The Future of Energy

For as long as the human civilization has existed, so has the Sun. And sometimes, with all of our technology, jobs and obligations, it is sometimes easy to forget just how fundamentally important the Sun is to our own survival. The Sun provides us with light, before the time of electricity, so that humans may actually be able to see and engage in activities to ensure our survival. The Sun warms the Earth, it makes it possible for humans to actually survive on this floating rock in space. It makes sure that we are neither too hot nor too cold that neither burn nor freeze to death. The Sun helps grow our crops, it provides nutrients to the food that we eat so that we do not starve.

The importance of the Sun is prevalent in all of the world’s cultures. No matter what culture, no matter what part of the world you hail from, you will always find some form of reverence to the power of the Sun. It’s amazing how much importance we can attribute to a giant ball of burning Hydrogen isn’t it?

And the Sun is about to become a whole lot more important. This week Morocco is officially opening phase 1 (out of 3) of the largest solar plant in the world. At full capacity this plant will be able to produce 500 MegaWatts (MW) of power for Moroccans, and possibly neighboring countries. The benefits of such a move by Morocco are enormous. They will be able to create hundreds of new jobs, minimize their carbon emissions, develop technology an exciting industry, and be able to increase their energy security. Not to mention be able to provide its citizens with cleaner energy.

How Morocco is able to do this, is that they are taking advantage of solar harvesting method called “Concentrating Solar Power” (CSP) technology. Basically, how this technology works, is rather than having laying out rows of flat solar panels (the conventional method), wherein the panes try and “catch” as much Sun rays as possible. CSP uses mirrors to try and “focus” the Sun’s rays to a singular point, which then harvests the energy to produce electricity.

Once the receivers absorb the Sun’s rays, they then use that energy to heat water, which turns turbines that produce electricity.

The introduction of this CRP plant to Morocco is amazing, and it takes us one step towards becoming less dependent on fossil fuels which produce harmful carbon emissions. Which got me thinking, if Morocco is able to introduce this kind of plant, then why not the Philippines? The Philippines is a tropical country on the equator, we get quite a lot of sun, and if past experience is anything to go by, we definitely need new source of electricity. So why can’t the Philippines have a plant like this too? So I took a look at what a solar plant could potentially mean for the Philippines.

So just how “clean” is the electricity that the Philippines use? According to the Philippine Department of Energy (DOE), as of 2010 (the latest that data is available), the Philippines has the capacity to produce 16,359 MW, and that the country as a whole has a 99.9% “electrification” rate (meaning 99.9% of all barangays have electricity). So for the purposes of this discussion we can assume that for the year of 2010, 16,359 MW is enough to power the country.

The next question is, “what are the sources of this electricity?” Well, according to the DOE, out of the multiple sources of power the Philippines has the top contributor is Coal, which provides 4,867 MW (29.75%), this is followed by Hydropower and Oil, which respectively contribute 3,400 MW (20.78%) and 3,193 MW (19.52%) respectively. So oil and coal (fossil fuels) contribute about half of our overall power needs. Conversely Solar only contributed 1 MW (0.006%) to the total power capacity of the country. So there’s plenty of opportunity for Solar to contribute a higher proportion of our power.

The benefits of using solar energy are numerous, however, the main points to note are that:

1. Solar energy is “clean energy”. It doesn’t emit environmentally hazardous emissions
2. Solar energy is plentiful and in great abundance, and need only to be harvested
3. After making the initial upfront investment, you don’t need to keep buying “input” to create electricity. Unlike fossil fuels where you continuously need to buy more oil and coal. And as such, solar energy is not prone to price fluctuations on the commodity market.

However, one interesting point that I found while researching CSPs is how much land you would need to produce proper amounts of electricity. According to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), you need approximately 5 acres of land (2.02 hectares) to produce 1 MW of electricity using CSP.

So doing the math, if you need 2.02 hectares to produce 1 MW of electricity, you would need only 33,045.18 hectares (330.4518 km²) to produce 16,359 MW of electricity. Now if 330 sq km sounds like a large amount of land, put it into perspective that the Philippines has a land area of 300,000 km². So in order to power the whole country, you would only need 0.11% of the country’s land area.

You only need 0.11% of the entire Philippines land area to generate enough clean solar power for the country.

Basically, you would need a solar plant that covers the area of Cebu City (315 km²). It might sound crazy to consider creating a solar power plant the size of a city, but that’s essentially what Morocco is doing. And in the grand scheme of things, I’m sure that the benefits would surely outweigh the cons of having such a power plant installed. Just imagine an unlimited supply of clean electricity for the entire country. History has taught us that grand scientific progress has been made whenever new source of energy have been discovered. The Industrial Revolution was only able to take place thanks to the large amounts of electricity brought about through the discovery of coal as a power source. The advent of Nuclear power has allowed for a plethora of new scientific discoveries. What is 315 km² in the face of such an opportunity?