'...It will only take about five months for the plant to produce enough energy to offset the energy consumed in its production. After that, Vorbrugg hopes, it will remain in service for another 25 to 30 years.'<blockquote>''Oliver Vorbrugg is monitoring progress in Andasol for the German solar company Flagsol. He bumps along through the rows of mirrors in a silver station wagon, against a backdrop of the snow-capped, 3,000-meter peaks of the Sierra Nevada mountains. His mobile phone rings about once every five minutes. His ring tone is a harmonica rendition of the theme from the film "Once Upon a Time in the West," a fitting reminder, says Vorbrugg, that parts of the Western were filmed here, at the base of the Sierra Nevada.
Workers are currently pouring foundations for cooling towers, while technicians are welding pipes together. The greatest possible precision is required during assembly and production, says Vorbrugg, but once the plant is up and running, it will be "a good-natured system," and an efficient one to boot. It will only take about five months for the plant to produce enough energy to offset the energy consumed in its production. After that, Vorbrugg hopes, it will remain in service for another 25 to 30 years.
The salt storage devices are particularly remarkable. Giant silver tanks, with a diameter of up to 36 meters (118 feet), contain liquid potassium and sodium nitrate, cheap mineral salts that are normally used in synthetic fertilizer. The engineers in the Andasol control room can decide whether to conduct heat from the solar collectors directly to the turbine or into the salt tank. Once the salt tanks have been heated, the power plant can run at full capacity for seven hours using the stored heat from the tanks alone.
...
In addition to such storage tanks, the
Desertec project would require cables to bring the electricity to European population centers. The cables would be high-voltage direct current (HVDC) transmission lines, which can transmit electricity over a distance of 1,000 kilometers with losses of less than 3 percent.
The longest of these underwater HVDC lines went into operation in late 2008. It transmits power from the Netherlands to Norway, or the other way around, depending on where the electricity happens to be cheaper at any given time. The Norned cable already recouped more than 10 percent of the initial investment within its first three months of operation.
...
If the boom does in fact take off, German companies, which are worldwide leaders in solar technology, will be the first to benefit. Giants like Siemens are involved in the business, but so are smaller, specialized companies. Cologne-based Flagsol produces solar control devices, the Bavarian company Schott Solar makes heat receptors for the solar troughs, and Solar Millennium, based in Erlangen in southern Germany, provides project development services. German companies already control a third of the worldwide market for solar thermal energy.
When the Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Environment and Energy calculated the projected revenues for German solar companies by the year 2050 under a best-case scenario, it came up with an astronomical figure: €2 trillion.'
- Cordula Meyer,
European Dream of Desert Energy Takes Shape, 05/27/2010
Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan</blockquote>