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Comment by strommen | Hacker News Reader

$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.

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As always, Wikipedia is informative: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ouarzazate_solar_power_stati.... The numbers there suggest a capacity factor of 26%...PV at that latitude might get about 2/3 of that.

Also from Wikipedia: they have a contract to sell the power at 19¢/kWh. For reference, coal and wind in the U.S. sell for more like 3¢.

It's great to see the world embrace clean energy, but the money in this project seems nuts to me.

Wild guess - it's a strategic thing for Europe.

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.

Last paragraph in the article:

“They had a vision to promote renewables at a time when oil prices were high"

Guessing that's why Europe backed out.

It doesn't seem like it's big enough to matter on a global scale. A million people is a rounding error.

We're never going to succeed if we can't get the cost close to fossil fuels.

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.

A lot of solar power is coming online. China is adding a significant amount, for example:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_in_China

Apple is building a couple hundred megawatts in China:

http://fortune.com/2015/10/22/apple-china-solar/

The problem is we need an awful lot more without breaking the bank.

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.

> or there's some sort of corruption around it.

Does this project count as "public procurement?" If so the chances of corruption would seem higher:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_in_Morocco

Actually, the Wikipedia article[1] says it ("Noor 1") costs $3.9 billion, and produce 125 to 160 MW.

That is $24/W to $31/W. That is horrible. For cleaning the reflectors, it apparently uses 23 times as much water as a dry cooled coal power station.

It makes me sad to think that money and resources are being spent so inefficiently, in a country where the GDP per capita is $3k/year.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ouarzazate_solar_power_station

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.

Wouldn't it likely take three hours to start after sunrise then?

No, because you can immediately start creating power when the sun comes up and slowly store heat over the course of the day.

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.

https://www.caiso.com/Documents/CaliforniaISOPeakLoadHistory...

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.

On a lighter note, in Britain the peak is at about 9pm when people put on electric tea kettles after football and soaps. [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TV_pickup

According to PV-magazine [1]:

This portion of the plant comes in around $6/watt, still bad but not as bad as the headline number for the whole project.

Also the 4th stage of the plant will be PV.

http://www.pv-magazine.com/news/details/beitrag/morocco-inau...

It's true that solar thermal can produce electricity after the sun goes down, but they also use natural gas--at least Brightsource's Ivanoah plant: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivanpah_Solar_Power_Facility

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