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Portugal steps up its efforts to increase the usage of renewable energy

Portugal is doing its part to invest in renewable energy with the dedication of a new 11-megawatt (MW) solar plant. The plant, which is located in Serpa, is one of the largest solar arrays in the world and can supply enough electricity for 8,000 households.

The solar plant was built by Catavento, a Portuguese renewable energy company and California based PowerLight Corporation, a GE Energy Financial Services subsidiary. It occupies roughly 150 acres in Portugal's Alentejo region and contains over 52,000 photovoltaic modules manufactured by Sanyo, Sharp, SunPower and Suntech. The solar plant is also said to reduce CO2 emissions by 13,000 tons per year.

"This project is successful because Portugal's sunshine is plentiful, the solar power technology is proven, government policies are supportive, and we are investing and delivering under GE's ecomagination initiative to help our customers meet their environmental challenges," said Kevin Walsh of GE Energy Financial Services. "Thanks to great Portuguese sunshine and high technology, this plant right here in Serpa is expected to produce the most power -- more than 20 gigawatt-hours per year."

"The Serpa solar power plant speaks to the green power initiatives now setting Europe on a course toward ambitious emissions reductions goals. By assembling a first-class team of companies in the solar arena, we've achieved a remarkable renewable energy milestone," remarked PowerLight CEO Tom Dinwoodie.

As reported last month by DailyTech, the European Union (EU) is aiming to receive 20% of its power from renewable energy sources by 2020. Currently, the EU receives 6.5% of its power from renewable energy.

Portugal wants to significantly improve on those figures before the 2020 deadline. Portugal's Prime Minister, Jose Socrates, has proclaimed that his country will receive 45% of its power from renewable sources within 3 years.

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land
By nah on 4/2/2007 8:27:57 AM , Rating: 2
20 GWh= 20 million KWhrs on 150 acres=0.607 Km2 of land. Now total world prodn of electricity is around 16000 billion KWh or 16 million GWh. It would require around 485600 km2 of land. Multiply that by a factor of 3/4 and you have total world energy consumption in 2007 in around 2-2.5 million km2 of land. More interesting than growing crops and burning them. Add wind power and you can give everyone on this planet the energy consumed by an average American--i.e. around 7819 kg of oil equivalent, or 7819 * 41 MJ




RE: land
By masher2 (blog) on 4/2/07, Rating: 0
RE: land
By nah on 4/2/2007 9:41:11 AM , Rating: 2
I meant multiply by 3 or 4--the 3/4 was a typo--checking on what you have said--your points are basically OK but i see no reason why we can't blanket 2/3 million km2 --total land area of the world is currently at 135 million km2--there are enough deserts and semi inhabited places to pull this of--and in anyway, what options do we have--wind+ solar to produce electricity for homes/factories/offices and hydrogen for cars/airplanes/dirigibles for transportation energy--gas/oil will run out by 2050/2075 tops. Coal maybe by 2200. Nuclear--simply too dangerous, hydro-capacity keeps diminishing over time due to river siltation


RE: land
By masher2 (blog) on 4/2/2007 9:53:43 AM , Rating: 4
> "and in anyway, what options do we have..."

Nuclear power, of course. Its far safer than any other form of power generation. Cumulatively, western nuclear reactors have racked up over 10,000 reactor-years of operation without a single fatal accident. And these are with primarily 1960s-era designs.

Far safer, cleaner, and more efficient designs are on the books, such as pebble-beds and Rubbia's "energy amplifier". Designs that can't possibly explode, designs that can actually burn the nuclear waste from conventional nuke plants, and that generate less radioactive waste than even a coal-based plant (due to the radioactive uranium found naturally within coal).

> "hydrogen for cars/airplanes/dirigibles for transportation energy"

Hydrogen isn't a source of energy. It's an energy-carrier only...the energy has to come from some other source.


RE: land
By chsh1ca on 4/2/2007 10:49:20 AM , Rating: 2
As long as they never have accidents, you're dead on.

