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.
Wow. I sure wish I could get my power at 6 cents. I pay closer to 10 for the electric plus another 4 for distribution. 40 percent off the mark doesn’t begin to cover the errors in this article
Morocco of course is the largest importer of fossil fuel in Africa, having little resource of its own.
this and the other solar panel initiatives and the solar CSP plant mean it will be able to drastically reduce its foreign currency payments for fossil fuel in the future – plus home built solar CSP is a big new employer.
Such initiatives also attract climate conferences, a lucrative sector of the tourist industry.
“high voltage high ampacity DC undersea power cable” Am I missing something, I was under the impression that transmission over distances was only feasible after Tesla introduced AC systems, DC was rejected due to I squared R losses unless the cables were huge.
Undersea cables are DC. Tasmania has a 290km one to our mainland that is also DC…
The longest high power AC cable to date is powering the Total Martin Linge platform offshore Norway, it is 163km long.
http://www.total.no/en/powering-martin-linge-field-shore
Anyone who believes that the nameplate capacity of a solar system means that it will produce that amount of power does not have much familiarity with using solar systems. My 3.12 kw system is lucky to hit a peak production rate of 1.1 kw these days. It is better in late June, however peak power only occurs between 11:00 and 13:00. Solar power production follows a partial sine like curve during daylight hours. Whatever the “rated” capacity is for this plant, I would like to see how they derated the capacity to try to align with reality.
I wonder what they calculate for the cost of cleaning.
Solar farms make no financial sense.
Localized or personal solar installations may make sense depending on costs, geography and weather. (I recently saw a solar installation on a house that was surrounded by tall trees, believe it or not.)
However it close to impossible to assess the cost effectiveness of solar due to myriad owning/leasing/subsidy schemes between solar companies and local and federal governments. For example say a county forces local electrical providers to buy a homeowners excess solar at 3 times the wholesale rate. This may benefit the homeowner depending on their solar installation costs, but for the county it is strictly a losing fiscal investment.
The muslims will then hold Europe hostage. Great plan!
A CNN report states that by 2018 it could power 1 million homes – so much for the BBC claim that it could power Europe!
It also reports that it will generate 160 megawatts in the first plant, and eventually 570 megawatts. One coal fired power station in Australia at Bayswater generates 2640 megawatts.
“A CNN report states that by 2018 it could power 1 million homes – so much for the BBC claim that it could power Europe!”
From the BBC piece….
“As well as meeting domestic needs, Morocco hopes one day to export solar energy to Europe. This is a plant that could help define Africa’s – and the world’s – energy future.”
Notice the words – hole, one day, could and future?
Hope
Willis,
You need to include in the calculation the fact that the daily dusting of the solar panels with fine particles,(which will not be cleaned in Morocco), will cause a 50% loss of output from week 1.
Scientific American had a story back in July, 2013-
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/challenges-for-desert-solar-power/#
With this tidbit-
“And now that it is built, Shams 1 sends a series of trucks up and down the lines of 250,000 mirrors every day, using robot arms to spray that precious water and clean away the dust.”
And for tower based CSP, this overlooked detail that increased the cost of the plant-
“In order to reach the 100-megawatt-capacity goal of the Shams 1 plant, developers had to add substantially more mirrors to the plant than planned due to dust in the atmosphere. Scott Burger, an analyst at Greentech Media’s GTM Research who focuses on the region, said the plant probably ended up costing three times the initial estimate, thanks in part to dealing with that dust.”
5 square miles (3200sq acres) of total devastation that will be a useless oasis of junk in about 10 years… Im not sure how green call themselves green.
All those zeroes can confuse me, but my Google thingy says that Europe generates 3 million GWh a year, which would mean that this plant would produce 0.012% of Europe’s juice. Need I say more?
When I turned left at Quarzazate in the early 1970’s to return to Europe over the High Atlas, it was a Moroccan army outpost keeping the Polisario guerillas at bay. There was a lot of action after I left (no connection!) and the guerillas these days are supposed to be restrained by a 2700km long wall of sand.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moroccan_Western_Sahara_Wall
As the sand does blow about a bit on the northern edge of the Sahara, Noor will need a lot of washing and with the wet cooling design of Noor 1 estimated water consumption is in the 2.5-3 million cubic metres/yr range. The dam on the Draa river 12 km away stores about 100x that…when there is no drought. There is also a need for about 19 tons of diesel per day.
https://www.afdb.org/fileadmin/uploads/afdb/Documents/Environmental-and-Social-Assessments/Morocco_-_Ouarzazate_Solar_Power_Station_Project_II_-_ESIA_Summary.pdf
“it produces 370 gigawatt-hours per year”
If it works. And it does not. The problem with wind and solar is not cost. Engineers can make them work as expected. With no respect for Griff of David Hagen, I applied a lot of physics and mechanical engineering skill making nukes work as designed. If we had not been able to do that, nuclear would not be an option today.
Commercial nuclear power had failures. Wind and solar was promoted as an alternative. Today nuclear is mainstream and wind and solar is being promoted as an alternative.
The physics of PV dooms it to failure for power production. CSP is also doomed to failure because of thermal cycles. Sure you can make CSP function poorly if you burn enough fossil fuel (ie 19 tons of diesel per day).
