World's sunniest spots hint at energy bonanza

By Alister Doyle, Environment Correspondent

OSLO (Reuters) - Southern California is sunny, the French Riviera is sunny, but NASA says the middle of the Pacific Ocean and the Sahara Desert in Niger are the sunniest -- and the information could be worth money.

America's space exploration agency has located the world's sunniest spots by studying maps compiled by U.S. and European satellites.

The maps can also gauge solar energy at every other spot on the planet, and have already been used to help businesses to site solar panels in Morocco, for instance, or send text messages to tell sunbathers in Italy to put on more cream.

"We are trying to link up observations of the earth to benefit society," said Jose Achache, head of the 72-nation Group on Earth Observations (GEO) which seeks practical spinoffs from scientific data, ranging from deep-ocean probes to satellites.

GEO member states will hold ministerial talks on November 30 in Cape Town to review a 10-year project launched in 2005 which aims to join up the dots between research in areas such as climate change, health, agriculture and energy.

From satellite data collected over 22 years, NASA says the sun blazes down most fiercely on a patch of the Pacific Ocean on the equator south of Hawaii and east of Kiribati.

More practically for solar generation, on land the Sahara Desert region soaks up most energy with the very sunniest spot in southeast Niger, where one sun-baked landmark amid sand dunes is a ruined fort at Agadem.

"For some reason there are fewer clouds just there than elsewhere," in the Sahara, Paul Stackhouse, a senior scientist at NASA's Langley Research Center, told Reuters.

The area got a searing average of 6.78 kilowatt hours of solar energy per square meter per day from 1983-2005 -- roughly the amount of electricity used by a typical U.S. home in a day to heat water. The patch in the Pacific got 6.92 kilowatt hours.

CLIMATE CHANGE

The maps could help guide billions of dollars in solar investments for a world worried by climate change, widely blamed on burning fossil fuels that could mean more floods, droughts, heatwaves and rising seas.

Satellite pictures could also help site offshore wind farms -- wind speeds can be inferred from wave heights and direction. Farmers might also be able to pick new crops, or estimate fertilizer demand, by knowing more about how much solar energy is reaching their land.

Using satellite data for Morocco, Portuguese company Net Plan worked out how many solar photovoltaic panels were needed to power a remote relay station for phone signals. It worked and a costly backup of diesel generators was removed a year ago.

"We're looking forward to install more units like this," said Iolanda Sousa, head of energy and environment at Net Plan. On top of this, she said the data from the freely available solar maps can be used to persuade banks to grant financing.

Among possibilities in Niger, the government is planning to award oil exploration permits for the Agadem block, which has been explored by Exxon Mobil and Malaysia's Petronas until the license lapsed in 2006.  Continued...