>Another showed how much land we would need to dedicate to solar panels to power the country (also not much).
Indeed. I seem to recall seeing that you could power the entire western hemisphere with just a Texas-sized solar farm.
Indeed. I seem to recall seeing that you could power the entire western hemisphere with just a Texas-sized solar farm.
Have you seen Texas? Boy howdy. That's 23,155 Noor Power Stations[0]. Scaling costs linearly, that's $58 trillion[1].
[0] 268597 (tx) / 11.6 (noor) square miles
[1] $2.5b * 23,155
58T is the opposite of pretty reasonable.
Even if you could assume it wouldn't need any maintenance, which you can't, it's too much money for anything.
60T is 10x more than global energy expenditure in 2010, and that's just for the Western Hemisphere, which I'm fairly certain expends significantly less energy then the Eastern.
Edit: just checked, and I was correct. In 2010, Western Hemi energy demand was ~130 PBtu, while Easter Hemi demand was ~330 PBtu[1], or 2.5x more.
So at this same price point, it would be 210T to power the whole world with solar, or 50% more than global GDP in 2019 (but only using 2010 energy consumption numbers, so it's actually much more). And of course you'd need to keep adding more solar as demand went up.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_consumption#/medi...
Even then, this is still a wildly conservative estimate in terms of price. For example, you're also not taking into account any of the things that can't currently be easily electrified, such as passenger jets.
Thinking about it more it would seem likely that as overall oil consumption falls, the relative cost of oil derivatives like jet fuel would go up because the advantages of scale decrease from what they are now. It's a pretty fascinating subject since solar prices seem to follow a Moore's law type price evolution at the moment while oil will get cheaper as well while demand decreases. Presumably there is a balance point somewhere?
While I haven't looked up the data yet, it seems plausible to assume that maintenance on photovoltaic electric generation is not only lower but significantly lower than thermal generation.
For example, having no moving parts in the generation process must be a large maintenance savings, though of course there must be unique costs associated with photovoltaics - cleaning, perhaps?
> Even then, this is still a wildly conservative estimate in terms of price.
I just did some quick calculations to check this statement and found it basically true - I estimate the cost of 100% PV solar generation at around $180tn 2019 USD for 30 years of capacity.
For reference, I used these figures:
173,340 TWh energy consumption in 2019 [1] * $35/MWh for utility-scale PV solar[2] * 1,000,000 MWh/TWh = $6.1t yearly energy cost for 100% PV energy production, or $182t over a 30-year lifetime.
This, of course, does not take into account the increase of energy consumption over that period which would raise costs, nor the economies of scale of this level of PV deployment which would surely lower costs, but as a BotE calculation it sounds about right and corresponds with your earlier estimate of $210tn for the same investment. Note also that the $35/MWh figure includes all operating expenses and amortized capital costs i.e. it takes all costs into account already.
However, as you imply with your first question regarding maintenance burden, the correct comparison is not "how much would it cost" but rather "how much would it cost relative to projected costs of energy" - and again per [2], utility PV solar is already cheaper than new utility thermal power generation. There is of course plenty of nuance when it comes to energy consumption - you point out, for example, that aviation will be a difficult sector to "electrify," a true enough statement in and of itself. However, it's pointed out in [3] that jet fuel represents 12% of transportation energy consumption and that transportation overall represents 25% of global energy consumption, implying that aviation only represents about 3% of global energy consumption.
Based on this, I speculate that aviation fuels can be produced in a 100% solar PV energy regime without increasing - and likely lowering - energy production costs above the current regime.
[1] https://ourworldindata.org/energy-production-consumption [2] https://www.lazard.com/perspective/lcoe2019 [3] https://www.maritime-executive.com/article/transport-uses-25...
If thats small, how can you describe the size of nuclear power plants required to do the same job?
And power plants would be way smaller and aren't impractical.
http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=texas%20area%20%2A%2010...
