Saudi Arabia to Become the Saudi Arabia of Solar Electricity

A couple days ago Bloomberg reported the following: "Saudi Arabia plans to generate solar electricity equaling the amount of its energy from crude exports, Oil Minister Ali Al-Naimi said." Wait, what?

That sounds like a ridiculous quantity of solar electricity. The article doesn't say quantitatively how much energy that is, so I did a quick check. Saudi Arabia exportsabout 2.7 billion barrels of oil per year, each containing the equivalent of 1,700 Kilowatt hours of electricity for a total of 4.59 × 1012 kWh per year, or the equal of about one quarter or the world's annual electricity demand.

Okay, so obviously solar electricity equal to the energy in all of Saudi Arabia's crude exports is far more than the Saudis could ever use, so maybe I'm misunderstanding the Oil Minister's meaning. Except, Bloomberg goes on to report that "Saudi Arabia, the world's largest oil exporter, has the potential by 2020 to produce enough solar power to meet more than four times global demand for electricity, al-Naimi said." Okay, so it appears they really are planning to ramp up huge. World leading huge. Region-or-more powering huge. A development plan this ambitious can only mean that Saudi Arabia intends to become a huge source of exportable electricity. 

Why would the world's largest oil producer wish to so quickly become the world's largest solar electricity exporter? I'm sure the Saudi leaders, looking around their country, had a conversation that started with, "so, apart from our rapidly depleting oil reserves, what natural resource do we have that could be exploited on an equally massive scale?" The Saudis realize the only answer is sunlight.

And knowing better than anyone that easy-to-retrieve oil is getting scarce, they have made the strategic decision to begin replacing it with their only other form of exportable energy, the only other source they can produce in abundance as massive, solar electricity. Saudi is making what in the medium- to long-term is the state-saving, obvious transition to the Next Economy. And they're doing it now while they're awash in enough oil capital to make it happen.

If I'm right about their plan to export ridiculous quantities of solar electricity, one of the next things we should see is investments into transmission capability (there are signs of this already, such as the huge new General Electric (NYSE:GE) power equipment plant, and plans for underwater power cables to Egypt).

Is a quarter of global electricity demand within feasible transmission range of Saudi Arabia? The Saudis would seem to think so. Other things we'll begin to see are contracts with solar providers and rising demand for materials all along solar industry verticals.Solar stock short sellers -- watch your backs.

Source:  AltEnergyStocks.com via Renewable Energy World

View - Interesting idea ... but why would we want to stay dependent on the Middle East for Energy - when the sun shines everywhere.   There is already the DESERTEC initiative to build large solar farms in Northern Africa and connect it to the EU grid in Spain ... but with the UK, France and USA deciding to take over the oil resources from Libya in the name of democracy and spreading unrest in Algeria and Morocco ... it will be interesting to see what happens to this project.

Personally, I'm in favor of small to medium sized solar projects located close to where the electricity is used ... in other words the German / Italian model of diversified energy production.   What is your opinion?

Saudi Arabia to Start Exporting Solar Energy?

Oil-rich Saudi Arabia wants to become an exporter of solar.

Yup, that’s right. The country’s oil minister confirmed Saudi Arabia’s solar ambitions last year and said the country has the potential to export power, not just oil. So far it seems to be moving on that promise. The Saudi Arabia-South Korea joint venture Polysilicon Technology Co. said this week it had signed a $380 million deal to build a $1.5 billion plant for manufacturing polysilicon, which is used in solar panels.

Saudi Arabian solar, however, looks like it’s a part of an overall oil strategy. The country wants to diversify its energy portfolio with solar and nuclear. By reducing its need to burn oil for electricity, it can preserve more oil for money-making exports, Reuters writes.

A handful of foreign companies have moved on solar opportunities in Saudi Arabia so far. Last year, SolFocus announced it would build the first and largest concentrated photovoltaic solar system in Saudi Arabia, delivering around 300 megawatt-hours of energy. Japanese thin-film solar company Solar Frontier will also provide 10 megawatts in a solar installation for a car park.

While renewable energy enthusiasts and companies often talk about cleantech as a way to end use of oil and fossil fuels, Saudi Arabia’s approach shows that in reality, the two are becoming complementary.

In fact, solar is being used to extract oil. This week GlassPoint said using solar to generate steam had become economical enough that the company was deploying it at its oilfields, where solar-generated steam is pumped into wells to help extract oil. BrightSource Energy is also deploying a similar solar steam approach at a Chevron oilfield, where it is expected to lower the cost of generating steam and thus result in cheaper oil, Greentech Media reports.

The renewable-fossil fuels crossover stretches to the area of energy efficiency. Other companies that have won investment lately aim to make the extraction and refining of fossil fuels more efficient. 

NEOS GeoSolutions, which has the backing of Bill Gates and Goldman Sachs, uses geophysical sensors and data analysis to determine the best areas to drill for oil and natural gas. (The use of sensors and data analysis is becoming increasingly common and important in the area of energy efficiency and management among cleantech companies). Rive Technologies makes oil-refining catalysts that help refiners squeeze more yield out of crude oil, and the technology could one day be applied to biofuels.

Solar Powered Desalinization

Saudi Arabia meets much of its drinking water needs by removing salt and other minerals from seawater. Now the country plans to use one of its most abundant resources to counter its fresh-water shortage: sunshine. Saudi Arabia's national research agency, King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology (KACST), is building what will be the world's largest solar-powered desalination plant in the city of Al-Khafji.

