Is Greenpeace correct to say South Africa is the world’s third best solar location?

[rpm]

Is Greenpeace right to say S. Africa is the world’s third best solar location?

A cartoon image that went viral on Facebook depicted South Africa as the third best solar location globally. How on earth do you measure and rank that?

 

[unskinnybob]

Going to wager a guess that we have 3rd most sunshine hours when considering factors such as cloud cover etc.

 

[Nether]

Let me guess, they want to create lots more toxic pollution by creating massive amounts of solar panels that only work during the day...?

 

[NorthPole]

I'd also figure the amount of space available to make use of solar is a factor too

 

[DvD]

I remember once reading that Namibia has 3 of the top 5 most sunny towns.

This link says Upington is a good place to visit for some sunshine.

 

[itareanlnotani]

Fairly easily. Lookup the solar irradiance values published, and compare them.
http://www.sealite.com.au/technical/solar_chart.php


Looking at a chart though, I see we rate about 5-5.8 kWh /m / day ( http://www.sealite.com.au/solar_tables/s.txt )

Sudan, Sri Lanka, as do Senegal (in the S's) score higher, so I can conclude that while we are likely not the 3rd best solar location globally, we're in the top, as a sampling of other countries shows that we score in the high 5's, and most are less (but not all).


As for the poster who says this "Let me guess, they want to create lots more toxic pollution by creating massive amounts of solar panels that only work during the day...?"

Hmm, if only there were multiple ways to uh, store the power generated?
Or use the excess for something time insensitive (eg water desalination).

If only we had the issue of too much generation, and nothing to use it on. We're far far far away from that, so any predictable generation which co-incides quite nicely with most of our usage (solar generation quite nicely sits around office hours, so quite easily assists with power used by aircon's, computers, printers etc etc) is quite welcome.

 

[konfab]

Over all the countries in the Sahara and Middle east? :erm:

 

[Rusty0]

If so, we should bill our sunshine 20% higher than the gold prices.

 

[MrGray]

As for the poster who says this "Let me guess, they want to create lots more toxic pollution by creating massive amounts of solar panels that only work during the day...?"

Hmm, if only there were multiple ways to uh, store the power generated?
Or use the excess for something time insensitive (eg water desalination).

Concentrated solar power plants use mirrors not solar panels.

And there are proven methods of storing solar power - e.g. Spain's Gemasolar plant which generates solar power 24hrs a day by storing energy in molten salt during sunlight hours and then using the heat overnight to generate power. Other schemes propose using solar generated electricity to winch up huge blocks of concrete or pump water uphill and then harvesting power overnight from the stored potential energy (i.e. let gravity do the job). There are other projects that use the energy to crank up massive flywheels and harness the kinetic energy when there is no sunlight and even proposals to build massive capacitors.

This is all insanely expensive at the moment, and the EROI (energy returned on energy invested) is not great comparatively, but it's a bit of a catch 22 as these things require economies of scale and experience from implementations to become more efficient.

 

[satanboy]

Let me guess, they want to create lots more toxic pollution by creating massive amounts of solar panels that only work during the day...?

better that than the constant pollution caused by burning coal, right?

 

[Chris.Geerdts]

Our global rank doesn't make any difference. The truth is we have some sites available and need to get these CSP projects going soon. If we play this right, we can build up sufficient local skills to ultimately create an export market

 

[Compton_effect]

We'd better be fast. Last I heard Germany and the World Bank was negotiating for massive solar investment in Namibia. We could end up buying from them if we take too long. Oh, and as for mister 'only works during the day'? Its called pumped storage. Read up on it.