Worldwide power consumption is about 18 TW, electricity is about 3 TW.
And current PV looks like it’s good for 20+ years so you’re getting that power at about $3 trillion per year. The only reference I can find to current energy costs is this from Wikipedia:
"""In 2010, expenditures on energy totaled over US$6 trillion, or about 10% of the world gross domestic product (GDP)""" - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_consumption
On that basis, you’d be getting roughly twice as many exajoules for roughly half as many USD.
(Also: Quarter of the expenses if you keep power use the same: It’s half cost for double the energy)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Growth_of_photovoltaics
(Someone should update the “Grid parity for solar PV around the world”, that map was last edited in 2015)
The plant will be able to store solar energy in the form of heated molten salt, allowing for production of electricity into the night. Phase 1 comes with a full- load molten salt storage capacity of 3 hours. Noor II, commissioned in 2018, and Noor III, commissioned in January 2019, store energy for up to eight hours.
Very cool.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ouarzazate_Solar_Power_Station
If the entire planet resided in TX, each person would get 1100 sq feet to themselves. That's a very large 1BR, good sized 2BR apt.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1B3Vtm-bk8NIntYc8mZRw...
Getting 10x our total energy would only require half the Sahara. We have plenty of deserted place for this if that's what we wanted to do. Transporting and storing that energy is more the issue, which is why hydro/wind/solar mixes aided by batteries/nuclear are probably what we'll be focusing on for the next few decades.
So while im all for solar and hope we build tons of it, I don't see it becoming the primary energy generation source of the world any time soon. The solar farms that we would need will be the biggest man made wonders in the world, which I don't see as all that feasible in our economic and political environment.
Last time I looked, the USA was in a similar position. Hasn't started building one in at least 40 years[1] and the one I saw on that list finishing in 1990 (Seabrook) I thought might be more recent, says it was permitted in 1976, took 14 years to get Unit 1 working and Unit 2 was cancelled due to delays, and cost overruns. That's the kind of thing I'm talking about.
The current 92 of them provided 20% of the USA's electricity generation. So you'd need another 368 to do the other 80%. How long will they take to build, 15 years each? 55 years to go all nuclear, assuming you build ten at a time. How do you get from "we haven't built a nuclear power plant in 40 years" to "we could build 10 at a time continuously for the next half-century" in a convincing way?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_the_United_St...
The same way we were like let's go to the moon, build the transcontinental railroad or some nuclear bombs. Everything is a hell of a lot easier and possible if you have alignment.
As with most technical projects, the technical problem is usually not the barrier to achievement.
One moon rocket, in an age of rocketry, competing with the Russians. 120 continuous nuclear power plants in an age of struggling to build a train line in California. One moon rocket to visit the moon which would look amazing, versus fighting climate change which the incumbent President thinks is a hoax. Not being able to get alignment is a valid reason to question "could".
I agree. That's precisely what I mentioned was the only barrier in achieving it. The answer to getting it done is getting alignment from various stakeholders.
Many of the people that think it's a hoax or the ones that don't believe it's doomsday support nuclear plants. That's always been the case in the US.
You can get alignment without even agreeing on why to go nuclear. This escapes the doomsdayers and the climate crusaders. And based on your comment... you.
I mean - you provided a perfect example. You mentioned our outgoing President thinking climate change is a hoax while we are talking about nuclear plants. And he supported nuclear plants.
People with different concerns and end goals can't talk and agree on things that would help both of their agendas.
You want nuclear plants? Pitch national security to one group. Pitch saving the world to the other. Pitch cleaner air to another.
You aren't going to get anything done if you try to convince them that they need to believe your reason.
As Neil deGrasse Tyson's dad told him - it's not enough to be right. You must be effective.
If fusion (or anything else) adds four orders of magnitude (~200 PW) of new power at ground level, the new global average blackbody equilibrium temperature would increase from about +15 C to about +70 C.