According to the European Commission's Institute for Energy,just 0.3 percent of the Saharan Desert's intense solar energy can provide Europe with all the electrical power it needs.A company called Nur Energy plans to capture some of it by building a solar plant similar to an Israeli one in the Negev desert that uses heliotropic mirrors.This technology, unlike photovoltaic cells, can generate energy even when the sky is overcast or at night.Thousands of mirrors, spread over 100 square kilometers, will concentrate sunlight to a tower where it heats and melts a special salt.Kevin Sara is the CEO of Nur Energy, said the technology makes storage easy.You can then store that heat very easily, so you can continue producing electricity after the sun goes down.In a heat exchanger, the molten salt turns water into steam for turbines that turn electrical generators.Sara said the project could significantly decrease use of fossil fuels in Europe.We could gradually decarbonize the European grid using desert power,using this solar energy with storage from the Sahara desert and linked to Europe with high-voltage DC cables which are very, very low in their losses.The cable link to Europe is another interesting part of the project.
