bleachedsharkfur t1_iyv5fg3 wrote
I have a noob question: Building solar in the desert makes sense because there is a lot of sun-supply. But I see two obstacles and I don't know how there a dealt with:
- heat: solar gets less effective with heat. --> do the panels require cooling? If yes, how?
- sand everywhere. Sand will probably cover up parts of the panels reducing efficiency. Using water sounds wasteful --> How do they clean the panels?
seanbrockest t1_iyv6abx wrote
You're right the heat is a little bit of a barrier, but it's a trade-off. The areas that produce the most sun, also produce the most heat. The panels are tuned to do their best. There are cooling options, but I have yet to see many places implement them. If you have fresh water nearby, you can certainly liquid cool them, but then you start to cut into your power production.
Yes the dust is also an issue, there are automated ways to take care of it, and they're automatic ways to take care of it. It's also a trade-off. Sometimes the wind is sufficient to blow the sand on and off again.
It's all part of the calculations they do before approving a project like this.
SirGlenn t1_iyvnax5 wrote
India, a bit in the U.S. and a few other places are realizing the potential of covering water canals with a metal cover, solar panels on top, the cooling effect from the evaporating keeps the panel temperatures about seven degrees cooler than the surrounding land scape, which allows more power to be had from the panels on top.
Glycerine t1_iyvcgh1 wrote
This is an interesting video about the current solution, and some of the limitations of sahara based solar plants: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q_HxJFuF5io&ab_channel=KnowledgePoint
mmaramara t1_iywpzos wrote
I guess you could have very very efficient water cooling by using similar techinque that's used for both heating and cooling buildings here in Finland: earth-heating or whatever it's called. They drill a hole, like 200-400m deep to have a small pipe in. You run water in the pipe to ether gather heat or get rid of heat, depending on the situation (heating in the winter, cooling in the summer) I don't know the numbers for cooling, but for heating you get like 6kW heating-power for 1kW of electricity used to run the system. For cooling inside air for comfort, the cooling is practically 0 energy spenditure.
It costs around 15-20 k€ for a residential building here. Majority is labour cost including the drilling.
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