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Saudi Arabia missed a huge opportunity in the 2010s. They could be one of the biggest solar players in the world, they are equatorial with a ton of cloudless de

Saudi Arabia missed a huge opportunity in the 2010s. They could be one of the biggest solar players in the world, they are equatorial with a ton of cloudless desert land for utility scale. They waffled on their impulsive solar plans and they are years behind where smart policy could've put them. Step back and just imagine: they are burning oil for electricity in one of the best solar markets possible. Burning oil for electricity is like using whale oil for lamps, it's harming your own society and planet due to myopic decision making.

csunbird 6y ago
Have you ever been there? Solar panels would be extremely useless because of the sand building up everywhere. I mean, literally, people never open up their windows, because of the extreme amounts of sand in the air.
- Robotbeat 6y ago
  Far from accurate. The price of solar power in the Middle East is record low, on the order of 1 cent per kilowatt-hour.
  - csunbird 6y ago
    My experience visiting there disagrees. They have a large amount of land, but they also have sandstorms, along with sand being everywhere. In the long run, the maintenance should outweigh the benefits, unless they find a way to deal with this issue.
    - phaemon 6y ago
      And reality disagrees with you: https://www.sunwindenergy.com/news/35-mw-solar-farm-saudi-arabia-completed https://www.sunwindenergy.com/news/35-mw-solar-farm-saudi-ar...
      - Robotbeat 6y ago
        Here’s a more recent article. 1.35 cents per kWh. Abu Dhabi. https://cleantechnica.com/2020/05/06/abu-dhabi-will-have-the-cheapest-solar-farm-ever-built/amp/ https://cleantechnica.com/2020/05/06/abu-dhabi-will-have-the...
    - raghava 6y ago
      > unless they find a way to deal with this issue. Cheap human labour from impoverished parts of Asia and Africa is one very possible option. The supply chains are already there. I personally know a few people from villages in South India, who had been trained in that kinda job - dressing up in heat-controlled suits, driving sand-buggies and operating large-scale-wipers and cleaners - to keep panels clean. A similar one is in India too. And some of those firms put in place a locally adapted solution - which involves a lot of wastage of resources of other kinds (water, manpower). More info: https://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/renewables/the-pros-and-cons-of-the-worlds-biggest-solar-park https://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/renewables/the-pros-and-con... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LyWUjTxyWsk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LyWUjTxyWsk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2V-8CY-5Oa0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2V-8CY-5Oa0
- prostoalex 6y ago
  To quote The Atlantic article that was linked in another comment > The university houses an incubator for technology start-ups, including a firm founded on the premise that there’s good money to be made in keeping solar panels clean in the desert.
- rtkwe 6y ago
  That's solvable though, there are setups for cleaning solar panels with robots on rails it'd be pretty easy to have a similar setup just dust off panels every few hours.
  - modriano 6y ago
    >robots on rails That's a pretty fancy way to say motorized brushes on a timer.
    - gumby 6y ago
      Yep, but that’s how you get press and get funded. I’m not being cynical or joking.
  - noja 6y ago
    Does the sand stick to the panels? Could the panels be tipped?
    - m4rtink 6y ago
      There is most likely static electricity involved, meaning that without mechanical action the finest of dust will stick the the panel even when you turn it upside down.
  - ghgraham 6y ago
    Cleaning is certainly a key issue as can be seen in this article: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-020-0553-2?draft=collection https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-020-0553-2?draft=coll... However, there are a few complexities. Cleaning the panels continuously also causes the panels to degrade quicker. Robots for each string of panels is also a significant capital investment. Imagine an installation with hundreds of string of panels and robots for each one. In most cases panels are cleaned by human teams and not on a continual basis.
- justaman 6y ago
  I feel like this is a solvable problem for solar panels.
  - jliptzin 6y ago
    Yea, at the very least couldn’t you just have something like a windshield wiper periodically wiping the sand away? Or vibrate it so the sand falls off?
    - Kye 6y ago
      It works for DSLR sensors.
    - imtringued 6y ago
      I just looked it up. It's pretty much a solved problem: https://youtu.be/yJ6kxipkem0?t=111 https://youtu.be/yJ6kxipkem0?t=111
    - pfdietz 6y ago
      PV cleaning robots are off the shelf products.
- tenebrisalietum 6y ago
  So tilt the solar panels a little so the sand falls off? Disclaimer: I don't know anything about solar panel farms or desert sand.
  - JoeAltmaier 6y ago