I'm not talking about meltdowns either, I'm talking about the incidental stuff that causes environmental damage that seems to never get talked about. My personal experience with it has been living mostly in cities located between two plants -- the Pickering, Ontario plant, and the Darlington (Bowmanville), Ontario plant. Pickering regularly had huge budget overruns and more importantly several coolant leaks.

Chalk it up to the CANDU reactors, or the government running power generation here, but there are health risks associated with them. Granted, they tend to be overblown (people jump to Chernobyl), but there is real non-explosion oriented pollution produced by these things.


RE: land
By masher2 (blog) on 4/2/2007 11:00:17 AM , Rating: 1
> "Pickering regularly had huge budget overruns and more importantly several coolant leaks"

None of which caused the slightest bit of environmental damage. And again, I have to stress that these plants are all primarily 1960s-era technology. Far better designs are available now, but there is little interest in building them, thanks to public hysteria and ignorance.

By the way, nuclear power set a record last year. It generated more electricity than any previous year, at an average cost of 1.66 c/kWh. Solar power tends to weigh in at 20 to 30 times that.


RE: land
By otispunkmeyer on 4/2/2007 11:27:34 AM , Rating: 3
ill agree here

nuclear power is probably the best choice for clean, reliable and substantial amounts of energy

but the ecomentalists get all riled up and thats puts an end to it. (these people are so ilogical at times it beggars belief)

not only that, the money required to design and build them is quite high. i know a government, especially ours in the UK, wont want to spend the money building one...it means they cant have nice office furniture or hire more civil servants.

what really gets me is, the technology is here today to reduce CO2, yet the government who are pushing their CO2 agenda and taxing anything that produces it....are nothing bot all about it.

biofuel is a great example. here is a fuel thats grown in a field (perfect to help our ailing farmers) a fuel thats actually higher in octane than normal petrol, burns cleaner, produces more power and produces 70% less CO2.

so is gordon brown writing cheques, (using the CO2 tax money) to help subsidise the installation of these bio fuel pumps? no. is he offering to reduce road tax, give free parking spaces, exempt you from conjestion charging if you use this fuel? no. is he offering to pay for the conversion of your car to run on bioethanol? no

what he is doing is roughly equal to the square root of sod all and thinkin about how he can implement some kind of breathing tax.

government tells people we must change, become more green. then they tax us to hell and back for using high carbon means, then gives us absolutely zero incentive to do something about it.

there are only 14 bio ethanol pumps in the UK (compared to 600 and growing in sweden)

as it stands now, id have to buy a new car, then move house to be near a place that sells the fuel. or i can carry on as normal and get taxed to the teeth. the former is probably cheaper (for now) and less of a hinderence.


RE: land
By BladeVenom on 4/2/2007 6:43:29 PM , Rating: 2
Uranium isn't unlimited. With more countries going nuclear stockpiles are going down, prices are skyrocketing, and the mines can't keep up.


RE: land
By animedude on 4/3/2007 4:34:57 AM , Rating: 2
Using current nuclear reactor, uranium supply would last anywhere between 80 years - 100 years.
If we extract them from sea water, uranium supply can last up to anywhere between 2 billion to 5 billion years. Its a matter of whether it is economical to further develop the current technology to extract it or not. By fast breeder reactors to breed uranium-238, the uranium supply would last 5 billion years. Only problem associated with the breeder method is the potential of using it as a weapon. So any of these two methods will provide us enough uranium supply to last billions of years. I doubt we will not develop a technology to one of the methods on top in the next 50 years where oil/natural gas price that will skyrocket.

As stated by masher, the pebble bed reactor (PBR) is much more efficient than current generator. It can generate 100 times more energy than current generator. Future PBR technology can also produce hydrogen which can potential creates a hydrogen economy.

If nuclear power is so danger, I wonder why the French is relying on it so much (accounts for 86.9% of its total energy use in 2005).


RE: land
By rtrski on 4/2/2007 7:08:38 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
biofuel is a great example. here is a fuel thats grown in a field (perfect to help our ailing farmers) a fuel thats actually higher in octane than normal petrol, burns cleaner, produces more power and produces 70% less CO2.


