$9B for a 580MW plant is _expensive_. For reference, most photovoltaic plants cost less than $3/W. Of course, PV stops working as soon as the sun goes down.
I'm curious how much additional capacity this thing gets by using solar heat instead.
1) They're very leery of whatever's Russia up to, and much of their NatGas comes from there. Any alternative energy is good energy.
2) It shores up the economy in a relatively stable part of northern Africa that'd be a prime location for people wanting to immigrate to spain. More refugees are not a good plan.
3) It helps Europe to hit Carbon reduction targets without having to deal with the NIMBY population.
Or at least it was a strategic thing. Reading some more, European investors pulled out, and it's the Africa Development Bank now. Maybe the money is too nuts even with strategic goals in mind.
True. Yet, the size of this single renewable project is bigger than what happens around my town. It is more significant than the current rounding errors.
Seems more like another of the typical schemes to put development world countries into debt. The book Confessions of an Economic Hitman by a former World Bank contractor gives a lot of details of how these deals work. (An on the surface bona fide project that no one would contest, a dam, urban development, highways, bridges. A 'sponsored' consultancy is sent in to make favorable projections. Key government officials in the target country take a couple percent of the loan for themselves, the public is on the hook for the rest forever, as the project inevitably fails to make economic sense.)
Like I said in another comment: in Morocco 50% is for the actual cost and 50% is for bribes. This is how "makhzen" works.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Makhzen
At those differences ,they might as well use solar PV ,and heat salts for energy storage for the nighttime. But who knows, maybe it's a job generator, or there's some sort of corruption around it.
Well, the article says it will provide power for 3 hours after sunset. Assuming 12 hours of useful sunlight per day, it seems safe to guess that it provides something on the order of 25% more power.
In a grid dominated by solar energy production the peak demand on a utility is shifted from the mid-day air-conditioning load to the evening. That's when people go home and turn on lights and use appliances, and there are still some industrial loads. So storing the renewable solar energy for those 3 hours is critical to leveling peaks and reducing the need for standby capacity (the high-cost plant that can be spun up on demand to meet the peak).
The peak in places like California is not midday, but always in the evening. And the challenge with solar is that the sun has frequently set by then. The chart that describes this problem is called the duck chart: https://www.caiso.com/Documents/FlexibleResourcesHelpRenewab...
The yearly peak for California, is in the afternoon, on particularly sunny days in July or August. The peak is slowly moving later because solar is shaving that peak and saving everyone lots of money.
Your document shows January and March, which is when the duck issue is at its worst. The peaks in these months are two or three times lower than the yearly peak, when the system has to work at its most stretched.
And remember this is net load, as those lines go lower, the actual demand is rising slightly, it's just being provided by solar rather than the utility.
This whole project just seems so insane to me. A medium sized damn in my area was built for a bit less than $10 million back in the 50's and has a capacity hitting around 1,000 Mw.
Obviously dams are highly location dependent, and are somewhat on the shadier side of environmental impact. But 900 times the cost for half the power output is just crazy. Is there really no better way to get power into the country? Or is this just some publicity / money burning stunt?
Anyway, short answer, no it's not 900x for half the power. Power stations are generally measured in capacity, often without mentioning the capacity factor. e.g. you could build a damn that can produce 1000 MW of power, but it is not connected to a river and relies on pumped storage, and have only storage for 1 hour of generating. The net energy generation of that facility is actually negative, a small cost for energy storage. You can't compare that to another installation which actually generates energy for 10 hours a day. They're completely different yet both carry a power rating which is not meaningful for comparing them in the way you'd want to.
I've got no clue whether that's the case for the dam you're mentioning, just giving an example where comparisons can go wrong. I can guarantee it's not 900x for 0.5x though, what it is exactly I don't know but perhaps you can name me the dam.
(in other news, the Guardian article is pretty shitty because it barely specifies any of the variables itself, like say a capacity factor. Read it as a general announcement, not a tech spec.)
That having been said, it IS a relatively more expensive project regardless. But one mustn't forget it includes a storage solution, too.
Hmmmm, yes. I have made an error in my logic by looking at peak production thanks for pointing that out.
Upon some digging I found that the Wanapum Dam in Washington (The one I was referencing) generates around 4 million MWh, or 4000 GWh per annum. Though the wiki is a little vague, not sure if that's max capacity or average. And looking on the Grant County website, it says that the dams construction cost was around $90 million, so a bit more than I previously stated.
On the other hand, the Quarzazate solar station will produce an expected 370 GWh per annum, according to the wiki. So, 10 times less power. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think that the ratios still stay the same?
Edit: I was reading the wrong section of the wiki, phase 1 is 370 GWh. 2 and 3 add 1100 more. 1470 total.