    The one project that attempted this with lofty goals, ended up with around 1% of the energy they claimed. Dust covering panels, abrasion, wind damage. Total fail. Also, I'm surprised at the blasé way folks dismiss the total obliteration of the delicate desert ecosystem. Its like strip mining on a massive scale, to install square miles of solar panels. But everybody is on board for some reason.
    - ponker 6y ago
      There’s a lot of desert. If a few lizards and cacti get their habitat fucked so that humans belch less CO2 in the air affecting every species on Earth it’s a tradeoff I support.
      - JoeAltmaier 6y ago
        See? There it is! Try to bulldoze one meadow for a development and you're killed in the press. But the desert doesn't get that respect. People seem almost proud of their disrespect for desert ecosystems.
        ponker 6y ago
        Well that’s just humancentrism. The meadow delivers value to me while the desert does not. And most environmental policy is about preserving the environment for humans — after all, if we stumble into population collapse the rest of the world’s species will celebrate.
        jcranmer 6y ago
        I mean, it's not like the Saharan Desert does anything useful, like feed nutrients (via dust storms that blow across the Atlantic) to the Amazon Rainforest that is the lungs of the world.
- me_me_me 6y ago
  So all of the buildings get burred in the sand? All the time? Whole cities? /s You can put the up on raisers or roofs of buildings.
- ArkVark 6y ago
  And even if you had the solar power, what would you do with it? There is very little industry or value-add in Arabia outside of oil. It would be easier for Europe to just build solar power in the south of Spain, Italy or Greece.
bserge 6y ago
They have started doing just that, I believe. And waiting a bit seems like a good idea with solar, newer technology is more efficient, reliable and cheaper. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/07/saudis-solar-energy/395315/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/07/saudis-... https://www.arabnews.com/node/1615406/saudi-arabia https://www.arabnews.com/node/1615406/saudi-arabia
js2 6y ago
Domestic energy production is the least of its problems. It's worth reading: - https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/venezuela-crisis https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/venezuela-crisis vs: - https://web.archive.org/web/20100123225932/http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/99680a04-92a0-11de-b63b-00144feabdc0.html https://web.archive.org/web/20100123225932/http://www.ft.com... ("The Iraqi who saved Norway from oil") Saudi Arabia is making an effort of weaning its economy off oil per the submitted article and: - https://www.cfr.org/expert-brief/saudi-arabias-shaky-experiment-modernization https://www.cfr.org/expert-brief/saudi-arabias-shaky-experim... But it's still hugely dependent on oil, again per the submitted article and many others such as: - https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2020/05/27/as-a-global-economic-crisis-wreaks-havoc-on-saudi-arabia-the-kingdom-should-reduce-military-spending/ https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2020/05/27/a... Edit: there's four countries with sovereign wealth funds over 1T: China, UAE, Canada, Norway. Saudi Arabia is fifth, with 890B. According to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_sovereign_wealth_funds https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_sovereign...
- ashtonkem 6y ago
  Their economy is basically broken, as is common for a rentier economy. I think the most alarming stat is that for the most part, the Saudi economy doesn’t actually involve Saudis; 90% of non-oil jobs in Saudi Arabia are held by non-Saudis, and only 30-40% of Saudis have or want a job. To a massive degree the Saudi economy is run by expats and migrant labor, and the important question is this: “Does Saudi have the ability to retain this labor once the oil money is gone?”
macspoofing 6y ago
>They could be one of the biggest solar players in the world And what would they do with that? They can't package solar-harvested energy and export it to China. They can provide regional power during daytime - but probably for more money than oil/gas ... and they will still need to rely on oil/gas for base-load, mornings, evenings and night-time.
- teraku 6y ago
  Agree with your premise of not being able to ship it cheaply, but base-load does not exist for 10+ years anymore in most modern energy grids (at least not the way described by people who are saying we are badly reliant on fossils). And if you have this much space, at least for domestic energy, power storages would suffice for the night/non-sun periods.
- gbasin 6y ago
  It's tough today but there are paths to solutions. E.g. hydrogen storage If it was easy, there would be no debate, and probably no opportunity.
- JumpCrisscross 6y ago
  > They can't package solar-harvested energy and export it to China Yes, they can. Bulk industrial chemicals are portable and extremely energy intensive [1]. [1] https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/use-of-energy/industry.php https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/use-of-energy/industry.p...
