The Hindu Business Line : Bright prospects for solar power in Europe

Last week, my Spanish lawyer friend Jacinto and I took off from Seville Flying Club in his Cessna turbo 210s and, after a quarter hour’s flying, we were in Spain’s Andalusian countryside, over the municipality of Sanlucar la Mayor.

The weather was good and the spectacle we wanted to see was in clear sight — the colossal 40-storey concrete tower surrounded by fields of photovoltaic panels. We were right above Europe’s first commercial solar power station, which recently went into operation in the sunny region outside Seville, Spain.

The spectacle was indeed amazing. The area around the tower was so bright that it actually illuminated the water mist and dust that rose in swirls in the air. For us, inside the cockpit, it became necessary to wear sunglasses. The entire image, with the sunlight being thrown into the air, was truly divine.

Here is how the tower works: the 645 solar panels, each a 120 square metre mosaic of mirrors and photo-voltaics, track the sun throughout the year, and reflect the energy of the sun to solar receptors at the top of the tower. Water passes through pipes at the top, and is heated enough to become steam, which drives a turbine. Costing around €1.2 billion, the project will be completed by 2013, when it will produce around 300 MW of energy for around 180,000 homes — equivalent to the needs of the city of Seville.

It will then prevent emissions of more than 600,000 tonnes of CO{-2} into the atmosphere per year over its 25-year life. The platform has created more than 1,000 jobs in the manufacturing and construction phase, and 300 service and maintenance jobs, when fully operational.

Another good year

While Spain is doubling its capacity each year of using sunlight to create clean renewable energy, it is Germany that pilots Europe and the world in PV manufacture and installation.

Germany remains the world’s top PV installer, accounting for almost half of the global market in 2007. Thanks to the country’s feed-in tariff for renewable electricity, which requires utilities to pay customers a guaranteed rate for any renewable power they feed into the grid, Germans have installed PV capacity of almost 4,000 megawatts, accounting for 1 per cent of Germany’s electricity demand. That share is expected to reach 25 per cent by 2050.

Spain accounts for 640 megawatts in 2007, an estimated 3 per cent of global production. Other countries becoming major players include Italy (25-50 megawatts installed) and France (45 megawatts), all thanks to new or strengthened feed-in laws.

Some of Portugal’s additions were part of a large solar plant that came online in early 2007 and will generate enough electricity to meet the needs of 8,000 households. Countries such as the Netherlands and Portugal contribute more than one per cent of power output on the European territory.

Other European countries represent less than one per cent of large-scale photovoltaic output in Europe. These countries are Switzerland, Belgium, Czech Republic, France (excluding overseas territories), Austria, Luxembourg and the United Kingdom.

Technologies

European scientists are also working on a range of third- and fourth-generation PV technologies.

German researchers have developed a prototype solar module that uses organic dyes combined with nano-particles, applied to glass with a screen-printing technique, to generate electricity. And companies in Europe are exploring ways to turn road surfaces into solar power generators.

At a former military air base to the east of Leipzig, a 40-megawatt solar power plant using state-of-the-art, thin-film technology, is to be finished by the end of 2009 — and is set to be the largest in the world.

The installation, in the Muldentalkreis district in the state of Saxony in eastern Germany, will be built on half of the location’s 220 hectares in the townships of Brandis and Bennewitz. The area is about one kilometre wide and approximately two km long. It takes more than an hour to walk around it. The surface area of the PV installation is equivalent to about 200 soccer fields!

Highest PV Grid

The power plant in Jungfraujoch, Switzerland, is the world highest grid-connected photovoltaic plant. It is located 3,454 m above sea level. It has been operating successfully since 1993, with a 100 per cent availability of energy production and monitoring data. Operation in high altitudes puts very severe stress on all the components.

Even in Switzerland, there is enough sun for solar energy. The average in Switzerland is somewhere between 1,000-1,500 KW/h (kilowatt hour) per square metre a year. In the Sahara, it’s just 2,500, so there’s not really a big difference between a “not so sunny place” like Switzerland and the sunniest place in the world.

Ambitious Solar Plan

The European Council has identified and set pragmatic targets for the year 2020. The European Parliament demands a renewables proportion of 35 per cent in the European supply by 2020.

Millions of Europeans already heat their water and homes with solar thermal systems. One square metre of solar collector surface per EU resident is to be installed, which corresponds to an installed solar thermal output of 320 gigawatts.

This would allow an annual production of solar heat output exceeding that of over 19 million tonnes of oil equivalent. This oil equivalent could replace precious mineral oil, gas and electricity.

In just a few years the solar industry has become an important employer in Germany. Photovoltaics enterprises employ around 50,000 people. The German renewable energies sector employs about 170,000 people.

India’s low Investment

India has abundant solar resources, as it receives about 3,000 hours of sunshine every year, corresponding to over 5,000 trillion kWh. Besides, India has a potential of about 20 MW per sq km and the daily average solar energy incident over different regions is about 5-7 kWh per sq m, depending on the location. Considering this, India’s investment in the solar power sector is disgracefully meagre.

With an expected robust economic growth of 8 per cent over the next couple of years, the demand-supply gap is going to further widen. Against this backdrop, solar power serves as a tremendous means of not only bridging the energy gap but also of creating employment.

(The author is former Europe Director, CII, and lives in Cologne, Germany. Feedback may be sent to mohan.murti@t-online.de)

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