Among the long-term energy scenarios identified by major international organization (IAEA, IEA, US-DOE, WBC, etc.) in order to drastically reduce fossil fuels consumption and set out towards a sustainable energy system within the 21st century, the possibility of desert areas exploitation for large scale renewable energy production must be seriously considered. Desert areas are characterized by very large lands availability with high levels of solar irradiation and wind. If just 4% of these areas was used for the installation of solar systems, the annual energy production would equal world primary energy consumption. A little 0.3% of Sahara desert area would equal the total installed electrical power of Europe (700 GW). However, apart from generating costs (which should fall down respect to conventional generation in future), two main problems would prevent the realisation. First, the variability of renewable power availability may lead to electric grid instability, reducing the quality of energy sup-ply. Second, because deserts are typically far from high density populated and energy demanding areas, very high power lines are necessary to transport the produced energy towards consumption regions. Hy-drogen, produced by water electrolysis, is one of the most promising and studied means of storage and transmission vector of energy from renewable power system. Hydrogen is universally seen as the future replacement of fossil fuels. The system proposed in this paper resorts to the use of liquid hydrogen (cooled down to 20.4 K) for energy storage, and to the combined transport of electric energy and hydro-gen with MgB2 superconducting line. The system allows flexible delivering of energy in electric and chemical form, depending on demand. The use of the superconducting line allows to reach multi-GW electric power delivery with a single line.
Long-term Scenarios for Energy and Environment: Energy from the Desert with Very Large Solar Plants using Liquid Hydrogen and Superconducting Technologies
TREVISANI, LUCA;FABBRI, MASSIMO;NEGRINI, FRANCESCO
2005
Abstract
Among the long-term energy scenarios identified by major international organization (IAEA, IEA, US-DOE, WBC, etc.) in order to drastically reduce fossil fuels consumption and set out towards a sustainable energy system within the 21st century, the possibility of desert areas exploitation for large scale renewable energy production must be seriously considered. Desert areas are characterized by very large lands availability with high levels of solar irradiation and wind. If just 4% of these areas was used for the installation of solar systems, the annual energy production would equal world primary energy consumption. A little 0.3% of Sahara desert area would equal the total installed electrical power of Europe (700 GW). However, apart from generating costs (which should fall down respect to conventional generation in future), two main problems would prevent the realisation. First, the variability of renewable power availability may lead to electric grid instability, reducing the quality of energy sup-ply. Second, because deserts are typically far from high density populated and energy demanding areas, very high power lines are necessary to transport the produced energy towards consumption regions. Hy-drogen, produced by water electrolysis, is one of the most promising and studied means of storage and transmission vector of energy from renewable power system. Hydrogen is universally seen as the future replacement of fossil fuels. The system proposed in this paper resorts to the use of liquid hydrogen (cooled down to 20.4 K) for energy storage, and to the combined transport of electric energy and hydro-gen with MgB2 superconducting line. The system allows flexible delivering of energy in electric and chemical form, depending on demand. The use of the superconducting line allows to reach multi-GW electric power delivery with a single line.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