- adrianN 6y ago
  There was this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desertec https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desertec and you can also store large amounts of energy in hydrogen or methane produced from electricity.
- eloff 6y ago
  > They can't package solar-harvested energy and export it to China Essentially that's what aluminum refining from bauxite does. It's also not impossible to build long distance transmission lines that far, but that's a big infrastructure project across an unstable region and the highest mountain range on earth.
duxup 6y ago
Does solar ... work very well when sent over long distances? Maybe that is a weird question but mostly I see regional sort of solar generation that seems to offset other local power usage, and not so much mass generation for large scale export.
- 7thaccount 6y ago
  It costs a LOT of money to build high voltage transmission lines (AC or DC) to transfer power over long distances. So even if they turned the entire desert into a solar panel, the cost to ship that outside of the region would still be billions.
  - me_me_me 6y ago
    Sure, but maybe instead of building a indoors ski slopes in the middle of the desert, you invest that money into creating world class research institutes, create educational system and promote science. Then maybe you would start inventing technologies that will push your country ahead. They could have created businesses based on solar tech and export it to the world. Thats what China did, and it worked out miracles for them. Acquiring knowledge instead of buying ready solutions.
    - 7thaccount 6y ago
      I'm not saying they can't do many things to improve (similar to many countries). All I was doing was answering a question to confirm that transmission lines are very expensive. They could use that cheap energy for certain kinds of manufacturing I suppose.
  - 7952 6y ago
    It all depend on electricity prices. There is a point where it is profitable regardless of the cost. As long as you can sell cheaper energy in a more expensive market.
    - 7thaccount 6y ago
andrewtbham 6y ago
it doesn't makes sense because long term the cost of transmission will likely be higher than the cost of production. source: tony seba
caymanjim 6y ago
They still have plenty of time to switch to solar domestically. Saudi Arabia's electricity consumption per-capita is only 75% of the US's, and their population is only 10%. Their domestic oil consumption is only a drop in the bucket compared to the export market.
- koheripbal 6y ago
  How is domestic consumption relevant? They are a tiny population country.
  - caymanjim 6y ago
    The parent comment I replied to was about Saudi Arabia burning oil for domestic energy needs. My point is that switching their domestic use to solar is going to have almost no impact since it's a drop in the bucket compared to their export market. Unless you think they should stop exporting their only commodity and turn into Yemen.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
bpodgursky 6y ago
SA does have great solar potential, but there's really no point in investing trillions in solar production before panel efficiency improves. The cost per watt decreases wildly every year, so if you invest half a billion in last-gen panels... Now, hoarding money and sponsoring solar efficiency research? Absolutely. But actually dropping the massive cap-ex on the solar farms was probably not a good move for SA itself (even if it was good for the world as a whole).
- maliker 6y ago
  If you look at the inverter/module price trends[1], you'll see we've pretty much reached the bottom of the cost curve. Continued price reduction is coming from balance-of-system and soft costs (e.g. planning). So SA is probably in a good position now to buy modules and inverters, focus on innovation in the non-module pieces and policies to reduce soft costs. [1]https://cleantechnica.com/files/2019/11/Installed-Solar-Price-Declines-Tracking-the-Sun-scaled.png https://cleantechnica.com/files/2019/11/Installed-Solar-Pric...
m4rtink 6y ago
A assure you Saudi Arabia is not equatorial.
einpoklum 6y ago
> it's harming your own society and planet due to myopic decision making. Umm, we _are_ talking about a foreign-power-supported, semi-feudal monarchy which keeps most of the population in abject poverty while living like, well, kings and princes themselves. Benefiting society is not really priority #1 for the kingdom.
iguy 6y ago
> They could be one of the biggest solar players But what's their advantage in solar? Lots of countries have plenty of sunlight, and some are closer to big markets. The pipeline infrastructure is useless. They don't have a manufacturing base, and most of their labor for it is foreign anyway, so could be more cheaply hired by putting the factory near the people. They don't have any home-grown high-tech.
Nasrudith 6y ago
I suspect that somebody else in their position could but not the Saudis. They have failed to diversify from on previous efforts due to baggage and cultural issues. Going adjunct tourist economy could be workable but not while remaining religious fundamentalists.

