ARMY it would take to defend the solar panel field from "The Crazies" that lurk in that area? But that would still be a very very small price to pay!

ball of dirt all by itself and many people just have to hate and war ... amazing.

Oh sure some of us are pretty cool.
On an individual one-by-one basis we can be pretty decent.
In groups though...............yeah...

You heard Tommy Lee Jones from Men In Black:
"A PERSON is smart. People are dumb panicky animals and you know it."

John Lucas

This plan wouldn't work. Having centralized solar panels like that wouldn't work because it is not 100% efficient to transport electricity through wires and a concentration of solar farms in those areas would cause environmental problems. Granted, these environmental problems are not bad as even the cleanest natural gas plant, but they do exist.

Instead, make it free for people to install solar panels on their houses, but in exchange they have to sell excess electricity back into the grid for free, until the cost of the solar panels and installation is paid for. You decentralize the power generation, which will make up for the lower levels of sunlight most places get. Even if you live in a temperate rain forest, like Seattle, solar power makes sense. In places like Arizona have larger solar farms to generate electricity on an industrial scale and of course put money into R&D for batteries to store excess electricity.

not a plan.

Solar is already decentralised .. in the UK and EU anyway. Solar can be 'tuned' for want of a better word to utilise the most abundant frequencies of light in a region. It's not super efficient but it's still in it's infancy.

There has been some discussion and testing using the electricity produced to split water into it's components H and O but that's very inefficient.

You can purchase solar outright or have it installed for free and 'feed in' to the grid (UK).

Even a "Capitalistic" middle ground that folks like the Koch Brothers are fighting to prevent all over the country is...If lets say, you & I, wanted to start our own business & we bought 500 acres & covered it with solar panels simply to sell back into the system this is ILLEGAL in every state as far as I know. In Georgia they just doubled down on preventing anyone from doing this & I have read about other states doing the same...So much for "Letting the market decide!"

It's intended to show the small total area that world solar power would require.

Perhaps it should have been compared to the sizes of the nations we have invaded for petroleum.

That is a good idea.

Or the graves of the people who die from the pollution from oil and other fossil fuels.

right there.

Sorry, I know this is an old post. But I was researching a topic and found this and I had to comment.

This is based on an idea of putting solar panels where there is most solar energy present, particularly various parts of northern Africa. There might be some issues though with the politics of doing this.

The reason they show it in that area of Africa is that is where the SUN IS...And YES, a massive solar field has been proposed for that area of Africa & seriously looked at by many European & African countries all of which are desperate for sources of energy especially those that don't come from Russia & happen to be clean. Not to mention many corporations who look to make a lot of money of such a project. That is before that area melted into pure chaos.

Now, I seriously doubt you give a damn about why I said what I said but if you do care about the truth the link is below...And I stand by my original comments. Which you should go back a read again after you read the article linked below AND do some more research on your own so you have a firm understanding of the topic before embarrassing yourself again with the typical DU CRY of "...the nations we have invaded for petroleum. " especially when it has nothing to do with the discussion! geez.

http://inhabitat.com/worlds-largest-solar-project-sahara-desert/sahara-solar-map2/

the army.

Regardless, why centralize it. Make solar panels our standard roofing material, around the world. Scatter panels through arizona, Utah, Texas, and all the other American states with great sun coverage. Chile has a nice high desert that could support a fair number of panels scattered about. Mongolia and China do not lack sun drenched land. Theres plenty of desert land in African nations that are not at war and would require minimal security efforts.

No need to go to war zones for solar power.

Before the area melted into chaos there were very real proposals to build a solar field big enough to provide power to much of Europe & northern Africa!!

http://inhabitat.com/worlds-largest-solar-project-sahara-desert/sahara-solar-map2/

Even in peaceful times it would take a HUGE force to guard against terrorism or looting for metal or whatever. Just fun to think about such things

Of course, they'd have to be spread out simply because the power must be moved from the panel to a local power station for distribution through the grid.

This would also mean the entire fleet of carbon-burning cars would have to be changed over to plug in batteries. This would mean the poorest among us would need subsidies to afford such a vehicle.

Is our species capable of implementing such a far-reaching policy? Are our politicians capable of exhibiting the courage to fight big oil, big coal and big automobile to put something like this in place?



Nah.

Sadly.

have what it takes, at least the current crop.

