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Concentrated Solar Power
Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn. —[Mr. Michael Foster.]
6 pm
Dr. Howard Stoate (Dartford) (Lab): I feel privileged to be given the opportunity to raise this extremely important issue tonight. Concentrated solar power is a concept of literally dazzling simplicity. It is an idea so simple, and with such extraordinary promise as a means of power generation, that it seems astonishing that in Europe we are only just waking up to its potential, more than 20 years after its first use in California.
The technology is very straightforward. A CSP plant uses mirrors to concentrate sunlight and create heat. The resultant heat is then used to drive turbines and generators, just like in a conventional power station. Heat can also be stored in melted salts so that electricity generation may continue at night or on cloudy days. For once, no amount of hyperbole is excessive. CSP represents, as The Guardian stated recently,
“A vast source of energy that holds the promise of a carbon-free, nuclear-free electrical future for the whole of Europe, if not the world.”
I could not put it better myself. In terms of its scale, therefore, CSP is a world away from the concept of solar photovoltaic technology such as the domestic roof-top solar panels with which we are more familiar in this country. The only issue with CSP is that it needs direct sunshine, and lots of it, to maximise its potential. Needless to say, it is not a technology that we will be seeing too much of in Dartford—or even, dare I say it, in Croydon, North.
Europe’s first commercially operating CSP plant has just opened in Spain, just outside Seville. It currently generates about 11 MW of electricity—enough to power up to 6,000 homes—but its operators hope that it will eventually produce sufficient power to meet the needs of Seville’s 600,000 residents. The deserts of north Africa, however, offer us the greatest potential as far as CSP is concerned. Each year, each square kilometre of hot desert receives solar energy equivalent to 1.5 million barrels of oil. Indeed, it has been calculated that we could produce the world’s entire electricity needs by covering less than 1 per cent. of the world’s deserts with CSP plants.
Desert-based CSP plants have the added advantage of allowing fresh water for crop cultivation and land irrigation to be created through the desalination of sea water using simply the waste heat from the CSP plants. The partially shaded areas under the solar mirrors also have many potential uses, including crop cultivation. It is even possible to imagine some energy-intensive industries choosing to locate in deserts to take advantage of CSP technology.
The key to realising CSP’s potential, however, is finding a reliable and above all cost-effective means of getting the power from the deserts to major population centres in Europe and elsewhere. The technology does now exist. Using high-voltage direct current, or HVDC, transmission lines, it is feasible and cost-effective to transmit electricity for more than 3,000 km. With modern high-voltage DC transmission, only about 3 per cent. of power is lost for each 1,000 km.
28 Feb 2008 : Column 1344
That means, for instance, that solar electricity could be imported from north Africa to London with a loss of power of only about 10 per cent. That compares extremely favourably with the 50 to 70 per cent. losses that have been accepted for many years in conventional alternating-current grids. Moreover, it has been calculated that 90 per cent. of the world’s population live within 2,700 km of a hot desert and could be supplied with solar energy from there.
The Trans-Mediterranean Renewable Energy Co-operation, or TREC—a group of scientists and engineers in Europe, the middle east and north Africa—is trying to identify ways of exploiting the energy-generating potential of hot deserts. TREC is calling for the creation of an HVDC supergrid to enable the transmission across the region of energy derived from north African CSP plants.
Like a significant number of hon. Members, I strongly support the case for an HVDC grid. Such a supergrid could allow energy from other renewable sources to be transmitted across Europe. Britain could put in wind power, Norway hydropower and central Europe biomass and geothermal power. An HVDC supergrid could also be integrated relatively easily with existing HVAC—high-voltage alternating current—transmission grids. The potential is so large that one may consider the possibility of extending the use of clean solar electricity into areas where gas, oil and coal are currently the dominant sources of energy. It would, for example, be perfectly feasible to expand the use of electric vehicles and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles, extend the electrification of railways, make greater use of electricity-powered heat pumps, and so on.
Apart from the importing of solar electricity from desert regions, the proposed HVDC supergrid has several other advantages. The chief one is the security of energy supply: a shortfall in any one area could be met by spare capacity in another area or another country. It would also reduce wastage: surplus power in any one area could simply be transferred to where it is needed. Conversely, the impact of the variability of certain renewable technologies such as wind power could be reduced by being able to integrate supply across a wide area. The supergrid co
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