Biofuels aren't necessarily a great fix either, as compared to nuke plants. Sure, burning something you grew should be effectively carbon-neutral, as the released CO2 is on par with that absorbed during the growing process. But what did you clear up in order to grow it?

There was an article on I think Reuters news today (just found it again...it was an AP story from yesterday, hope I haven't been sucked in by an April Fool's joke <grin> http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070401/ap_on_sc/biofu... ) about how palm oil plantations have been put in on drained boglands which otherwise would have been much better carbon sinks.

Not to mention that the bigger 'greenhouse gas' issue isn't the C02 in the first place, as masher keeps pointing out.... I can't help but wonder if all the 'carbon-neutral' mantra is just plain missing the point, regardless of whether they're even addressing it intelligently for its own sake...


RE: land
By derdon on 4/2/2007 7:10:23 PM , Rating: 1
Hello, I'm one of those "illogical" environmentalists and yes I do oppose nuclear power.

They're big and concrete landmarks, costly to build up and costly to dismantle. There's the question of where to put the depleted uranium stuff. There's no major uranium source in Europe, everything needs to be imported. Do we want to put money on something that we cannot control? And Sellafield and La Hague are polluting the north sea and all the supporters of nuclear power always speak about the new designs being soooo much better even possibly waste-free and whatnot. Believe what you want, I'm also sure that they're x times as expensive and you're not getting a cost effective solution that way. Neither one that is independent nor future-proof. Now we care about oil-prices, next thing we'll care about uranium prices. What's the price of wind? What's the price of the sun?

I agree that nuclear power would save big on Co2 emission and that's an undeniable fact, but going for them is to jump out of the frying pan into the fire. It opens up lots of new problems, that we could avoid if we'd get cleaner energy sources developed and rolled out. There's a lot of money that's being put into research on nuclear power. It'd be amazing to just have half of this money on renewable energy.

Despite all of this, I think the biggest improvement would be to cut on energy consumption and not increase it. There's been some suggestions in this direction, which is good, but it needs more thinking and finally plans.
This is the most important point of all. I do think that if we're continuing like now, whether we adopt nuclear power or if we go with wind/solar/... we'll eventually hit a wall.

So at the one hand, I think there's rethinking needed in the way to generate power and that's happening right now. On the other hand there's also rethinking needed on why we generate power and how to reduce our power consumptions. That's not happening so much and people are frightened about this since it would mean giving up their lifestyles... well, adopting a different one. I can understand this, but I do think that this question will need to be thought about and openly discussed.


RE: land
By masher2 (blog) on 4/2/2007 8:57:14 PM , Rating: 1
> "They're big and concrete landmarks, costly to build up and costly to dismantle"

And yet, even with those costs, nuclear power is still the cheapest form of energy which exists...save possibly a well-run hydro plant in a good location. The industry averaged costs of 1.66 cents/kilowatt-hour last year.

I notice when the issue of solar or wind power (which typically costs 10-50 times what nuclear power does) the environmentalists suddenly stop worrying about costs.

> There's no major uranium source in Europe."

There's plenty of thorium in Europe, however...and plenty of nuclear-plant designs which can use it.

> "There's a lot of money that's being put into research on nuclear power"

Nonsense. All the fission-based research in the world combined doesn't even approach 1% of what we're spending on piffle like wind and biofuels.

> "I think the biggest improvement would be to cut on energy consumption and not increase it"

Which is the REAL reason environmentalist oppose cheap, clean nuclear power. Because it doesn't force people into a conservationalist lifestyle.


RE: land
By Whedonic on 4/2/2007 9:19:17 PM , Rating: 2
Clearly we just need to get fusion working, so we can sidestep the whole issue.