The area for the world looks to be a square around 300 km (186 miles) to a side. That would be like covering the entire western half of the state of Tennessee from Nashville to Memphis in a continuous, unbroken, solar panel. I support solar power. I think we could learn to live with consuming a fraction of the electricity that we consume at present.

Thanks for the thread, redqueen.

And even then, demand independent confirmation. I'm TRYING hard to think of how best to respond.

Thanks.

There is already a lot of stress on the grid.

Unless you live in a constantly dark and dreary place, solar is going to help. But the biggest challenge is power storage - do you sell it to the power companies and buy it back at night, or do you spend thousands on batteries that are only good for maybe 10 to 15 years?

We gotta go solar. But it is a major challenge, and it is not as clean and as pretty as we want to think. Even in the barest looking desert - plants and animals live there, and we are going to have to disturb their habitat. We are going to have to mine a lot of copper - and that is a filthy process.

In one instance they talk about electric cars being hooked up to the grid so that in a system where a person didn't drive every day (like myself) the electric energy is stored in the car during the day and released back into the grid at night.

Another one talked about an innovation in electric batteries that stored the electricity in molten metal - some interesting research that's being done.

I guess my point is that there are people aware that it's a problem and research is progressing to solve the problem in multiple ways.

Don't tell them about that. They don't want to hear it.

I don't think we get the losses quite as bad as they were even a few years ago.

And each chemistry has it's own foibles.

NiCd batteries need to be completely drained before recharging, or they lose capacity. NiMH have some of the same effect, but not nearly as badly.

Li-ion batteries do not need to be discharged, but they are damaged most by the transition from about 30% to 0% and from about 90% to 100% (IOW, don't "top off" your cell phone or laptop if it's close to full, and try to not drain it completely) But if you keep it between 90% and 30%, it lasts a very long time.

Those are the ones I can remember off the top of my head. I'd have to go look up what the various lead-acid types are stressed by.

The price/kwh is steadily dropping and the standard to beat is daily full discharges for 26 years (10,000 cycles) while maintaining above 80% of original capacity.

This is the reason Musk has released the patents on Tesla technology, he wants to encourage participation in the industry in order to spur manufacturing investment, which is the key to further cost reductions.

EV batteries have to be light and small. "Grid" batteries do not. They can be enormous and incredibly heavy.

A lead-acid array can already beat your standard. But it's way too enormous to run an EV. But since a "grid" battery is just sitting in a building, enormous isn't a problem.

I live in Albuquerque. There is so much sun here..
you wouldn't need to store it, share it, sell it or
measure it. But Sadly Susana is being taken in
by the Koches.

You never use electricity at night? OK.

as you know there are about 300 days of sunshine per year
here in New Mexico, give or take a few depending on the
state of the climate.. I believe the number of sunny days are
increasing, and we will soon need to figure out a way to
make water from sunlight.. but that's an aside.

What I am suggesting is we have extra here, and somebody
ought to be harvesting it in a big way.

you said "... wouldn't need to store it..."

That's what you said. Now you say, "... wouldn't need to store a ton of it ..."

Just admit you misspoke and move on. Otherwise your credibility is shot.

Anyone that points out your error is unnecessarily and thoughtlessly nitpicking your words and should not say anything.

When you are speaking about technical subjects, that's called peer review. Engineers are not supposed to let technical errors like that pass. It sometimes gets people killed.

Please forgive me if I have misunderstood you.
All I know about solar is there's a hellalot of it
here, more than enough to share.

aqueducts like the California aqueduct.
This would do 2 things:
1) Create energy
2) Protect needed water from evaporating.

We should also have solar panels built into the roof of cars, buses, trucks and trains (especially electric trains).

There is a meme going around Facebook that India is already doing something like this.

So much for the U.S. being a "world leader".

From there, the transmission of power would be available to large population centers, or electrical car recharging centers in rural areas.

We actually lose more energy transporting electricity than we get. Most depressing EE class I ever took...

ever-sunny California. I would like to do that, but my government subsidizes the real costs (I'm including external costs like asthma and cancer and other results of pollution) of other fuels so much and subsidizes the cost of my sending my extra energy to my water and power department so little that it does not make sense for me to put the panels on my house.

