Are There Solar Panels In The Desert

The sahara hasn t always been dry and sandy.

Are there solar panels in the desert.

Given the sahara covers about 9m km 2 that means the total energy available that is if every inch of the desert soaked up every drop of the sun s energy is more than 22 billion gigawatt hours gwh a year. Vast open lands roughly equal in size to the entire state of new mexico with an endless bounty of heat from the sun. There are several solar power plants in the mojave desert which supply power to the electricity grid. Each square metre receives on average between 2 000 and 3 000 kilowatt hours of solar energy per year according to nasa estimates.

These plants can generally be built in a few years because solar plants are built almost entirely with modular readily available. There are solar plants in deserts and marginal land sites all over the world. The mojave desert straddling california and nevada has been called the saudi arabia of solar power. Solar power for 400 000 homes.

There are two places in the world that have this high level of solar. The main issue is getting the electricity from the deserts to the cities where it is needed transmission lines are expensive to build and the longer the distance the less efficient they are meaning more electricity has to be used to overcome the resistance in the wires. The desertec initiative proposed a network of solar energy generators across the sahara we did a study so that we had numbers which are scientifically sound based on the present knowledge in a. Insolation solar radiation in the mojave desert is among the best available in the united states and some significant population centers are located in the area.

This question was originally answered on quora by mark rogowsky. Installing mass amounts of solar panels in the sahara could also have a remarkable impact on the desert itself. It s a clean energy developer s dream. In this part 1 of our solar panels in deserts article series we will examine the background challenges and potentials for solar pv energy in desert environments with emphasis on the sensitivity of solar pv modules.

Until dry cooling technologies are further advanced it could limit solar farms to the desert fringes close to large bodies of water. Indeed archaeologists have found traces. Somewhat counter intuitively some countries such as jordan.