The plant will use a new kind of concentrated solar photovoltaic (PV) technology and new water-filtration technology, which KACST developed with IBM. When completed at the end of 2012, the plant will produce 30,000 cubic meters of desalinated water per day to meet the needs of 100,000 people.

KACST's main goal is to reduce the cost of desalinating water. Half of the operating cost of a desalination plant currently comes from energy use, and most current plants run on fossil fuels. Depending on the price of fuel, producing a cubic meter now takes between 40 and 90 cents.

Reducing cost isn't the only reason that people have dreamed of coupling renewable energy with desalination for decades, says Lisa Henthorne, a director at the International Desalination Association. "Anything we can do to lower this cost over time or reduce the greenhouse gas emissions associated with that power is a good thing," Henthorne says. "This is truly a demonstration in order to work out the bugs, to see if the technologies can work well together."

While the new concentrated PV technology might generate affordable electricity, solar power still costs more than fossil fuels in many parts of the world. But even with those high costs, using it to power desalination makes sense, Henthorne says. "You're not doing it because it's the cheaper thing to do right now, but it would be the cheapest thing down the road."

Desalination plants typically use distillation. Most upcoming plants, including the one in Al-Khafji, will use a process called reverse osmosis, which forces seawater through a polymer membrane using pressure to filter out salt. Both these methods are energy-intensive. Saudi Arabia, the top desalinated water producer in the world, uses 1.5 million barrels of oil per day at its plants, according to Arab News.

The new plant's concentrated PV and reverse-osmosis systems will use advanced materials developed by IBM for making computer chips. 

In a concentrated PV system, lenses or mirrors focus sunlight on ultra-efficient solar cells that convert the light into electricity. The idea is to cut costs by using fewer semiconductor solar cell materials. But multiplying the sun's power by hundreds of times creates a lot of heat. "If you don't cool [the device], you end up overheating the circuits and killing them," says Sharon Nunes, vice president of IBM Big Green Innovations. IBM's solution is to use a highly conducting liquid metal--an indium gallium alloy--on the underside of silicon computer chips to ferry heat away. Using this liquid metal, the researchers have been able to concentrate 2,300 times the sun's power onto a one-square-centimeter solar device. That is three times higher than what's possible with current concentrator systems, says Nunes.

For desalination, IBM has worked with researchers at the University of Texas at Austin to develop a robust membrane that makes reverse osmosis more energy-efficient. Desalination is done today with polyamide membranes that get clogged with oil and organisms in seawater. The chlorine used to pretreat seawater also breaks down the membranes over time.

The new polymer membrane contains hexafluoro alcohols, a material IBM uses to pattern copper circuits on computer chips. At high pH, the fluorine groups become charged and protect the membrane from chlorine and clogging. As a result, water flows through it 25 to 50 percent faster than through currently used reverse-osmosis membranes, according to IBM.

The new membrane removes 99.5 percent of the salt in seawater. This is comparable with conventional polyamide membranes, says Menachem Elimelech, chair of chemical engineering at Yale University. "You need to achieve this high rejection, otherwise you can't get good water quality by one pass, you have to desalinate again."

The Al-Khafji desalination plant is the first of three steps in a solar-energy program launched by KACST to reduce desalination costs. The second step will be a 300,000-cubic-meter facility, and the third phase will involve several more solar-power desalination plants at various locations.


Source:   Technology Review

Emerging Solar Markets in North Africa and Middle East

The UN, World Bank, African Development Bank, IFC, and League of Arab States were just a few of the speakers at MENASOL 2010 held in Cairo on May 4-5. Over 250 solar professionals attended not only from the MENA region but many international companies in Europe and the USA. The key reason for all delegates to attend was to get the inside track on how to finance, develop and build utility scale solar projects in the MENA region.

A clear message from all the speakers was that the solar potential for the regions was immeasurable and was defiantly shaping up to be the leading region that could harness the solar power and develop a booming industry for either domestic use or export to Europe.

The biggest European initiatives including the DESERTEC Foundation and Mediterranean Solar Plan outlined the bright future that could make Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Egypt the powerhouse for the rest of Europe.

It would not be fair to mention the recent activities in Saudi Arabia that which are pro actively working towards creating a solar industry as big or even bigger then the oil sector. An impressive statement, but with the government and private companies sharing the same vision, Saudi Arabia could once again be a leading energy provider.  And it doesn’t stop there as they are also looking at being a manufacturing base to supply the  PV and CSP community.

The future of solar for each country was discussed by government agencies and ministries and the practicalities of developing this projects were discussed by leading players such as Abengoa, Acciona as well as top research institutions such as DLR which gave the full picture on capacity building in region and how these projects can transform the education and employment of a country.

Obviously lots of steps need to be taken as there are many challenges that lay ahead, including the security for international investment, subsides & regulations. All of these were discussed and created interesting debate among the participants during the panel discussions and Q&A.

Heidi Hafes, Event Director,  New Solar Today said ‘The high level of participation and mix between the commercial and private sector was key to making this event so successful for those involved. Governments were able to use it as a platform to attract investment and businesses were able to develop the company strategy for the region. It is a well known fact that building relationships is fundamental to generate business, and even more so in the region…and having spoken to many of the participants this was definitely achieved.’

MENASOL 2010 has defiantly created some excitement for the solar industry and offered a realistic perspective of what the future holds for the MENA region.

    For more information or if you would like to purchase the presentations please contact:
Heidi Hafes, Event Director, New Solar Today

+44 207 375 7206
heidi@newsolartoday.com