Located in Egypt's "Western Desert", west of the Nile, but in the eastern Sahara. 1.8GW is a lot, amounting to 5% of Egypt's capacity, but they're also finishing three 4.8GW gas-fired combined-cycle plants (40% of capacity), to meet peak demands.
There's a PV Project Feed-In Tariff document, which has prices, but it may not show the effective cost of the new solar electricity.
--
Thanks,
- Win
The almost 10 GW of new always-on gas plant will help them a lot. The
1.8 GW of intermittent solar power, not so much.Feed-in "tariffs" are paying suppliers for the privilige of paying them.
Actually, 14.4GW of gas-fired power. While mid-day solar comes at a good time and does help to reduce peak-power production needs, this story makes clear just how much bigger grid-scale solar farms need to be, to have a serious impact.
A second calculation I did was, looking at Egypt's per capita electrical use, about 1.623 MWh/year. Oops, my wife and I consume about 10.5 MWh/yr, or 6.5 times more. OK, 3.23 x more per capita.** Our roof makes 11 MWh/yr, but it's sobering thought.
** Doesn't count consumption at work, or our share of other shared consumptions. worlddata.info says U.S. per capita = 11.93 MWh/yr, or 7.35 x higher. Hey, we'd need to more than double our roof solar.
--
Thanks,
- Win
If it says it's for peak, that implies that it's not always on.
The 1.8 GW of intermittent solar power,
Geez, 5% of the country's capacity from one new solar installation isn't a serious impact? They didn't build all the existing capacity in just a year or two, did they? If this covers 5%, build 4 more and you have 25%. Would that be serious or something to piss all over too?
I pay a few hundred dollars a year 'extra' on our electric bill to 'get' all our electric from the nearby wind mills. (I also burn ~1,000 gallons/year of oil, driving cars and heating the house.)
George H.
Will be interesting to see how those flimsy Amp connectors hold up in that environment. They already have one instance of a connector failure due to heat.
And add storage.
People need electricity at night too.
Would you sign up to only get all your electricity from windmills?
That is the peak power.
Fortunately Egypt has a nice amount of hydrolectrics that can be used as energy 'storage'. The maximum power output from the Aswan dam is
2.2 GW, so they could shut down the hydro generators during the day and save water for evening, night and morning consumption. Also remember that day consumption is always larger than night consumption.
A fixed PV array has a capacity factor about 30 %, so the installed power would have to be about 40 GW peak to produce the same energy as the three combi sites.
Since these are combi units that would suggest that they are used several thousand hours each year. Emergency gas turbines are cheap low efficiency units, which are used a few hundred hours a tear.
Each of the three sites have twelve combi units, each consisting of two gas turbines, a boiler and a single steam turbine. At least starting the steam turbine takes some time, but apparently the gas turbines can run independently. Since there are 12 combi units in each site, it is possible to adjust the output power to closely match the demand.
The building cost was surprisingly expensive, more than $2/W of peak power.
Feed-in tariffs suspicious if set by the state in advance.
In India private companies makes bids for which tariffs they are willing to build and maintain a PV plant for decades and get the income. The state only selects the lowest bid and builds some infrastructure such as roads and HV lines.
You mean when the wind mills aren't turning my house goes dark? If so, then of course not.
GH
Sure, but again that doesn't mean that it's running full capacity at night. Energy usage declines sharply at night.
The consumption is typically 10-30 % lower during the night than during the day depending on country and season. Apparently it can fall by 50 % in some countries, if there are very little 24/7 industry.
I didn't realize it was always night in Egypt.
-- Rick C. - Get 2,000 miles of free Supercharging - Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209
Would you sign up to pipe the exhaust from a gas fired plant into your home?
Yes, that is a stupid question and so is yours.
-- Rick C. + Get 2,000 miles of free Supercharging + Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209
In the UK it is 4:1 ...
? Peak demand for electricity is about four times greater than night-time demand ? Electricity consumption increases rapidly in the morning as people wake up, shower and begin to use appliances ? Many people are out during the day, which keeps consumption steady ? Electricity consumption peaks in the evening when most people are at home cooking, using lights, and when TV viewing is at its height ? Major national events, such as a Wimbledon final, can cause sharp drops and increases in demand
Source:
You mean like in the US? When you say day/night, what is really important is seasonal variations on top of the daily cycle. Summer peak to fall/spri ng low is more than 2:1 in the US. That is clearly no t dominated by 24/7 industry since that would not show such a heavy seasonal variation.
-- Rick C. -- Get 2,000 miles of free Supercharging -- Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209
You failed to quote the heading of the chapter you are quoting
With that heading that chapter makes sense and might even be accurate.
However, from production point of view, those figures are quite irrelevant. More relevant is to include industry and infrastructure consumptions, such as street lights.
Presumably there is a lot of electric space heating/cooling then.
In the UK most space heating is gas or oil in regions without mains gas
- and domestic aircon is rare. Never gets hot or humid enough to worry.
UK stats are something like base load at night 20GW. Weekday working hours 35GW, weekend working hours 30GW.
The only time there is serious seasonal variation is if there is a very cold winter when peak daytime can reach 50+GW (about the limit of the entire UK generating capacity). Last winter was quite mild so even on the coldest winter days the peak daytime seldom went above 40GW.
We are only really in trouble if it is a blocking high calm cold winters day without wind and the same over most of Europe. When that happens next time there will be UK power cuts since France won't export to us if their entire generating capacity is needed domestically.
-- Regards, Martin Brown
When discussing PV the relevant thing is the day/night difference _within_ a season. Wind also suffer from short day variations (days), so there must be other quickly dispatchable sources.
The seasonal variations are easier to handle, start extra power plants (such as coal or even nuclear) at the beginning of the high consumption season (summer at low latitudes, winter at high latitudes) and let them run until end of high season. Regular scheduled maintenance can be done during low season.
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