I attended a workshop held by the Asharqia Chamber on solar energy in the Kingdom, in which the representative of the German Economic Office presented the importance of solar energy to the Kingdom and the advantages that the Kingdom shall enjoy if to increase reliance on solar energy, and the presenter included a comparison between the Kingdom and Germany in most of the examples he gave.
I objected to this Comparison, which I found it a shallow narrative of deep topic and turning the lecture into a sales presentation for Germany’s solar technology. Below is a summary of the points I raised in the workshop, which explain the difference between the Kingdom and Germany in the field of applying solar energy:
1. Air conditioning loads constitute 70% of the electrical loads, which by their heavy mechanical nature require high energy intensity and a quick response from the energy source to generate the required energy.This type of load still represents a major challenge to the economics and technologies of solar energy. Air conditioning for the Kingdom and the Gulf countries is not a luxury (such as What is in Germany and the cold European countries) is rather a life support, such as heating in their winter, which does not need heavy mechanical systems, but it needs enormous energy that solar energy or any renewable source will not be able to, even if it is available.
2. The speaker attributed that government support for electric energy is the reason for the inability of solar energy to compete, and here I mentioned that the German government and all European countries generously support the use of solar energy in all stages of installation and operation, as it bears part of the costs of the panels and mandates electric grid networks companies to connect homes to the grid as energy sources and mandates the purchase of energy at preferential rates.
3. The speaker mentioned that one of the negative aspects of solar energy is its need for cleaning and blocking sunlight from dust storms, and he did not address the most important negative that we have and that is not found in Germany, which is the high temperatures that reduce the efficiency of energy generation by up to 30%, which makes solar panels inefficient despises the presence of sunlight, which cold countries do not suffer from, the cold weather increases the efficiency of energy generation and compensates for the lack of sunlight.
4. The speaker mentioned that we have a lot of sand and minerals that support the manufacture of solar panels and distribution systems. I see that this is another shallow narrative as solar panels need pure natural silicon to manufacture them so that they do not consume manufacturing energy in removing impurities, as well as converting natural (mono) silicon into (Poly silicon) needs energy and high technologies, which one of the national companies in Jubail tried and did not succeed in competing with international prices despite the availability of low-cost energy, which called on the company to close its factory and lay off all workers.
Finally, I believe that we must continue to think and search for solutions to generate and save energy from all its sources, but we must know our needs, we must know the nature of our consumption and the technologies that suit us, and we must be very careful not to make our country a field of experiments. We must develop Solar energy research to find out what is available and how suitable for us, and to support our research in order to own it. I also see that we are an oil/ gas country and we have large quantities of gas that we cannot export, and it will be of great economic feasibility to use it in energy generation and benefit from its proceeds in developing what suits us from renewable energy that needs at least 10 years for it to mature and its weaknesses and strengths to become clear.
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