I hope that we will, as a nation, one day value the safety and healthiness of solar panels as much as we value the profits of nuclear energy, oil, gas and coal companies and subsidize the installation of solar panels on homes in sunny areas.

each house if at all possible. And the roof will put big power outages that cause so much trouble, in the past. Why need to send out crews to repair power lines when a big section of our country is called the sunbelt.

is saving us about 40% on our electric bill, but we're still connected to the grid. We lease the hardware and get billed a small amount each month by LIPA.

When the power goes out (several times each year) our system shuts down for the safety of repair crews. I've installed a lockout on the service panel and a generator. We were without electric and heat for a month after Sandy and I don't want to go through that again.

Solar has been great, so far, but for us it doesn't help during a LIPA power outage.

The installation was free, he pays $80 per month 'rental' but this month, he got a $100 credit on his account from the power company. Net savings for this month was whatever he would normally have paid - say $350 in the summer per month? (guessing) plus $100, minus $80 rental fee = ahead $370.

I'm not sure the name of the company, but I know it's owned by Elon Musk.


edited to add the link to Solar City

"As of 1980, the longest cost-effective distance for direct-current transmission was determined to be 7,000 km (4,300 mi). For alternating current it was 4,000 km (2,500 mi), though all transmission lines in use today are substantially shorter than this.[7]"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_power_transmission

that can operate at anywhere close to "normal" temperatures. Long-distance transmission lines cooled by liquid nitrogen is not remotely practical. Not to mention making the coolant would probably use more energy than the transmission losses.

home.

Where are the details that back this up?

They're scattered through probably hundreds of journal articles and books all over the place.

You find a map of 'insolation' values for parts of the world, that show just how much solar energy is hitting a given area.
Then you find the amount of that energy able to be captured by solar panels of a given size.

Then you find a listing of the amount of energy actually being used in the world (or, be lazy and simply find out how much energy is being used solely in the US, for instance, and then extrapolate that out across the total population of the world - that will give you an incredibly overlarge value, since we use far more power per person than pretty much any other country out there.)

Do the math to determine how many panels it will take to generate that amount of energy, and then calculate how much total area would have to be covered by that many panels.

You'll wind up with a 'box' of roughly that size in that part of the world.

Now, the legitimate nitpicks that could be offered up is that transmission losses would be enormous if we merely put all of the panels in one place in the world, and thus we need to place the panels all over the world to avoid such losses. And thus, you'll need to cover more area, because most parts of the world don't receive the same amount of insolation as cloudless deserts do.

On the other hand, I'm willing to bet if we added up all of the area in the world covered by rooftops, it would add up to a box of roughly the same size, if not even larger.

Use a little commonsense. It makes us all seem smarter.

just FYI (not directed to Erich specifically), the solar constant is 1360 W/sq. m - that is the solar radiation intensity at the distance from the sun to the earth. The atmosphere absorbs a little bit of the radiation (or a lot if it is cloudy), and the angle of the sunlight on a solar panel affects the amount of power captured. Some solar panels have been made approaching 30% efficiency, but most commercially made panels are around 15%. So a typical square meter panel has a rated capacity around 150 W.

The effective output of solar panels is generally estimated at 6 hours per day, or 0.9 kWh per sq. m; but with sun tracking (which greatly increases the installation cost of the panel array), the effective output can be increased by 50% or more.

Worldwide energy production, according to Wikipedia, for 2008 was 143,851,000,000,000 kWh and increasing at a rate of around 2-5% annually. So, now you can calculate worldwide solar panel demand.

As for batteries, they are a real problem so far. I live on a bank of 20 golf cart batteries, but I do not run air conditioning and sometimes the lights dim when the washing machine starts. So it is a marginal case. Charging efficiency is only about 80%. Pumping water up a hill and regenerating the power when the water runs back down, or driving a locomotive up a mountain and letting it roll back down - these types of kinetic storage are in use along with others, but they are even more inefficient: water pumping and regeneration is only about 30% efficient, a locomotive can do a little better (but costs more).

Several others discuss the transmission problem so I will not belabor it.

Think globally and act locally. Different locations can have different solutions. Solar is pretty easy at the household level; it is getting affordable for most people in the US now. But it is certainly not as easy as hooking to the grid.

Eco-balance of a Solar Electricity Transmission from North Africa to Europe
http://www.dlr.de/tt/Portaldata/41/Resources/dokumente/institut/system/projects/Ecobalance_of_a_Solar_Electricity_Transmission.pdf

This particular graphic is on page 12.

