> _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
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
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)
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.
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.