"here comes the sun" ... Vast farms of solar panels in the Sahara desert could provide clean electricity for the whole of Europe, according to EU scientists working on a plan to pool the region's renewable energy.And a few terrorists could blow it all up. Acres of solar panels are tough to protect from threats man-made or otherwise. I would be more concerned with shifty sand. It would just be part of the overall solution. Terrorists would have to blow up everything: solar, wind, geothermal, ..... etc. I don't think that's going to happen. LoPhatt is more correct. Dunes move. threats man-made or otherwiseI believe that's what I implied. If it's not a man made threat that pretty much leaves nature. The article does say that they would only need to capture 0.3% of the sunlight that falls in region. I'd imagine they could find some stable regions. They should go for it. If we can think about it, I am sure they have pondered it already. This website shows a map of the Sahara and shows the area that would be needed to power the world, power Europe, and power Germany. Remarkable that it is so small (relative to the rest of the world). We are being f'd up the arse by all the oil people. Map showing how much space needed to power the world with solar. CSP plants must by neccessity, to ensure plant alignment, be built on flat ground (not sand dunes) - and there is a fair amount of flat desert to be had in the Sahara. As for the bombing of mirrors - it's all a bit pointless (and will take an awful lot of effort to ensure miles of mirror are shored up). Compare this to taking out a nuclear power plant, where transboundary long-lasting human, environmental and economic devastation will follow, with years to rebuild (if really wanted). Bomb a bunch of mirrors in the desert - and all you will get is 7 years bad luck. (It takes 3 minutes to make fresnel mirrors - so even replacement is easy). For more information, look at http://www.trec-uk.o... Most of the Sahara is not sand dunes but wind swept bed rock and fields of regolith. Even the sands have bedrock below them so you could put tall wind turbines on the dunes and anchor them to the bedrock and use the rocky plateaus to build solar farms. As for terrorism, there would be far more than one installation. Some simple security measures could minimize any impact they could make. |
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