On Jan 9, 2015, at 1:57 PM, Michael Ross <[email protected]> wrote:
> I heard Elon Musk claim that you could provide all the current global power > use with 100 square miles of PV. A friend and I roughed that out and he is > not far off (there are a lot of assumptions you can make to vary it one way > or another). But, the point is clear enough - a whole lot of energy lands on > the earth from the sun. You can barely see 100 m^2 from orbit. Musk is absolutely right. I did a similar calculation a year or three ago. The _residential_ rooftop surface area in the US alone is enough, at the efficiencies of the panels you can buy at your local home improvement store, to meet all the energy needs of the entire planet. (Roughly.) And, obviously, we wouldn't need to provide power for everybody else, which means we've got the potential for an absolutely embarrassing surplus -- and so does everybody else. Long before we have to even hint at thinking about putting panels on commercial buildings and parking lots -- let alone sensitive wilderness areas. Even with all the high-density housing and the shade trees and skylights and what-not. You might not be in a position to generate your own electricity, just as you might not be in a position to ditch the landline and go cellular-only or ditch the ICE vehicle and only drive an EV. But there're also lots and lots and lots and lots of people who can trivially generate ten times what they need, if money were no object and there were some incentive for them to do so. Those who want solid calculations backed with hard figures can find them here: http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/12/wind-fights-solar/ Cheers, b& -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: signature.asc Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 801 bytes Desc: Message signed with OpenPGP using GPGMail URL: <http://lists.evdl.org/private.cgi/ev-evdl.org/attachments/20150109/4584d221/attachment.pgp> _______________________________________________ UNSUBSCRIBE: http://www.evdl.org/help/index.html#usub http://lists.evdl.org/listinfo.cgi/ev-evdl.org For EV drag racing discussion, please use NEDRA (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NEDRA)
