...Now Algeria, aware that its oil and gas riches will one day run dry, is gearing up to tap its sunshine on an industrial scale for itself and even Europe.
Work on its first plant began late last month at Hassi R'mel, 420 kilometers (260 miles) south of Algiers, the capital. The plant will be a hybrid, using both sun and natural gas to generate 150 megawatts. Of that, 25 megawatts will come from giant parabolic mirrors stretching over 180,000 square meters (nearly 2 million square feet) — roughly 45 football fields.
Experts say it's the first project of its kind to combine gas and steam turbines with solar thermal input in a hybrid plant.
The plant should be ready in 2010, and the longer-term goal is to export 6,000 megawatts of solar-generated power to Europe by 2020, about a tenth of current electricity consumption in Germany....
From the AP via the IHT
