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> Their cloudless desert is a great place to put solar panels Extremely high temperatures reduce efficiency. Extremely low temperatures at night mean high st

> Their cloudless desert is a great place to put solar panels Extremely high temperatures reduce efficiency. Extremely low temperatures at night mean high stress from thermal cycling. The desert is full of dust which reduces efficiency. Finally, the desert is not just a mass of sand, it's a full on ecosystem that experiences impacts from laying large farms on top of it.

tensor 3y ago
Sounds like it would be good for solar thermal plants then. Also, burning fossil fuels will destroy a much larger ecosystem: earth. I think we can compromise a bit here. Besides, how many plants would really be needed to disturb the desert eco system? It's a fairly large area.
fredgrott 3y ago
To put it another way sand is not a good PCM material for example in green houses they use calcium chloride and sodium sulfate decahydrate to absorb heat during day and then give off that stored heat at night. Sand is operating in reverse as it absorbing heat near freezing and releasing it as temps get above freezing... Sorry I did have quite a bit of physics once upon a time..
monkeydreams 3y ago
I was with you 100% until this point: > it's a full on ecosystem that experiences impacts from laying large farms on top of it. You think that the Saudi government, with the extremist clerics holding a knife to their throats, their citizenry on life-long unemployment welfare, with their drive to continue to make climate change worse, who spill oil on the sand and billow smoke into their skies, give one tiny iota of a shit about a delicate desert ecosystem?
- pyuser583 3y ago
  The point is you can’t rely on the desert to simply be sunny. If you screw up the ecosystem, the result is haze, mist, and other obstacles to solar power, not to mention animal and human interference. From what I understand, Saudi oil produces less carbon than other types of oil. So the Saudis are expecting they will be among the last to shut down - which a reasonable assumption. Otherwise you would be shutting down a lower carbon fuel in favor of higher carbon fuel.
  - sfn42 3y ago
    Oil is more than fuel. We have to solve a lot more problems than fuel before we can stop pumping oil.

tensor 3y ago

Sounds like it would be good for solar thermal plants then. Also, burning fossil fuels will destroy a much larger ecosystem: earth. I think we can compromise a bit here. Besides, how many plants would really be needed to disturb the desert eco system? It's a fairly large area.

fredgrott 3y ago

To put it another way sand is not a good PCM material for example in green houses they use calcium chloride and sodium sulfate decahydrate to absorb heat during day and then give off that stored heat at night. Sand is operating in reverse as it absorbing heat near freezing and releasing it as temps get above freezing... Sorry I did have quite a bit of physics once upon a time..

monkeydreams 3y ago

I was with you 100% until this point: > it's a full on ecosystem that experiences impacts from laying large farms on top of it. You think that the Saudi government, with the extremist clerics holding a knife to their throats, their citizenry on life-long unemployment welfare, with their drive to continue to make climate change worse, who spill oil on the sand and billow smoke into their skies, give one tiny iota of a shit about a delicate desert ecosystem?

pyuser583 3y ago
The point is you can’t rely on the desert to simply be sunny. If you screw up the ecosystem, the result is haze, mist, and other obstacles to solar power, not to mention animal and human interference. From what I understand, Saudi oil produces less carbon than other types of oil. So the Saudis are expecting they will be among the last to shut down - which a reasonable assumption. Otherwise you would be shutting down a lower carbon fuel in favor of higher carbon fuel.
- sfn42 3y ago
  Oil is more than fuel. We have to solve a lot more problems than fuel before we can stop pumping oil.