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Green Energy Problems?
CommunistCow
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
This post was prompted by this image from digg showing how much area of the world we would have to cover with solar or wind power to power the world:
I have a big problem with this image because I recently did a calculation on how much space we would need to power the entire US with solar power and came up with a VASTLY different conclusion. From my understanding solar and wind power honestly don't produce that much power and are more expensive. I'm not saying we should try to use green energy I'm just saying it might take a combination of lots of different sources to get even close to the power we get out of coal. I also think in the interim(next 25-50 years) we could use nuclear power to make up the difference while cutting back CO2 and only producing about 3 cubic meters of spent fuel waste per year.
Note the original calculation and assumption were wrong because I had the US area off by a few orders of magnitude thus I think the above map is close to right and this thread may just need to be locked/deleted.
Can someone check my calculation here and see if I'm doing something wrong or making an incorrect assumption(I could be fucking something up with MWh and MW):
The largest (thermal) solar array in the US is from Solar Energy Generating Systems and has a capacity of 354MW and takes up 561 acres of land. For reference the average coal power plant has a capacity of ~600+MW and nuclear power plants produce in the range of 600-1200+ MW.
The US had an average total power consumption of 3.34TW in 2005 or 3,340,000MW of power.
Thus I did a simple calculation 354MW/561acres = 3,340,000MW/ X acres.
x = 5,293,050 acres.
For reference the US is roughly 2.428 [strike]million[/strike] billion acres.
While I haven't done as much research it seems like wind power has similar issues.
Edit:
Edit2: corrected the above from Feral's comment below.
Spoiler:
I have a big problem with this image because I recently did a calculation on how much space we would need to power the entire US with solar power and came up with a VASTLY different conclusion. From my understanding solar and wind power honestly don't produce that much power and are more expensive. I'm not saying we should try to use green energy I'm just saying it might take a combination of lots of different sources to get even close to the power we get out of coal. I also think in the interim(next 25-50 years) we could use nuclear power to make up the difference while cutting back CO2 and only producing about 3 cubic meters of spent fuel waste per year.
Note the original calculation and assumption were wrong because I had the US area off by a few orders of magnitude thus I think the above map is close to right and this thread may just need to be locked/deleted.
Can someone check my calculation here and see if I'm doing something wrong or making an incorrect assumption(I could be fucking something up with MWh and MW):
The largest (thermal) solar array in the US is from Solar Energy Generating Systems and has a capacity of 354MW and takes up 561 acres of land. For reference the average coal power plant has a capacity of ~600+MW and nuclear power plants produce in the range of 600-1200+ MW.
The US had an average total power consumption of 3.34TW in 2005 or 3,340,000MW of power.
Thus I did a simple calculation 354MW/561acres = 3,340,000MW/ X acres.
x = 5,293,050 acres.
For reference the US is roughly 2.428 [strike]million[/strike] billion acres.
While I haven't done as much research it seems like wind power has similar issues.
Edit:
Spoiler:
Edit2: corrected the above from Feral's comment below.
CommunistCow on
No, I am not really communist. Yes, it is weird that I use this name.
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To power the United States alone with Solar Power you require an area the size of Alaska.
On the topic, I've heard plans for a Sahara Solar Farm for forever, but it never seems to materialize. Possibly because it wouldn't do much to help people living near the Sahara so much as it would Europe.
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Isn't that wind needed somewhere else farther down the line?
I imagine it screws up weather when it's absorbed before it can make it past the windmills.
That's 2.428 billion acres.
Edit: So, no, you're not looking at 2.3 times the surface area of the US. You're looking at roughly 1/450th of the surface area of the US. Basically New Jersey.
no god why
ah Yes...thank you sir.
No, I am not really communist. Yes, it is weird that I use this name.
...sigh...
EDIT: What projection is that map in? I likes it.
I mean looking at it, a lot of that area is uninhabitable desert anyway.
my unofficial autobio will be accompanied with tips on how to smile
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The answer to this is that there is such a massive amount of energy flying around the world every day in the form of wind that whatever tiny, tiny amount our little turbines pull out isn't enough to ever be noticed.
my unofficial autobio will be accompanied with tips on how to smile
cause I've found that when they don't see you frown, they never know that you're a threat
and they don't sweat you when you came around
No, I am not really communist. Yes, it is weird that I use this name.
The top map is actually serious and as far as I understand it pretty accurate. I'm hoping moniker or ELM might be able to corroborate that.
