I would really want to know where the 15000 TWh figure comes from, considering that it's 3x the US annual electricity consumption.
And to reach that figure you would: assuming you have the same MWh density as the topaz solar farm. Require something like 300 000 km^2. Which isn't 8% of California but more like 75%.
Why not use asphyxating gases? If the internet can figure out how to make painless exit bags then why can't the US government? It's not like nitrogen, helium or hydrogen sulphide is terribly expensive or hard to aquire.
Probably because the topaz area is calculated as a square more or less and the actual panel distribution inside is patchy.
The Desert sunlight solar farm is also 550MW and covers 16 km2.
The W/m^2 number are low because panels needs to be accessible for service and whatnot. And given the cost of land compared to the rest of the farm there's no real need to maximize panel density.
At 50 square kilometers that's two topaz solar farms which would produce 2192 GWh/year.
Compared to the coal that at 5.5GW and 90% capcity factor nets in at 43362GWh/year: approximately 20 times more.
I live in an apartment.
Also what about your not-daytime needs and industry?
Sure there's a place for solar energy but it's vastly overhyped as society changing when it's really just a form of middle-class luxury for folks in sunny places.
Nice opinions, too bad you don't have any numbers to support them.
With your head stuck in the sand the horizon is quite close.
What I mean is that solar irradiance is at 1000W/m^2 give or take depending on sky quality time of day and so and combined with turbine efficiency means that you can never exceed 600W/m^2 peak no matter what the scaling modifiers are presented as.
All solar energy is area dependent and will scale linearly in a similar manner.
Solar can only get cost competitive with coal when it exists as a supplemental power source. It cannot take over baseline supply due to intermittency so it can only serve to shave off daytime peaks.
Storage? Sure, but that costs money and shaves off efficiency. And if you want to go full solar you need to expand the farms so they can:
1. Cover all daytime demands.
2. Produce enough surplus to charge all the battery banks to cover the sunless hours.
3. Produce even more surplus because some days are cloudy.
The topaz solar farm, peak production 550MW, is 25km^2 in area. Average production estimate is 125 MW = 1,096 GWh/year.
A baseload power plant, classic numbers, are 1000MW, 90% uptime. So 900MW average.
To replace one of those, assuming perfecft efficiency battery storage, you need 180km^2 of solar panels that produce 4GW electric at peak. This also means that battery storage needs to be colocated unless you want to build a new grid too.
US total power consumption 2008: 4,401,698GWh. That's 4016 topaz solar farms, again ignoring efficiency losses.
This is 100400km^2.
That's 1/3 of the surface area of germany.
That's a circle with the radius 180km( or diameter360km )
That's you standing on top of the world tallest building and only seeing solar panel all the way to the horizon.
In fact YOU COULD STAND ON TOP OF A BUILDING IN THE CENTER THAT'S 2400 METERS TALL (3x Burj Khalifa) AND WOULD STILL ONLY SEE SOLAR PANELS ALL THE WAY TO THE HORIZON!!!!!!
In short: The solar future doesn't look as bright once you start to scale it.
But the world will be such more enjoyable for the potential suicidee when he's denied plastic bags, shoelaces, power cords and bedsheets!
Soon we'll be able to grow the criminal himself from the DNA and punish him even he's not found.
Handing out multiple life sentences will take on a whole new meaning.
Yes I think like this.
The greenies want to see the earth depopulated and they take every opportunity they can to make predictions about this or suggestions on how to do it via population control. Paul Ehrlich summarizes the whole movement pretty well with his numerous antihuman quotes.
Another movie did it too.
They called it Operation Dark Storm and shortly afterwards most of humanity went extinct, just like how the greenies like it.
Pushing the turbo button for a brush won't clear away jumpers or renegade livestock standing on the rail.
I tell them to turn to the study of mathematics, for it is only there that they might escape the lusts of the flesh. -- Thomas Mann, "The Magic Mountain"