The per-annum value is the total amount of energy generated over the course of the year. The Wannapum dam is rated at 1,400 MW; if it generated that 24x365, it would generate 12.3 million MWh. Since it actually generates 4 million MWH, it is running at about 30% capacity.
That said, a $90M dam in the 1950s would be a lot more expensive today. Partly due to inflation, but also for extra effort to preserve river ecology, etc. that nobody cared too much about back then.
So a few comments to make to explain some of the difference.
1) Damns aren't generally comparable to other renewable projects in cost, because they're dependent on a natural resource that doesn't scale. i.e. a sizeable river and geography that can act as a natural reservoir for water. Hydro can't really scale, even in Canada, a gigantic country with a relatively tiny population and a relatively huge hydro industry, can't really find new hydro projects that make economic sense because they've exhausted the opportunities already.
Imagine instead of energy, you'd be looking for a source of drinkable water for your goats. You can either build a pipeline to a nearby source of fresh water, or you can build a desalination factory. Of course the former is cheaper. But you can hardly compare its cost to another region that has no fresh water, and needs to build a desalination factory, and then say 'the price difference is huge!'. It's expected to be, particularly for very old hydro projects, which are usually the hydro projects that were the lowest hanging fruit and the easiest to exploit (unlike e.g. today's potential hydro projects in Canada, which are 10x more expensive than some of the old ones from decades ago. That cost differential is not really a function of technology)
2) Even disregarding the above, $10 in 1959 is not $10 today. In fact, it's ±$80 today. In fact, the project cost roughly $765m in today's dollars. I mean hell, in 2014 there was a crack that cost $69m to repair alone, almost as much as building it you'd almost think :p Citing a $93m cost is unintentionally misleading.
3) So about 11 more expensive, not 900x.
4) You're now referencing the 370 Gwh per annum figure, but that's for only the first part of the project that has 160 MW of capacity (which has a significantly lower cost than the $9b figure you're using). The $9b project has a capacity of 580 MW, so roughly 1350 Gwh per annum, so about 2/3rds less, not 10x less.
So you're off by a LOT with some of the numbers. Regardless, the point still stands that this is an expensive project, but then I refer to point 1) which is that you can't compare them. A better comparison would be to look at what it'd cost to build a new dam in Morocco, and there's not really much potential there that hasn't already been exhausted by the existing hydro stations in Morocco. Hydro would definitely be a more expensive venture, for sure, as would wind and fossil. As expensive as this may be, it beats what they currently have, which is importing 95% of their fossil fuels, which is a financial huge burden on a country that doesn't have a hard currency.
Just guessing, since I have no specific knowledge about this area... but perhaps Morocco doesn't have a river they can dam? Also, perhaps it is an investment in the technology and skills required to build solar power plants, so that as things become less expensive and more efficient in the future they are poised to be experts or leaders in the field? (So it's an "R&D" investment of sorts).
Morocco has rivers and dams already. Geographically speaking it has almost everything, from sand desert to skiing stations. This is personal publicity for the King himself.
Not sure why you're downvoted - that certainly seems like another likely candidate for why this is happening.
The moment you read the quote “At around 2pm, the king will press a button, the parabolic mirrors will start turning, the heat will begin to turn the turbines and the plant will come to life,” - you have to wonder how much of this is a vanity project.
Not at all. The country is deeply dependant on imports of fossil fuels for its energy, something around 96%. In the case of electricity it's mostly coal from South Africa.
If you're familiar with hard currency scarcity issues, I need not say more. Morocco consistently struggles with that every year, and the economy has been pretty deeply affected by energy price swings in the past. The past years it received various precautionary loans to deal with this, which needn't be exercised due to favourable oil prices.
Anyway, energy import dependency is a huge issue for Morocco, more so than for a country with a hard currency, say the US, any country in Europe, Japan etc. It's a burden on the economy, and moving towards self-sufficiency has benefits beyond the basic economics of typical energy infrastructure.
As for why solar? Well it's a country with some of the largest solar potential resources in the world, and on a relative scale it's off the charts. Morocco has several hydro projects, but they have mostly utilised their hydro capacity and in fact need to do some repairs on existing ones. There's very little potential for massively scaling that up. Pumped hydro is an option into the future, but it's a storage solution, not a source of renewable energy in and of itself. Wind, also, can't beat solar in Moroccan conditions. And again, Morocco has few fossil fuels. It has some oil reserves but they're not exploited because they're not economically viable and no exploration company really wants to get in there, not 10 years ago and definitely not today, and even then the reserves are small fry compared to say Algeria let alone elsewhere.
Short story is, Morocco needs energy independence badly, not 100% but it needs to start moving towards it. And relatively the best resource to do that is solar. You need projects to get started, build an industry, build expertise and expand it out, this is step one and it's certainly not a vanity project.