That area could be split up into many different regions...

I mean, really.

It IS a pretty picture and I got the point, meaning a very small area. I'm all for solar.

I was looking for some details and someone provided that.

"a lot of sensitive types here today..."

I used to rationalize my back-handed compliments too.

"I used to repeat my subject lines in the body of my post."

I mean, I reeeealllly long for it.

But this post communicates a truly great concept. Thank you for it.

The split up would best serve the world if they provided those jobs in lieu of what we're paying to the highest paid folks at all of the places where they are currently going in the oil and natural gas industries. Save oil for creating plastic for those things that serve us then recycle.

I love solar.

I just found out that solar uses a lot of water to clean the panels. Putting the panels in the deserts sounds like such a great idea, but no water there.

A 26 megawatt installation uses 2 acre-feet of water per year just to wash the panels... lots more during the installation phase. And those figures are from the contractor and subject to change upward by reality.

(No pun intended.)
[hr][font color="blue"][center]The truth doesn’t always set you free.
Sometimes it builds a bigger cage around the one you’re already in.[/center][/font][hr]

about doing that off of the northeast coast?

On edit: I think they were talking about a floating wind farm.

Thermal generation is one of the largest water users in the world. They recycle most of it back in, but when water shortages occur or during times of extreme heat, they are severely impacted.

Solar? Not so much at all.

and reuse it.

Nuclear power plants use enormous amounts of water for cooling, etc, and most of that water evaporates as steam.

Solar is The Way.

And gas fracking may pollute groundwater too much for a state like California.

Nuclear energy also uses a lot of water I gather from the problems at Fukushima.

I have neighbors with solar panels. I had never heard that they use water to clean them.


The final word on solar panel cleaning

The old saying "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" applies - in most residential installation scenarios, solar panel cleaning just isn't worth the bother - or the potential danger if accessing your rooftop. Unless dirt is clearly visible or performance is noticeably impacted; simply let nature do the job for you .

http://www.energymatters.com.au/renewable-energy/solar-power/cleaning-solar-panels.php

Another thing solar panel installers may offer to do is come around and clean your solar panels, again for a fee. I don’t get this at all. Without special circumstances, there is no point in getting your solar panels cleaned. That’s what rain is for. Basically, they are self cleaning. Sure, there are exceptions, if you’ve been hit by a dust storm you may want to hose off the panels, and if, for some reason, your rooftop solar is underneath a tree that has recently been taken over by a colony of fruit bats – well, you’ll probably want to move house because I can tell you now you’re in for a crappy time. But for the most part, owners of rooftop solar report very little difference in performance after having their panels cleaned. Even if you’re willing to do it yourself, it’s generally not worth the effort and almost certainly not worth the risk of mucking about on the roof. If you want increased output from your solar panels, rather than clean them, it’s much easier and more cost effective to simply install a slightly larger system from the beginning, so if you lose a little bit of output from dust and grime it’s not a problem.

http://cleantechnica.com/2013/04/12/how-to-maintain-and-clean-rooftop-solar-dont/

If you can clean your windows – you can certainly clean your solar panels.

The hard part (especially for roof mounted solar panels is reaching them). Assuming you can reach your solar planels - clean the surface of a solar panel much like you would clean your car -- with warm water and dishwashing soap to remove any accumulation of dirt and grime.

http://www.solar-facts-and-advice.com/solar-panel-cleaning.html


If you have windows, you use water to wash them. If you have a car, you use water to wash it.

Solar panels probably don't have to be washed often if at all.


Do you have solar panels? If so, how often co you clean them?

Actually, I've long thought that once Saudi Arabia started to run out of oil, it would just turn all that sand in the Rubʿ al Khali into solar panels, and just keep on being one of the planet's largest energy suppliers.

big gas and oil will continue to fight back with BS propaganda. Can't have a workable solution that cuts into their bottom line!

Tyson also noted in the recent Cosmos episode that it would be very easy to supplement with wind power and you don't even have to use land, the windmills can be placed in the water just off the coastline.

spotted rows and rows of windmills just offshore. These, you can see in the harbor.

I didn't have a pic to go with the statement. Thanks for the visual.

k/r

This gets worse and worse!

Now how do we distribute it to everyone?

