Ecobella Blog

• Experts are putting thousands of metal mirrors networked
• Project aims to eliminate the current dependence of the European Coal
• Energy will be distributed thru high-voltage direct current (HVDC) transmission cables under the Mediterranean sea

In just six hours of the Sahara desert receives solar energy from which humanity consumes in a whole year.

Therefore, a network formed by 60 scientists from Europe and Africa yesterday announced a project to capture part of that energy to produce electricity and use non-polluting, for now, on both continents.

The initiative, designed by the private conglomerate called DESERTEC Industrial Initiative, based in Germany, is the creation of a huge network of solar-thermal-solar farm in various parts of the Sahara desert.

Despite being located in the desert, all plants are located near a water source, on the shores of the Mediterranean. This occurs because water is an important part of the production of energy.

The plants under construction will be different to the traditional power plants because they do not work with photovoltaic cells or solar panels, which are normally quite expensive and some are difficult to install, but use metal mirrors to capture the sun’s rays.

Once they catch the sunlight, this energy is stored in a container. Then, another container filled with clean water from the process of water desalination in the Mediterranean, will be responsible for cooling the first container that stores the sun’s heat to generate steam.

The resulting water vapor is responsible for pushing the turbines and thus generates the electricity that we all know and has many uses.

The technology also has other value-added as the plants can generate electricity network in the absence of sunlight, i.e. at night or on cloudy days because it has the ability to store the heat it produces and then cooled with desalinated water.

Source: La Nacion
Source: Financial Times
Related: DESERTEC Foundation

If you are an engineer, a designer or simply an enthusiast interested in helping to make cleaner cars available to all, we want to hear from you! We are currently building up the community of people who will make this happen, while establishing the on-line infrastructure. Go to Get Involved for more information.

Our starting point is the design schematics licensed to us by Riversimple. Riversimple has built a hydrogen fuel cell powered network electric car which was unveiled to the public for the first time in London on 16th June 2009.

This wiki site, which is still in an early stage of development, is the platform where, over the next few months, designs will be made available under a Creative Commons license for viewing and download, where information about the projects is made available and where discussions will take place

Source: Riversimple