First Solar, the US solar power company, has joined the Desertec project in the Sahara desert for an initial three year period. The whole project is worth an estimated US$ 546.6 billion and proposes sending energy to local markets in Africa and Europe. The ultimate goal of the Desertec Industrial Initiative project is to supply 15% of Europe’s energy needs from renewable sources by 2050, they also hope to supply renewable energy to the Middle East and North Africa.
There are 12 other member companies involved, who are mostly German including, Siemens, E.ON and Deutschbank. The project leaders have estimated that more energy falls in the desert as sunshine than the world consumes in a year. Which explains why they have invited First Solar to join the initiative, making it the first purely photovoltaic (PV) company to join the group.
First Solar has already built other utility scale PV power plants in desert conditions in the US, Arab Emirates, and are currently in the planning stage for a new 2 GW solar power plant in Inner Mongolia. First Solar uses cadmium telluride rather than polysilicon to make its thin-film cells, which are the cheapest to produce in the industry. This thin-film technology also delivers superior yields even under desert conditions.
“As a high-performance, low-maintenance technology that can be deployed in stages and deliver clean energy quickly, PV is the ideal complement to other renewable energies already represented in Desertec,” said Stephan Hansen, managing director of First Solar GmbH.