csunbird 6y ago

Have you ever been there? Solar panels would be extremely useless because of the sand building up everywhere. I mean, literally, people never open up their windows, because of the extreme amounts of sand in the air.

Robotbeat 6y ago
Far from accurate. The price of solar power in the Middle East is record low, on the order of 1 cent per kilowatt-hour.
- csunbird 6y ago
  My experience visiting there disagrees. They have a large amount of land, but they also have sandstorms, along with sand being everywhere. In the long run, the maintenance should outweigh the benefits, unless they find a way to deal with this issue.
  - phaemon 6y ago
    And reality disagrees with you: https://www.sunwindenergy.com/news/35-mw-solar-farm-saudi-arabia-completed https://www.sunwindenergy.com/news/35-mw-solar-farm-saudi-ar...
    - Robotbeat 6y ago
      Here’s a more recent article. 1.35 cents per kWh. Abu Dhabi. https://cleantechnica.com/2020/05/06/abu-dhabi-will-have-the-cheapest-solar-farm-ever-built/amp/ https://cleantechnica.com/2020/05/06/abu-dhabi-will-have-the...
  - raghava 6y ago
    > unless they find a way to deal with this issue. Cheap human labour from impoverished parts of Asia and Africa is one very possible option. The supply chains are already there. I personally know a few people from villages in South India, who had been trained in that kinda job - dressing up in heat-controlled suits, driving sand-buggies and operating large-scale-wipers and cleaners - to keep panels clean. A similar one is in India too. And some of those firms put in place a locally adapted solution - which involves a lot of wastage of resources of other kinds (water, manpower). More info: https://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/renewables/the-pros-and-cons-of-the-worlds-biggest-solar-park https://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/renewables/the-pros-and-con... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LyWUjTxyWsk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LyWUjTxyWsk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2V-8CY-5Oa0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2V-8CY-5Oa0
prostoalex 6y ago
To quote The Atlantic article that was linked in another comment > The university houses an incubator for technology start-ups, including a firm founded on the premise that there’s good money to be made in keeping solar panels clean in the desert.
rtkwe 6y ago
That's solvable though, there are setups for cleaning solar panels with robots on rails it'd be pretty easy to have a similar setup just dust off panels every few hours.
- modriano 6y ago
  >robots on rails That's a pretty fancy way to say motorized brushes on a timer.
  - gumby 6y ago
    Yep, but that’s how you get press and get funded. I’m not being cynical or joking.
- noja 6y ago
  Does the sand stick to the panels? Could the panels be tipped?
  - m4rtink 6y ago
    There is most likely static electricity involved, meaning that without mechanical action the finest of dust will stick the the panel even when you turn it upside down.
- ghgraham 6y ago
  Cleaning is certainly a key issue as can be seen in this article: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-020-0553-2?draft=collection https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-020-0553-2?draft=coll... However, there are a few complexities. Cleaning the panels continuously also causes the panels to degrade quicker. Robots for each string of panels is also a significant capital investment. Imagine an installation with hundreds of string of panels and robots for each one. In most cases panels are cleaned by human teams and not on a continual basis.
justaman 6y ago
I feel like this is a solvable problem for solar panels.
- jliptzin 6y ago
  Yea, at the very least couldn’t you just have something like a windshield wiper periodically wiping the sand away? Or vibrate it so the sand falls off?
  - Kye 6y ago
    It works for DSLR sensors.
  - imtringued 6y ago
    I just looked it up. It's pretty much a solved problem: https://youtu.be/yJ6kxipkem0?t=111 https://youtu.be/yJ6kxipkem0?t=111
  - pfdietz 6y ago
    PV cleaning robots are off the shelf products.
tenebrisalietum 6y ago
So tilt the solar panels a little so the sand falls off? Disclaimer: I don't know anything about solar panel farms or desert sand.
- JoeAltmaier 6y ago
  The one project that attempted this with lofty goals, ended up with around 1% of the energy they claimed. Dust covering panels, abrasion, wind damage. Total fail. Also, I'm surprised at the blasé way folks dismiss the total obliteration of the delicate desert ecosystem. Its like strip mining on a massive scale, to install square miles of solar panels. But everybody is on board for some reason.
  - ponker 6y ago
    There’s a lot of desert. If a few lizards and cacti get their habitat fucked so that humans belch less CO2 in the air affecting every species on Earth it’s a tradeoff I support.
    - JoeAltmaier 6y ago
      See? There it is! Try to bulldoze one meadow for a development and you're killed in the press. But the desert doesn't get that respect. People seem almost proud of their disrespect for desert ecosystems.
      - ponker 6y ago
        Well that’s just humancentrism. The meadow delivers value to me while the desert does not. And most environmental policy is about preserving the environment for humans — after all, if we stumble into population collapse the rest of the world’s species will celebrate.
        jcranmer 6y ago
        I mean, it's not like the Saharan Desert does anything useful, like feed nutrients (via dust storms that blow across the Atlantic) to the Amazon Rainforest that is the lungs of the world.
me_me_me 6y ago
So all of the buildings get burred in the sand? All the time? Whole cities? /s You can put the up on raisers or roofs of buildings.
ArkVark 6y ago
And even if you had the solar power, what would you do with it? There is very little industry or value-add in Arabia outside of oil. It would be easier for Europe to just build solar power in the south of Spain, Italy or Greece.

