problem of the millions of birds and bats killed by windmills and solar thermal.
Dispatchable solar, that’s funny.
This is an exceptionally sunny place…
Plus of course Morocco is building solar CSP which will provided stored heat for overnight generation…
David L. Hagen Your links are interesting but thermal storage is not the same as electric energy storage. Did you think people would miss the conflation of two separate concepts. If not, explain how stored solar heat is going to be “dispatched” from Africa to Europe.
You could take your own advice, especially the first part: Think.
“Griff December 11, 2016 at 8:44 am
This is an exceptionally sunny place…”
Australia is sunny too, most times. But it’s 9pm here in Sydney right now and I just looked outside the window, and I can’t see too much sunshine. And I see solar rooftop installations pointing everywhere but north!
David L. Hagen:
I can’t access that link without signing up, but can you point to an working CSP plant that actually delivers fully dispatchable power? Ivanpah is delivering about about 70% of promised output and currently uses a fair amount of natural gas to keep the salt hot during part of the night. And they sell power at $200/MWh, which is way more than coal or CCGT units get.
“Make renewables cheaper” sounds wonderful, but performance has been lacking to date.
Gemasolar power plant in spain. it has 15hours of molten salt storage allowing it to produce power 24hr a day. ivanpah has zero storage capability and needs natural gas to preheat the cold turbine in the morning.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemasolar_Thermosolar_Plant
Alan Watt See articles on solar thermal power storage. See recent reviews of solar thermal power storage e.g., . e.g. see: Review on concentrating solar power plants and new developments in high temperature thermal energy storage technologies. PS I encourage you to do your homework first. Practice the method shown here.
Allan Watt The link I gave is publicly accessible at no cost. Making it Cheaper to go green. Otherwise learn how to use the internet. There are numerous other articles by Bjorn Lomborg and the Copenhagen Consensus advocating this. For technical articles, you can always try Scholar.Google.Com
Ivanpah needs to mark each turbine with little birdie stencils, 1 per kill, different silhouettes, like fighter planes. There can only be one ace of aces.
David L. Hagen:
Magic!
There is no theory as to how such a thing might even be possible.
Let me explain:
An internal combustion engine runs at ~25% thermodynamic efficiency.
I could use thermodynamics to design an engine running at 65% efficiency. Now the problem is one of engineering, particularly materials which can handle the extreme temperatures and stresses. But at least it is theoretically possible.
Solar is:
1) diffuse
2) intermittent
We know that to overcome these limitations requires a lot of money and a lot of gear.
Nobody has any idea how to get to dispatchable solar in a system which produces more power than it took to build the plant in the first place.
No amount of “hard nosed life cycle costing with RD&D” is going to change that. Solar is just too far down the hole.
TonyL Spoken as a true disbeliever, expert in “magic”, slightly knowledgeable in conventional wisdom. 1) The Wartsilla 31 internal combustion engine has achieved 53% efficiency. 2) By “Nobody has any idea” you apparently claim universal knowledge of all humans as well as throughout the cosmos! Remarkable. 3) solar system which produces more power than it took to build the plant. The Energy Return on Investment (EROI) of conventional solar thermal power systems is already reported as in the range of 9 to 19. That is NOT an upper limit! Re “too far down the hole.” May I recommend you have been digging your hole too deep. Time to get out into the light! May I recommend you learn to search for current information before pontificating.
A big diesel such as found on a ship can run at 45% efficiency. And they don’t run at extreme conditions. That’s a reasonable compromise.
Make it cheaper to go green
=====================
If Solar or Wind was large screen TV’s the answer would be obvious. When TV’s were $10,000 almost no one had one. Now they are $1000 or less and everyone has one.
