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I would like anyone to shed some light on this......
Sharjah, Ajman and sometimes RAk face some issues with electricity.....
Why are they not using the only unlimited resource available.....SUNLIGHT instead of whatever they may be using at the moment......

Most of us know that the electricity rates have been increased in Sharjah....why .....ermmm...."Sir, we are providing you with electricity and would like to charge more" was one answer I guess the other one was "We made some changes"

Solar energy is a onetime charge thing (I assume)......anyways UAE has a lot of sunshine....actually a lot more than needed and a lot of barren land.....so why not think and make a huge solar power plant....infact why not make the world's Biggest power plant.... they kinda like to do it.....Worlds biggest this....biggest that,,,longest this,most expensive that.

This concept is explained is a much better way in the Documentary "HOME" which by the way is a must see.
Gives a lot of General Information......
So who's got a light...........

Its a nice utopian idea, however the amount of power actually generated from a selenium solar cell is fairly insignificant. You will notice that parking meters are all solar powered because the usage is infrequent and the amount of watts of energy required is small. Normal household lighting burns between 20 (energy saving bulbs) and 100 watts (normal tungsten bulbs) which would need an array 6ft x 4ft just to run a single bulb! The normal way it runs is to have a battery (ballast storage unit) that the solar panel feeds during daylight hours which is then drained during darkness hours. Its expensive, cumbersome and inefficient still.

Masdar have promised to work on it.



Knight

Also believe it or not we have the 'wrong type' of sunshine in the UAE for solar panels to work effectively on a large scale. BP completed an extensive research project into this a few years ago and it turns out the sunlight here is too harsh.

There's another way to produce electricity - using the sun's energy to drive steam turbines.

Desertec is a project that is using this (but aims to produce electricity for Europe):
http://www.desertec.org/en/concept/technologies/

Cheers,
Shafique

Chocoholic wrote:Also believe it or not we have the 'wrong type' of sunshine in the UAE for solar panels to work effectively on a large scale. BP completed an extensive research project into this a few years ago and it turns out the sunlight here is too harsh.

Any reference? Is in outer space the radiation not so harsh as in the UAE?

The problem with solar cells is concentration (sun angle) and relatively short exposure times in late afternoons when energy demand peaks, especially in hot climates around the equator.

When silicum solar cells are used (cheapest cells), you can determine capacity with surface area. These non-concentrating systems work pretty well when the sun's exposure is long. The decision to add trackers to increase focal accuracy is an economic one. Solar tracker systems increase system costs (maintenance of moving parts) and can be useful to optimize the electricity output.

Problem in Dubai is that the sun is darn hot, which increases photovoltaic resistance in the panels (if I remember correctly) and with the short daylight exposure, plus rapidly changing angle of focal concentration, you can't do without solar trackers to manage the output problem during the late afternoon demand peak, as the sun goes down in the ME. And then you have to consider the seasonal changes also (like capacity requirement in Winter). So in my opinion its purely an economic decision not to use photovoltaic systems to generate electricity in Dubai.

Chocs is right. The wrong type of sunshine.

Sounds like the rail system in the UK. Every winter it grinds to a halt because of the 'wrong type of snow' on the track or the 'wrong type of leaves' falling...

Maybe Abu Dhabi can buy the right kind of sun for us?



Knight

If money is not a problem, everything is possible.

About economic viability I agreed but for another reason: cheap oil and gas. Even in Europe solar panels is highly subsidized by government due to high cost of pure crystaline silicon (the material is not the cheapest but has the highest efiiciency). It happend due to competition for raw material from chips manufacturers. Another problem might be dirt after sand storm.

However, I read in the local media about a project of huge solar panels field in Abu Dhabi.

Anyway I'd be gratefull for the reference. It's a pure curiosity.