bserge 6y ago

They have started doing just that, I believe. And waiting a bit seems like a good idea with solar, newer technology is more efficient, reliable and cheaper. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/07/saudis-solar-energy/395315/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/07/saudis-... https://www.arabnews.com/node/1615406/saudi-arabia https://www.arabnews.com/node/1615406/saudi-arabia

js2 6y ago

Domestic energy production is the least of its problems. It's worth reading: - https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/venezuela-crisis https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/venezuela-crisis vs: - https://web.archive.org/web/20100123225932/http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/99680a04-92a0-11de-b63b-00144feabdc0.html https://web.archive.org/web/20100123225932/http://www.ft.com... ("The Iraqi who saved Norway from oil") Saudi Arabia is making an effort of weaning its economy off oil per the submitted article and: - https://www.cfr.org/expert-brief/saudi-arabias-shaky-experiment-modernization https://www.cfr.org/expert-brief/saudi-arabias-shaky-experim... But it's still hugely dependent on oil, again per the submitted article and many others such as: - https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2020/05/27/as-a-global-economic-crisis-wreaks-havoc-on-saudi-arabia-the-kingdom-should-reduce-military-spending/ https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2020/05/27/a... Edit: there's four countries with sovereign wealth funds over 1T: China, UAE, Canada, Norway. Saudi Arabia is fifth, with 890B. According to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_sovereign_wealth_funds https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_sovereign...

ashtonkem 6y ago
Their economy is basically broken, as is common for a rentier economy. I think the most alarming stat is that for the most part, the Saudi economy doesn’t actually involve Saudis; 90% of non-oil jobs in Saudi Arabia are held by non-Saudis, and only 30-40% of Saudis have or want a job. To a massive degree the Saudi economy is run by expats and migrant labor, and the important question is this: “Does Saudi have the ability to retain this labor once the oil money is gone?”

macspoofing 6y ago

>They could be one of the biggest solar players in the world And what would they do with that? They can't package solar-harvested energy and export it to China. They can provide regional power during daytime - but probably for more money than oil/gas ... and they will still need to rely on oil/gas for base-load, mornings, evenings and night-time.

teraku 6y ago
Agree with your premise of not being able to ship it cheaply, but base-load does not exist for 10+ years anymore in most modern energy grids (at least not the way described by people who are saying we are badly reliant on fossils). And if you have this much space, at least for domestic energy, power storages would suffice for the night/non-sun periods.
gbasin 6y ago
It's tough today but there are paths to solutions. E.g. hydrogen storage If it was easy, there would be no debate, and probably no opportunity.
JumpCrisscross 6y ago
> They can't package solar-harvested energy and export it to China Yes, they can. Bulk industrial chemicals are portable and extremely energy intensive [1]. [1] https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/use-of-energy/industry.php https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/use-of-energy/industry.p...
adrianN 6y ago
There was this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desertec https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desertec and you can also store large amounts of energy in hydrogen or methane produced from electricity.
eloff 6y ago
> They can't package solar-harvested energy and export it to China Essentially that's what aluminum refining from bauxite does. It's also not impossible to build long distance transmission lines that far, but that's a big infrastructure project across an unstable region and the highest mountain range on earth.

duxup 6y ago

Does solar ... work very well when sent over long distances? Maybe that is a weird question but mostly I see regional sort of solar generation that seems to offset other local power usage, and not so much mass generation for large scale export.