Btw it is relatively expensive for a solar project, which is a bit disappointing, but it must also be noted that it can generate energy even when the sun is down as it includes a storage solution which is priced in, so it can't be compared 1 on 1 vs a regular solar installation that doesn't have one.
All that is true fellow compatriot, but as you know, everyone on the process of being energy independent has to take his part of the cake, which is of course made of public money. Your taxes and mine. And of course show off as if it was his own personal project.
Well I can note two things. For one, energy is deeply subsidised in Morocco. Whatever corruption is obviously present in Morocco, sadly, the general public is better off on this road of energy independence, financially too, especially in the long-run, and due to subsidies, in the short term the consequences are limited to some extent.
Secondly, it's absolutely true of course the King is present on every major occasion. But what's the alternative? I don't think Morocco is ready for the alternative. As much as the king sucks in some ways and generates ridiculous revenues for him and his close allies, he's keeping the place together and Morocco is moving forward into a positive future. That's a big deal for what really is quite a poor North-African country with few natural resources, a not so recent colonial past, especially compared to most arab nations that have far more resources. Does the corruption suck? Absolutely, but I see it as part of the system. In much of the 'west' we have taxes that are used to run a more-or-less democratically elected government. In Morocco this tax is levied in the form of corruption and used to run a non-elected system of governance. The former is obviously preferable to the latter, but both are imperfect and the latter is generally working out for the Moroccan public, whose lives are getting better on the whole, their economy is growing on the whole, even through the crisis, in a world that's becoming more grim and harder to navigate. Morocco has deep challenges but the King putting up his usual show/routine is really not one of my current concerns.
Beyond that, it must be said this project was mostly externally funded, from Saudi Arabia, CIF, African Bank etc. If anything, given the strong electricity subsidies for households, I'd expect the public to be net beneficiaries of this project.
>> this project was mostly externally funded, from Saudi Arabia, CIF, African Bank etc. If anything, given the strong electricity subsidies for households, I'd expect the public to be net beneficiaries of this project.
Aren't subsidies paid from public taxes ? And does it matter who finance this , when part of the deal is a contract to sell expensive electricity to the people of morroco ?
Dams are dependent on a large volume of water flowing over a large drop to spin turbines. Looking at the aerial in the article, it's safe to assume that the water in the dam is a precious strategic resource and cannot be sent downstream in sufficient volume to provide infrastructure scale power.
I'm not trying to imply that Morocco's money would be better spent on dams, as Morocco is not in a location suitable for dams. I'm merely drawing attention to the fact that they intend to invest in a facility that will cost 1800x more per Kw than another common source of energy. Perhaps a better comparison would be pure solar, or off shore wind. Though I'm still confident those options would still be vastly cheaper than their current plan
This is a great project, the only thing that concerns me about it is the very large loan from the IMF denominated in USD they took out in order to build it. Could well have been the work of EHMs
Could you refer me to the IMF loan, I can't find it?
I do know Morocco took our a precautionary loan, iirc with the IMF, in the past few years which was renewed not so long ago. But it was renewed because it was not exercised, it's more of a free loan option they had secured to protect against the very swings in fossil fuel prices that a project like this diminishes due to increased energy independence. Perhaps that's the loan you're referring to? In that case, note that Morocco didn't actually lend the money, it only secured the option to borrow in case shit hits the fan. (oil goes to $100, which is a disaster for Morocco, but no sign of that anytime soon).
The article I read that in originally references a mixture of private and "IFI funding"[1] which I took to mean International Financial Institutions (which includes IMF/WorldBank etc. who make loans denominated in USD)[2].
The book I referenced above is by John Perkins who worked as a consultant for a company who would justify huge loans denominated in USD for power infrastructure to developing nations, but a significant majority of the work and materials would come from US companies. So the World Bank or the IMF would loan tonnes of money to someone in USD, much of it being transferred directly to companies in the US anyway, and leaving the nation with a large debt to service in a currency they do not issue (leaving them vulnerable to pressure from the US to export goods, for example, even though people require them locally, to liberalised trade agreements, or even to be allies in conflict etc. all sorts of sordid shit; the John Perkins stuff is well worth reading).
When governments take on large debts denominated in a currency they do not issue, it's always a cause for concern. That's why MMT academics were against the Euro[3], and why so many developing nations are now locked into crippling debt service that they cannot possibly keep up with.
Countries like the US, UK, Australia and Japan who only issue debt (ie. all currency or treasury securities) denominated in their own currency, have no risk of insolvency and no trouble servicing the debt[4] -- they can choose to stop paying interest any time they want and indeed the "debt" people refer to in those economies is really a "buffer stock" rather than a "bond market"[5]
When a nation that does not issue USD (ie. any nation other than the US) takes on USD denominated debt, with interest payments denominated in USD, they're up shit creek without a paddle.