RE: land
By bpurkapi on 4/2/2007 10:08:28 PM , Rating: 2
You state the cost of hydro power as the cheapest, I can tell you that hydro power when well managed definitely is the cheapest. I am from Oregon and we have a gigantic series of hydro plants along the Columbia and Snake rivers, our energy prices are the lowest in the United States. But the price of energy doesn't mask the fact that the Hydro plants have destroyed salmon habitat and they are on the verge of extinction. Hydro power has it's problems as well, all of the technologies have problems. Either they pollute too much(coal), have long term consequences(nuclear), destroy the environment(hydro), ruin biodiversity(ethanol and biofuels) or cost too much(solar). Out of all the choices for power I think that wind power is the greatest compromise. In Oregon we let farmers lease plots of land for these wind mills to be built on, so the farmer gets a check, and the energy consortium gets land, and the consumer gets power for cheap. The biggest obstacle for wind power is the proximity to major power transmission lines. These transmission lines can cost millions of dollars and so every wind farm gets a quick boost in final price. Luckily the gorge where all the dams are has transmission lines and loads of wind, so Oregon and Washington have seen a plethora of wind farms being built and they are providing cheap energy for us consumers. This is a case study of how power generation works best, it is not about one mode of power generation, it is about multiple modes, hydro, solar, wind, the occassional nuclear plant, and biofuel investments.


RE: land
By Hoser McMoose on 4/3/2007 6:12:39 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
They're big and concrete landmarks, costly to build up and costly to dismantle

And yet they're still one of the cheapest methods to produce power even though those costs are always factored in. Many other types of power plants do not factor in the costs of dismantling when they've outlived their life and almost none factor in the cost of waste produced the way nuke plants are usually required to.

quote:
There's the question of where to put the depleted uranium stuff.

The *depleted* uranium is not the stuff that you have to worry about given that it's depleted. There are some other types of nuclear wastes that shouldn't just be tossed into our airs and streams like we do with most industrial waste, but there are many solutions available. Short and long term storage are very practical and being used. It's also MUCH safer then the waste "disposal" (read: dumping into water or pumping into air) of most of the alternatives.

quote:
There's no major uranium source in Europe, everything needs to be imported. Do we want to put money on something that we cannot control?

You mean like you do with oil (mainly from the middle east), natural gas (mainly from Russia and the Caspian sea area), coal (mainly US and China)? How is that different from Uranium which is mainly supplied by Canada and Australia?

And there ARE uranium mines in Europe, they do produce about 10% of the worlds uranium, more then most other energy forms.

quote:
What's the price of wind? What's the price of the sun?

Surprisingly high. Uranium prices would probably have to go up by MANY orders of magnitude before solar power would be cost-competitive for most of Europe (currently solar power is about 20-30 times as expensive as nuclear, and fuel cost is a pretty negligible part of nuclear powers cost).

The fact is, solar for bulk power production just isn't remotely practical for most of the world, the costs are just too high. Even this project in Portugal, with some of the best solar conditions in all of Europe, is still SIGNIFICANTLY more expensive than any other projects. It's also only a trivial size (11MW is TINY, most coal, nuke and dam-based hydro generating stations are in the 1000-6000MW range). It only gets worse from there, putting solar panels up in the UK or in Scandinavia is almost totally pointless.

Unfortunately for solar it just doesn't make sense on the large scale, it works much better on small scale, like putting a bunch of panels on the roof of your house. This way one of the major expensive for solar (the cost of the surface area to put them) is already a sunk cost. It's still unlikely to be cost competitive, but at least it comes much closer to it then handling things on the large scale.


RE: land
By nah on 4/2/2007 11:14:05 AM , Rating: 2
hydrogen is an energy carrier thats true--but what i meant was that H2 be produced from solar,wind and other renewable forms of energy for use in cars/other forms of transportation.

Nuclear energy can only run for so long--exactly how long will reserves of enriched uranium last--and how can you see this as a global fuel--with the furore over countries like Iran--do you really expect the West to share nuclear tech with every country--highly unlikely, for political reasons.

One thing inhibiting the use of solar energy is cost--but costs have fallen by a factor of 2 or more since the early eighties--right now you could mass produce electricity with solar panels with 15 % efficiency at a derate of 0.65 at an average of 22 cents per KWh in the sunniest locations--this will fall to 12-13 cents by 2020--by which time the average electricity cost in the US will have gone up to 14-16 cents or more