7thaccount 6y ago
It costs a LOT of money to build high voltage transmission lines (AC or DC) to transfer power over long distances. So even if they turned the entire desert into a solar panel, the cost to ship that outside of the region would still be billions.
- me_me_me 6y ago
  Sure, but maybe instead of building a indoors ski slopes in the middle of the desert, you invest that money into creating world class research institutes, create educational system and promote science. Then maybe you would start inventing technologies that will push your country ahead. They could have created businesses based on solar tech and export it to the world. Thats what China did, and it worked out miracles for them. Acquiring knowledge instead of buying ready solutions.
  - 7thaccount 6y ago
    I'm not saying they can't do many things to improve (similar to many countries). All I was doing was answering a question to confirm that transmission lines are very expensive. They could use that cheap energy for certain kinds of manufacturing I suppose.
- 7952 6y ago
  It all depend on electricity prices. There is a point where it is profitable regardless of the cost. As long as you can sell cheaper energy in a more expensive market.
  - 7thaccount 6y ago

andrewtbham 6y ago

it doesn't makes sense because long term the cost of transmission will likely be higher than the cost of production. source: tony seba

caymanjim 6y ago

They still have plenty of time to switch to solar domestically. Saudi Arabia's electricity consumption per-capita is only 75% of the US's, and their population is only 10%. Their domestic oil consumption is only a drop in the bucket compared to the export market.

koheripbal 6y ago
How is domestic consumption relevant? They are a tiny population country.
- caymanjim 6y ago
  The parent comment I replied to was about Saudi Arabia burning oil for domestic energy needs. My point is that switching their domestic use to solar is going to have almost no impact since it's a drop in the bucket compared to their export market. Unless you think they should stop exporting their only commodity and turn into Yemen.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

bpodgursky 6y ago

SA does have great solar potential, but there's really no point in investing trillions in solar production before panel efficiency improves. The cost per watt decreases wildly every year, so if you invest half a billion in last-gen panels... Now, hoarding money and sponsoring solar efficiency research? Absolutely. But actually dropping the massive cap-ex on the solar farms was probably not a good move for SA itself (even if it was good for the world as a whole).

maliker 6y ago
If you look at the inverter/module price trends[1], you'll see we've pretty much reached the bottom of the cost curve. Continued price reduction is coming from balance-of-system and soft costs (e.g. planning). So SA is probably in a good position now to buy modules and inverters, focus on innovation in the non-module pieces and policies to reduce soft costs. [1]https://cleantechnica.com/files/2019/11/Installed-Solar-Price-Declines-Tracking-the-Sun-scaled.png https://cleantechnica.com/files/2019/11/Installed-Solar-Pric...

m4rtink 6y ago

A assure you Saudi Arabia is not equatorial.

einpoklum 6y ago

> it's harming your own society and planet due to myopic decision making. Umm, we _are_ talking about a foreign-power-supported, semi-feudal monarchy which keeps most of the population in abject poverty while living like, well, kings and princes themselves. Benefiting society is not really priority #1 for the kingdom.

iguy 6y ago

> They could be one of the biggest solar players But what's their advantage in solar? Lots of countries have plenty of sunlight, and some are closer to big markets. The pipeline infrastructure is useless. They don't have a manufacturing base, and most of their labor for it is foreign anyway, so could be more cheaply hired by putting the factory near the people. They don't have any home-grown high-tech.

Nasrudith 6y ago

I suspect that somebody else in their position could but not the Saudis. They have failed to diversify from on previous efforts due to baggage and cultural issues. Going adjunct tourist economy could be workable but not while remaining religious fundamentalists.