Ah I see, no I wouldn't mean to take it as the IMF although they may have been part of the loan. A big chunk of the money is from climate investment funds (CIFs), which come from IFIs, of which in particular the regional IFI, the African Development Bank, in addition to private loans from Saudi Arabia and Germany. In fact it's co-owned by some of those companies, e.g. the saudi ACWA Power, the Spanish TSK etc.
Anyway, it doesn't matter as indeed all of those could be dollar denominated. I don't know if they are. It's extremely common for, particularly in english/international reporting, numbers to be reported in dollar equivalents. Whether that's the actual denomination of the loan I don't know. I do know Morocco struggles deeply with hard currency scarcity, particularly in the realm of necessary energy imports every year, so they're well aware of the issues surrounding obligations in foreign currency denominations. There's a lot of fluff pieces on this project but sadly little deep insight in how it's all structured.
Thanks for the book reference. I'd not read it but I've been introduced to the issue in college classes many times, it features heavily in international political economy classes for example of which I took a few. I hope to find some time this semester to look into all the resources you linked me, thanks for that!
It's used in the book I linked to above (and stands for "economic hitman", an industry insider term; or so claims John Perkins who used to be one -- interesting book and worth a read)
Solar power is a fully-developed technology. PV panels are a commodity that are manufactured mainly overseas. Most of the cost of a new solar plant is in the planning & labor. And it does indeed cost a lot of money to build a solar plant (relative to the amount of money you can sell its power for).
That said, solar and wind power are a great way to get consistent (but low) returns on your investment. Look into "solar bonds".
Looking at the graph from the first link, what will likely happen is solar installations will grow rapidly to meet the trend line, which means high revenue growth.
Solar is also currently priced like it's dying, so there'd also be a price/earnings increase.
There's no barrier to entry on anything solar-related. A wise investor would assume that serious competition will occur prior to reaching a trillion-dollar jackpot.
There are in fact barriers to entry on everything solar.
It's: political connections, zoning, utilities, regulations, laws. Try putting up a huge solar farm without the right connections and insiders, don't grease the right wheels, see what happens. There's no bigger barrier to entry than that.
See: FirstSolar's benefit from being tied to the Walton clan (JWMA / True North Partners). FirstSolar is basically the world's largest independent solar company, is flush with cash, and very profitable. It's not a coincidence they've fared so much better than the rest of the industry.
"The Waltons own more than 112 million shares of First Solar, four times as much as the second-biggest shareholder"
Then you'd get stuck buying half assed divisions of a bunch of F500 companies who get into the market just to profit off you.
Plus you'd need unlimited capital for this plan. And current solar companies might go bankrupt before solar hits the scale needed to compete with fossil fuels.
And the DOJ would sue you for antitrust violations. Standard Oil did your plan. That sort of thing won't be allowed again.
I'm surprised to see that this project uses wet cooling. Wikipedia claims it uses at least twice as much water as a coal power plant of similar capacity.
Is water surprisingly abundant in this part of the Sahara?
By definition this is low grade heat. In cold climates that can be used for stuff like heating nearby homes. In hot climates you're basically limited to running it through a bottoming cycle [1].
But that needs a delta T between the hot water coming out of your cooling system and ambient temperature of probably about 40 K, which probably requires a bigger cooling system than otherwise. So you have the added investment cost of a bigger cooling system plus the bottoming cycle, but you've gained some more energy output. Is it worth it? Impossible to say without crunching the specific numbers. But my first guess is "no" in this case. It is usually worth it for gas fired powerplants though.
a bit OT, but I have about 70m2 south facing roof space (UK) where I'd like to install solar panels at some point. How are panel prices likely to develop over the next 5 years? Should I wait, will panels become ridiculously cheap in the near future?
I can't speak to the UK specifically, but I have 4.8kW system on my south-facing roof in similarly-cloud Oregon. Panels will continue to get cheaper, but likely the largest part of the cost will be the installation, and that is not likely to become cheaper nearly as soon (though it should gradually, as it's more and more common).
There is a rule for calling yourself the "tallest building" that is relevant here. You aren't the tallest building until you have topped out. Before that, you are just a construction site. This is important because it means you cannot be "tallest" while still under construction. The title belongs to the tallest current building until such time as you stop building.
This "worlds biggest" solar plant therefore isn't. It isn't yet biggest. It may never be biggest. It may be passed over by some other plant started tomorrow. Or it could stop expanding before ever reaching its designed size.
I'm curious how much additional capacity this thing gets by using solar heat instead.