Another assumption you missed, Willis: Solar PV power output declines about 1% a year. So it will take even longer than you calculated to pay it off. Of course we know that it will be abandoned and covered in sand much before that. Shame all those billions of dollars wasted…
PP, Quarzazate is solar thermal, not PV.,but how fast will the mirrors and actuators get sand blasted?
v’
“That’s good news, because we need it to line Elon Musk’s pockets …” a cheap shot conveying an innacurate impression
John Hardy December 12, 2016 at 1:12 am Edit
Cheap shot? No way. Given that Musk has already taken over four BILLION dollars from the taxpayer, it has definitely not been cheap … that’s far too damn much money for nothing more than coal-fired sparky cars. I ‘d call it wildly overpriced, not cheap.
w.
The Arabic Noor comes from the Aramaic Owre אור or Maowre מאור meaning ‘light’. Arabic being a daughter language of Aramaic-Hebrew.
And anyone who thinks we can depend upon Morocco, Libya, and Algeria to supply Europe with energy, must be wearing uber rose-tinted glasses. First sign of political tension, internally or externally, and they will cut us off.
A power plant in the Sahara would only work if Europe stationed 200,000 soldiers in the desert to protect them and their power lines. And we cannot do that, because that is ‘Imperialism’ (apparently). So the idea of power from the Sahara is a dead duck.
R
Better to make an experiment like Quarzazte for trying out if something works and finding ways how to improve – than making the experiment of converting a whole republic into an experiment like here in Germany.
But even as Germany and South Australia have volunteered to do this experiment state-wide, wise folks can see the outcome.
In Germany it works, because they use their neighbors to buffer energy.
In South Australia it doesn’t work, having no neighbors to buffer.
Additionally, Germany needs coal power plants to have a backup, therefore CO2-Savings are nil.
It is interesting. I just looked at the price of set of PV panels with inverter for my house in Poland (10 kW). It is 50 000 PLN (price includes cost of panels, cost of inverter, fitting, 8% VAT and is not subsidized). Multiplying it by 16 000 I am getting 800 000 000 PLN (it is 190 mln USD). But I think I would get a significant discount for buying and fitting 16 000 of such sets (not deducting 16 000 of unnecessary inverters). I think cost of a bit of Sahara is not huge.
And I always thought Poland is quite expensive country…
. . . and at night, no output
Yes, but it is not the point – in my post I looked only at plain cost of getting an 160 Mw PV installation.
I’m building a house near the Columbia River in Washington State, USA, and have investigated various alternative energy ideas. My attitude is very simple: I will not pay a premium for smugness. I’d rather be more self-sufficient than less, but the numbers will rule.
Geothermal heat pump would cost at least twice as much up front, and maybe a good deal more. They are said to be finicky, expensive to repair, and over time might be hard to find parts for in the rural area where we’ll be living. So we’ll probably be getting an air-source heat pump with a backup propane furnace for when the heat pump doesn’t work as well.
Home-scale wind turbine would cost at least $30,000 after the tax credit. It would have a 3-year warranty. Maintenance is expensive, and the things have a poor reputation on the reliability front. And they are ugly as hell. Scratch that.
Solar panels would cost $25,000 to $30,000 after the tax credit. The warranty is 25 years, and degradation is warranted at 0.85% per year. On my property, they’d be ground-mounted because I have the space, and angle unobstructed to the south. They would replace power that, at today’s rates, would cost $32,500 over 25 years. Maintenance is minimal. I have yet to confirm the numbers, but if they’re real, we’ll have solar panels. In WA State, the local utility is required to do “net metering,” i.e. you give them a kWh, they give you a kWh, meaning that their distribution network is free of charge to me, although I will have to pay a monthly connection fee.
Battery storage, i.e. those Tesla “powerwall” batteries, or competitors. This would be a ludicrously expensive proposition, about 17 cents/kWh, compared to 9 cents/kWh for the power itself off the panels. And because of the timing differential between summer and winter, the capital investment in those batteries would be enormous — as high as $100,000 for a set that would truly take us off grid. That will not happen.
Numbers, you are not very smart are you? If you want to be self sufficient, grow vegetables. Leave making electricity to the experts.
Washington State has a mild climate suitable for a heat pump.
Um, I have an M.B.A. from the Wharton School of Business, and am retired with a nice cushion. It’s obvious that you know nothing about Washington State’s climate. But thanks for playing.
Guys, you missed a couple of points.
1. These are not PVs, this is an array of mirrors concentrating solar energy to melt salt (CSP). USA has one of those in Mojave desert – so you know that it is even less efficient (per sq. meter) then PVs.
2. The location is the one previously chosen by the DESERTEC consortium which folded in 2014 after spending $$$$$$$$$.
3. It is all EU technology (German, I believe) – so if this is such a profitable idea, why isn’t EU financing this, say, in Spain or Sicily that have similar insolation?
Did visit Ouarzazate a few years back. Never heard about this solar project. Mainly a friendly small desert town and because of the scenery around a lot of movie recordings there. Clearest memory is the kashbah Ait Ben Haddu close by and the drive by car through the mountains to get there from Marrakesh. Funny that big capital (Atlas movie studio and this power plant) is so active in this seemingly so remote a place.