Surface Area Required to Power the World with Solar

landartgenerator.org

7 pointsph0rque3 comments

Missing from this: any mention of cost, so out of interest I went and figured it out.

Assuming a cost of $200 per square metre, carpeting the 336,000 odd square km required for 2008's energy usage would cost... 67 trillion dollars. Factor in a bunch more for transmission and storage.

Wouldn't the cost per square metre fall with efficiencies of scale alone? While it might cost $200 per square metre in the beginning, the costs would fall over time.

Non-standard parts installed by huge amounts of human labor vs. standardized solar panel installations dropped on site a la prefab housing?

This is pretty interesting. I wonder if the projections take into account increased efficiency of the panel technology over time?

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