Solar Power from Desert Areas

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Desert regions are excellent places to generate solar power, as the sun shines directly and uninterruptedly during the day. These areas are also the most dusty places in the world due to the prevailing drought. The sand and dust particles clearly hinder the generation of electricity, as the sun's rays are deflected or obscured. PV and CSP system operators are thus forced to constantly clean the surfaces of solar systems with water in order to minimise yield losses. Otherwise they are threatened with yield losses of up to 1 percent per day if the collector surfaces are not cleaned.

But this again causes enormous O&M costs, because water is a precious commodity in desert regions. At least because the cleaning is necessary at least 12 times a year, whereas in Europe the solar systems have to be cleaned once every two years.  In order to avoid these enormous yield losses and O&M costs, I have developed a solar power plant especially for the desert areas. The high-performance optics and the CPV-ADAM modules are protected by glass and the collector surfaces are automatically cleaned of sand and dust with the kinetic energy of compressed air. It is common knowledge that air is available everywhere free of charge and unlike water does not need to be transported over long distances.

This solar power plant generates both electrical and thermal energy, less than 1 US cent/kWh. The installation costs of such a power plant would be half those of flat PV systems. All this because Desert Solar focuses the sun's radiation energy by a factor of 700X and this entire construction consists of only a few parts.

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  • ABOUT THE ENTRANT

  • Name:
    Ryszard Dzikowski
  • Type of entry:
    individual
  • Profession:
    self-educated person
  • Ryszard is inspired by:
    Low-cost electricity generation in the countries where it is most needed. This can bring about economic recovery and avoid conflicts.
  • Patent status:
    pending