Imagine that instead we had subsidized manufacturers that produced $10,000 large screen TV’s, with $9000 subsidies, so that it only cost $1000 to buy a TV after the government subsidy. Why would manufacturers ever get the cost down? Why would the government care, the $9000 subsidy would be very popular, so long as it was added to the debt not the tax rate.
fredberple Agreed. Thus Bjorn’s pragmatic economist focus to focus RD&D on reducing costs of renewables until they are competitive NOT subsidizing inherently expensive systems. The DOE has set a SunShot target of 3 c/kWh for 2030. However, Dubai Water and Electric has already received a bit of 2.99 c/kWh in May 2016 for 800 MWe. See discussion Understanding the record low 3 cent solar in Dubai in context
Dispatchable solar.
Okay…is solar cheaper than say …nuclear?
Nope,. So adding storage to it will make it cheaper?….
Or perhaps you mean storing heat and then using a heat engine to extract power…
Oh dear. heat engine likely to be less than 50% efficient, so double the size and cost….
Whichever way you cook it, solar plus storage of some sort is always going to be way more expensive than nuclear. To the point where it may not even repay the energy invested in its total construction.
Leo Smith A disbeliever pontificating without insight? See 52% efficient with a single expander at 100 MWe. You haven’t even begun to explore how to reduce solar power costs!
David L. Hagen, your link is to a patent application for a CCGT system. Do you care to explain what this has to do with solar power or are you just posting random goggle searches that you do not understand?
David L. Hagen, your link is to a patent application for a CCGT system. Do you care to explain what this has to do with solar power or are you just posting random goggle searches that you do not understand?
Ray in SC. 1) Read just a little further and you will find that I am the primary inventor (who wrote the patent) and so know something about the topic! 2) Then if you could indulge us read just a bit further and think about my comment, you will realize that it is NOT a Combined Cycle Gas Turbine (CCGT) since it does NOT have a steam turbine or Rankine cycle. 3) Concentrating solar power systems can generate high temperature heat sufficient to heat the gas to drive a gas turbine.
What if the notion that “green” power generation does not emit CO2 is 100% exactly opposite of the truth?
Dav09 Generally agree on benefits of CO2. Important but separate issue.
Solution. Seek the greatest life cycle benefit /cost ratio. Consider all benefits and costs. See The Right Climate Stuff, for a validated climate model. (IPCC’s models are not validated. CO2 Science documents benefits from many plant studies.
Morocco is a net importer of energy, but may soon start producing its own natural gas:http://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/Morocco-Could-Start-Pumping-Natural-Gas-By-2019.html
Just when the Muslim stranglehold on oil supplies is broken they talk about giving them control over electricity .
Here’s another example of the big renewable energy project.
In Iowa, Midamerican Energy Co. owned by Berkshire Hathaway/Warren Buffett announced a $3.6 billion 2000 MW wind project named Wind XI. The announcement said they will build 1000 wind turbines over a two year period.
With the federal construction tax credit and state/federal production tax credits, the owner will get his investment back in 10 years. The full cost to the American taxpayers may eventually be $5.6 billion.
Iowa customers will not receive a rate increase for some indeterminable period. Hopefully, the current electric rate will cover all operating and maintenance expenses of the project.
I’m sure the Iowa customers of MidAmerican really appreciate the generosity of the American taxpayers.
Maybe Willis can do a more complete, full examination of this project
great post
It beats the space-based solar power project idea and the space mining venture stories too.
On California energy costs… my friend in Redding works minimum wage and pays $200 a month for water and electricity. Her neighbors disconnected from the grid. On recent cold days I hear their cars running in the driveway a fair amount. At the nearby Safeway many folks sit in their cars in the early morning with engines running.
Until the police tell they can not sleep in their vehicles.
California – the ‘no’ state.
The main problem with wind and solar is the pathetically low energy density. Look at the size of this thing! 1,400,000 square meters – the size of 200 football fields! If we adopt this approach to solve the climate change non-problem, we’ll run out of planet.
So, the refugee crises are powered by the clean, green blight. Something similar happened in China that led to the progress of urban ghettos.
What do they do at night, beside burn fossil fuel to keep the lights on and the tele and fridge running?