Powering Third World Countries for the Same Cost as Building the Border Wall
Abstract
The border wall between Mexico and the United States has an estimated cost of $30 billion. This same budget could be used as foreign aid to build solar farms in Third World countries. For example, three solar PV farms could be built in Kenya, three in Ethiopia, and one in Zimbabwe around the capital of Harare. The three solar PV farms in Kenya would have a combined power of 4 GW, the solar PV farms of Ethiopia would have a combined power of 4 GW as well, and the Zimbabwe plant would have a power 3.75 GW. Ethiopia would produce 9.49 billion kWh in the first year, Kenya would generate 9.1 billion kWh in the first year, and Zimbabwe would generate 8.05 billion kWh in the first year. This would give clean energy to 167 million people. The cost of building these farms would be about $23.65 billion, leaving $6.35 billion for additional infrastructure. These various solar PV systems were simulated and designed using the NREL SAM software suite. The presentation will summarize the results of this study including economic analysis via LCOE and hardware /system performance trade studies
Keywords
Pv farm, Simulation, Economics, Modeling, Third-world