The inability to extrapolate this information into a useful solution. Let me offer some help: look at the top of every building in any community. Do you see that space up there?

start with every government building: Every city hall, every courthouse, every police and fire station, every public school, every library, every public administration building, the tops of every light pole in every public parking lot and public road -- the list (and opportunities) goes on and on. Those small wind generators could be substituted if solar was weather-prohibited. Even if the devices powered only the direct need, it would still be huge.

Their output matches the demand peak better and they consequently produce a more valuable product.

I have a house with a completely clear W facing roof, and a large detached garage with a clear S facing roof.

By design.

... gets shaded by my rather massive chimney structure. Even with a number of strings and an inverter with multiple MPPT channels I couldn't get it to work.

I once did a comparison between my south facing and west facing roof, assuming they were both clear of shadows. As you say, the west facing roof got almost as much total sun, and it was later in the afternoon at the peak demand period. But in my area there is no time of day differential at all so it didn't make up for the difference in total equivalent sun hours.

Are you saying we can't have solar? That is my point. There is a whole host of options for locating solar panels and the onus does not have to rely on the homeowner. Communities can do this to power most or all of their needs. A shaded dwelling does not mean we cannot reap benefits everywhere else.

What I was pointing out is that saying "solar on EVERY roof" and "just look at the top of ANY building" is nonsensical.

EVERY and ANY have meanings. EVERY roof and ANY roof are not suitable for solar. I don't know how you stretch that to me saying we can't have solar. We can and we do. (I do, anyway.)

of the American southwest can clearly see that we have enough unused, open,sunny space for a sea of solar panels.Why don't we have them? Good post.k&r.

Which would be substantial if a giant solar panel farm was across the globe from the point of consumption.

But the thing you seem to miss is that that required area wouldn't have to BE IN ONE PLACE. That area - spread across many continents and countries would lessen the losses you note, significantly.

BTW, here in Central CA - where there's GOBS of sunlight most of the year - there's a rush of outfits pushing solar systems that you lease. You're locked into a monthly payment for 20 or 25 years. You still have to make a make-up payment to your power supplier, but you have the locked in rate with the leaser. It might be nice to know that your meter is running backwards during the day, but you're not saving much in the end.
To add insult to injury, the power companies have installed new remotely monitored meters on most homes. That means that when they get to raise rates, they'll skew the increases to the dark-time hours to make sure they still get their money.

We have almost a whole acre of bare, flat property we could put panels on. Our best bet would be to buy a system outright - such as you can buy from Costco - and set it up. Yes, you have to have some technical skills - and I happen to have a mechanical/electrical background. If I'm gonna join the solar revolution, that's how I'll approach it.

to make it practical/cost efficient.

To supply the planet with electricity we will need massive solar panel farms located throughout the world.

for animals & humans in the long run. Meanwhile, our economy runs on the manufacturing of arms and the use of them on the poorest people in the world.
Shucks, people got to make a living making a killing. We get to pump up the stock market and someone gets to earn a stripe for pushing the buttons at the same time.
Get with the program, Pyle!

And quite an expensive job. I would definitely want to use an electrician with a lot of experience, and get quotes from several companies.

I'm taking this as nothing more than an area required in a sunny place.

In real life, we'd decentralize to increase transmission efficiency and also to reduce how juicy a terrorist target the locale would be. Besides, that location would be seeing night-time during half the day, so we'd want to decentralize just to distribute that.

By the time you add in the fact that most areas of the world aren't as consistently sunny, and that there still will be transmission losses, the area is larger. But nobody would bother to bomb my house just to get rid of my power generation if every other house has the same thing on it.

That's how I read it as well.

do anything, after we set our priorities. Then we must take the slow long slog toward winning the victory.

Imho, what we need are sustainable energy sources based on local conditions. In the US, big utilities walk hand in hand with oil and gas manufacturers. They will not stop the march to total rape of fossil resources until we stop buying their propaganda. We must also challenge oil and gas producers, and our congress critters over taxpayer funded profit.

If we are truly exceptional, then so are all humans on this planet who work toward saving life as we know it on this azure planet.

Africa could be the next power production engine of the world. Solar.

A better source is here. And it uses a distributed model (energy sources per continent).

http://landartgenerator.org/blagi/archives/127

Its still quite remarkable though how relatively small a space it would require. I would have thought much larger.

Nice to see the point isn't completely missed by most.