The Desertec concept envisages an interconnected Europe, Middle East and North Africa in which huge amounts of electricity are generated in the region’s deserts and transported to consumers throughout the region via a solar power supergrid.
By
ABB Communications
The idea grew out of ABB's early development of HVDC (high-voltage direct current) transmission technology, a system invented to provide an efficient means of transmitting large amounts of electricity over long distances or under the sea.
Back in 1992, ABB power transmission experts drew up a map showing the potential of harnessing renewable energy created in Europe, the Middle East and North Africa to meet the growing power needs of the region.
The plan ties together wind farms, hydro-, biomass, geothermal and a series of solar plants across North Africa, connected to Europe using high-efficiency HVDC power links.
Now it is the central vision of the Desertec Foundation, an international non-governmental organization whose goal is to transform vast quantities of solar energy from the world’s deserts into sustainable, emissions-free electricity to help meet the growing needs of an expanding global population.
This grand vision took a further step towards realization in July 2009 when ABB and 11 other companies joined forces to create the Desertec Industrial Initiative. The main goal of this initiative is to work on the feasibility, financing and construction of the plan, in which a large number of networked solar thermal power plants dot the Middle East, North Africa and Mediterranean Europe.
The vision is to produce by 2050 enough emission-free electricity to make a significant contribution to Europe’s power requirements while serving the power needs of the source countries. The resultant savings in greenhouse-gas emissions will be considerable.
Two technologies have been singled out by the Desertec Foundation as the most efficient and sustainable to generate and transport this huge volume of electric power: high-voltage direct current, a power transmission technology pioneered by ABB in the 1950s; and concentrating solar power (CSP) plants, a technology that ABB helped develop in the early 1990s.
Concentrating solar power plants
Concentrating solar power plants use mirrors, reflectors or parabolic troughs to capture and concentrate the sunlight, which is then used to heat oil or other heat transfer fluid to a temperature of around 400° C. The hot fluid is pumped through tubes to a power block where it is used to heat water and produce steam to generate electricity.
CSP was selected by Desertec for its ability to produce a round-the-clock supply of power. The system uses surplus energy received during the day to heat tanks of salt to extreme temperatures, which cause the salt to melt. In this form, the salt retains much of its heat and acts as an energy source for the generation of steam to drive turbines when the sun is down. A CSP plant like Andasol 1 can continue generating power for almost eight hours after the sun begins to set. This is currently not feasible using photovoltaic plants; the cost is prohibitive.
ABB has played a pioneering role in the development of technologies for CSP plants and has recently supplied extensive power and automation solutions for Europe’s two largest solar power plants, both of which produce 100 megawatts of power using CSP technology.
Long-distance bulk power transmission
Once the electric power has been generated it can either be connected directly to the existing AC transmission grid or converted into DC power for bulk transmission via overhead transmission lines or underground and underwater cables.
High-voltage direct current is an ABB innovation that enables large volumes of electricity to be transported efficiently over distances of several thousand kilometres with exceptionally low power losses.
ABB introduced the world’s first commercial HVDC solution in 1954 and has since supplied around 60 HVDC projects with a combined transmission capacity of almost 50,000 MW. Many of these are groundbreaking or record-breaking installations.
They include the world’s longest and most powerful HVDC installation (the Xiangjiaba- Shanghai power link currently under construction in China, which will deliver 6,400 megawatts of electricity over a distance of 2,071 km); the world’s longest underground cable and transmission system (the 180-km Murraylink project in Australia); and the world’s longest underwater power cable (the 580-km NorNed interconnection between Norway and the Netherlands).
Other groundbreaking ABB HVDC installations include the world’s largest offshore wind park connection (the 400-MW BorWin1 in the North Sea); the world’s first power-from-shore solution for an offshore oil and gas platform (the 84-MW Troll A project in the North Sea); and the world’s largest converter transformers (with a power rating of 621 MVA and weighing a massive 554 metric tons for the Pacific Intertie in the United States).
In July 2009, ABB was selected to supply another record-breaking solution for a new HVDC power link in Brazil that will connect hydropower plants in the northwest of the country with Sao Paulo. At 2,500 km, the link will set a new record for the world’s longest power transmission connection.