I feel like there ought to be a combination of the wind and solar maps that pretty much the whole world could get behind. Throw in some underwater human battery farms and we're set
my unofficial autobio will be accompanied with tips on how to smile
cause I've found that when they don't see you frown, they never know that you're a threat
and they don't sweat you when you came around
2) The map ignores that the main problem with power is not generation, but distribution.
The map that includes powering the world with people batteries is serious? You'll excuse me if I don't take such a map as the definitive source.
Personally, I'm way too 20-years old to give a toss about humanity, but I am fundamentally irked by the thought of letting the stupid people win by default on this one. It is incongruous with every libertarian, free-market, liberal or even Christian principle to let non-polluting and already suffering nations take the majority of the repercussions of our non-internalized externalities. If somehow the pollution would only affect the country in which it was produced everything would be different. But what we will be looking at in a decade or more is essentially murder but with populations in place of individuals. It's like we are smoking ourselves to death but we refuse to admit that the wind carries all the tar over into the impoverished asthmatics next door. It's psychopathic. Copenhagen or bust, it seems like.
It's serious in that human batteries are absurdly useless and the Matrix is a stupid movie.
576 acres = 2.2 km2 or about 160 W/m2 (or MW/km2).
Nevada is 286,367 km2, so multiplication gives me somewhere in the 4,600,000 MW range. More than the number you just gave for the U.S, and the U.S. uses so much of it inefficiently. It is roughly the size of Oklahoma with that level of efficiency. People assume much greater levels are possible, in the range of 250 to 300 W/m2. So that would reduce the size accordingly.
The TOP map.
It's based on this: http://www.landartgenerator.org/blagi/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/AreaRequired1000.jpg
Also, I'd imagine there are installation and maintenance issues with giant structures in the middle of uninhabited deserts.
Well, nobody is actually suggesting we build one gigantic plant the size of New Jersey.
If you can get solar cost competitive with coal and natural gas, economics will force it. The other problem with your view is that you are looking at it with dimensions that make it sound impossible.
If you look at CIGS solar cells, Nanosolar can produce production line quality cells only a few microns thick. That means your one square kilometer of film area takes only a few cubic meters of actual volume. A cheap polymer grocery bags covers a huge amount of 2D area for the weight of the bag, and that is thicker than some of the solar cells now on the market. The biggest problem with CIGS is the cadmium indium gallium in the name, because that stuff isn't cheap. You can back that cell with whatever you need to make it structurally sound.
There is a race to see who can get CIGS and other print process solar cells out to market first in large quantities. Nanosolar uses CIGS, Konarka uses polymer films, and there are others whose names escape me at the moment.
The only reason you should worry about the Turbines "using up" the worlds wind, is if you also fear that large buildings and mountains are also decreasing the amount of available wind.
Wind is created by air moving from high pressure to low pressure systems, along with tidal forces and other factors. It really cant run out.
Fact: the oceans dried up during the industrial revolution due to the overuse of watermills.
Electricity is a huge fucking pain in the ass to move around.
It's also completely inapplicable to solar power, since unlike coal power no one cares if you build it close to population centers.
How durable can we make the panels? It would be really nice to pave over our roads with something photoenergetic if it could take the abuse.
Why is the distribution problem still brought up? Solar is a fixed position generator, like wind or hydro. People don't have to transport fuel to it to keep it functional. I'd be interested in meeting the people who would complain if their neighbor put solar panels on their roof.
Oh no, black 1 inch thick panels on the roof of my neighbor's house!
No, it's not. Power loss is a HUGE issue.
The real problem here is that we've got mainstream conservatives, who want to pretend there isn't a problem in the hopes that that'll make the problem not exist (seems to be a recurring theme, come to think of it) and mainstream liberals, who acknowledge that there is a problem and then propose hilariously inadequate and unworkable solutions. Nothing's gonna get done until the sea levels start noticeably rising, and by then it's too late to really fix anything.
I know this is coming right after Shryke, but really the nuclear-power chest thumpers still ignore another large problem- fuel disposal.
There is no easy solution to this. "Sticking it in a mountain" is a really really shitty idea. Ask any geologist.
my unofficial autobio will be accompanied with tips on how to smile
cause I've found that when they don't see you frown, they never know that you're a threat
and they don't sweat you when you came around
Compared to the efficiency of solar panels (~28%, IIRC), the ~92% efficiency of power lines is a godsend.