What If We Make The Sahara Desert A Solar Farm To Generate Energy For The Entire World?

According to professor Amin AI-Habaibeh, a scientist from Nottingham Trent University, he is mind-blown by the enormousness of Sahara, every time he visits this area.

Advantages of Sahara to become a solar panel

Located in Africa, Sahara is considered the largest hot desert on Earth. If it were a country, the desert would be the world’s fifth-biggest one, just slightly smaller than China. At the condition when every inch of Sahara soaked up fully sun’s energy, it receives 22 billion gigawatt hours a year. The thrilling statistics about Sahara have made Amin think about a solar farm built on this area. The hypothetical farm covering the entire desert would produce 2,000 times more energy than the world's largest powerhouse. The output could cover over 7,000 times Europe's electricity demand. Especially, there would be barely any carbon dioxide emission.

Also, Sahara gets the advantage of being close to Europe. The shortest distance from North Africa to Europe is just 15 km, and a further distance is still possible to carry electricity. Serious plans have been made, to bring academic insights into practice. Despite acquiring a lot of funding, they are quickly held back because of high costs and some other factors.

Is Solar Farm Named Sahara possible?

Amin AI-Habaibeh said that there were two technologies suitable for the plans, but each had pros and cons.

Concentrated solar power (CSP) generates electricity through conventional steam turbines. It makes use of the sun's extreme heat by focusing sunlight in one spot, through lenses or mirrors. The technology can help produce solar energy at night by storing energy using molten salt. However, CSP requires the use of water. Besides, CSP technology currently cannot compete on price with other solar panels, its lens could be covered by sand storms.

Photovoltaic solar panels, the other technology, is the most common type of solar powers. Not only can it be connected to the grid or distributed for small scale use, but it can also provide reasonable output in cloudy weather. But considering that temperatures can exceed 45 degrees Celsius, this approach is not ideal as its efficiency drops once the panels become too hot.

Although it now remains in academic insights, Amin supposed that the ideas would become reality as solar technology improved and things got cheaper.