World's Biggest Energy Megaprojects
UK is building a wind park with turbines larger than the Unicon eye and that a single dam in china could have powered the entire united states for a whole year
Hydropower
Of all the ways we have tweaked our earth to serve us nothing comes close to our daring re-plumbing of the world's waterways whether it's for agriculture industry or even power generation we can't do it without water it's easy to assume that since 75 percent of the earth's surface is covered with water using water for our needs won't be a problem but you'd be wrong the truth is that 97 of our planet's water is salty ocean most of the remaining three percent that is fresh is trapped in glaciers in Antarctica Greenland and mountains only 0.5 percent of the world's water mass is held on the surface in rivers lakes and wetlands where we can use it to use the few masses of water we do have ancient people have always found many ways to store water but over the past two centuries humans have gone to a whole new level with hydro engineering with dams that trap water to provide electricity hydroelectricity has gone on a grand scale none of it though is more impressive than the three gorges dam located on the Yangtze river the three gorges dam is the largest dam structure in the world construction took almost 20 years from 1994 to 2012 but the result is a facility on a scale like no other the hydroelectric facility generates 22.5 gigawatts of electricity 11 times more power than the equally massive hoover dam making it the most productive hydroelectric dam in the world the massive dam is 185 meters tall and 2.3 kilometers long its power source
Station has generated enough total energy to power the united states for a whole year as efficient as the dam is though it's not without its controversies environmentalist and political opposition to the construction of the three gorges dam was fierce which is why it took the Chinese government more than 40 years to give the go-ahead on the project since its construction criticisms have not stopped the dam project caused the displacement of over 1.3 million people between 1993 and 2009 by far the biggest population resettlement for a hydropower project in human history the dam also disrupted the river's flow creating an imbalance upstream and depriving agricultural land and fish downstream of essential nutrients not to mention the imminent threat of the dam collapsing
For years reports have surfaced warning of the dam's inability to contain the river during floods concerns worsened when the state-run media agency Xinhua news agency reported in late 2020 that there had been a breakage in the dam structure that could potentially lead to the collapse of the entire dam although the authorities claim the damage is within manageable parameters
Solar Power
Currently only about two percent of world renewable power comes from solar energy which is surprising since solar energy is the most abundant renewable energy source the truth is that the sun has more than enough energy for everything we need on earth the only problem is our ability to turn it into electricity efficiently tesla even came up with their installment the tesla solar roof but while the small rooftop panels are undoubtedly efficient and generate enough energy to power households they're way too small for large-scale factories
Wind farms have been developed to match rising demand one facility that puts the full might of solar farms on display is Badla solar park in India the plant's construction began in 2015 and it was completed in 2019 it covers an area of 13000 acres enough space to fit 9 000 football fields and houses over ten thousand solar panels that's fifty percent more solar installation than sun run the largest residential solar installer in the united states has completed in its 14-year history to put it plainly the Badla solar park is massive which is understandable since it serves up to seven hundred thousand households the Badla park is spread over the jodhpur district of Rajasthan one of the hottest places in India the location of the plant is very strategic for the project the area is dry and arid with temperatures reaching as high as 46 Celsius only a few if any can live in this area with peak sun and virtually no one around it makes a perfect place to host
The biggest solar park in the world but that's not the only reason this massive park is located in India the country boasts the cheapest solar power in the entire world much cheaper than in the US and Europe this is because of low technology labor and permit costs which makes India one of the top spots for solar energy deployment and the country is taking advantage of those low costs it already has over 30 solar parks like badla in the works to cater for 20 of the country that doesn't have access to electricity with a goal to push solar energy generation to 40 percent by 2032
Heliostats
Quick backstory a heliostat is a device that includes a mirror that reflects sunlight towards a predetermined target theoretically heliostats have an advantage over solar parks because they have minimal reflection loss and offer much higher solar thermal efficiency American scientists thought so too that's why they built the Ivanpa solar electric generating system located in California's Mojave desert the Ivanpa system is the world's largest solar thermal facility a joint project led by NGO google and bright source energy Ivanpa produces enough clean renewable electricity to power 140000 homes the facility is covered with mirrors over an area about the size of Los Angeles international airport and reflects the sunlight in three 150 meter high towers the project also helps curb carbon emissions by more than 400 000 tons of carbon dioxide a year which is equivalent to removing 72 000 vehicles off-road by most standards ivanpus station looks like a great idea to harvest the sun's energy but that's only half the story from the day the plant opened for business in 2014 critics have said the technology at ivanpa is outdated and too demanding to maintain it certainly didn't help that in 2016 ivanpa's operator NGO energy reported that a fire had broken out on the plant due to mirrors
That did not track the sun correctly focusing sunlight onto the wrong part of the plant tower when it comes to scaling solar parks also have the advantage over ivanpah ivanpa has 173 500 garage door sized sets of mirrors all those moving parts make yvonne pot more challenging to maintain than static solar panels
Offshore Wind Parks
Wind the way we use it today is very different and becoming more efficient in addition to huge onshore wind farms more and more offshore wind farms are offshore wind farms have most of the same advantages as land-based wind farms but because of the faster winds on the ocean they can generate much more energy horn c1 the world's largest offshore wind farm is a pioneer project and a testament to this fact located 120 kilometers off England's
Yorkshire coast farther out in the sea than any other wind farm in the world horn c1 is an ambitious project meant to supply 1 million UK homes with clean electricity currently the farm has a capacity of about 1.2 gigawatts and covers an area larger than the Maldives plans to expand the wind farm are already being finalized in order to ultimately generate up to six gigawatts and supply four million households as of 2021
IT hosts 174 wind turbines with turbines that rise 190 meters into the sky and blades with a radius one and a half times bigger than the London eye Ferris wheel according to developers a single rotation of one of the turbines can power the average home for an entire day and that's not even the most impressive part the farm also features the world's longest high voltage offshore cable system comprising more than 900 kilometers of cables that transfer the generated electricity to the national grid the project is another step for the united kingdom in its quest to produce a third of its power from offshore wind by 2030 what do you think about these energy projects which do you think holds the most promise for the future let us know in the comments below