How Many Solar Panels Would Be Needed to Power Earth?

[truckspond]

Spain has a total area of about 505,990 square kilometers.

Australia alone has about 1,371,000 square kilometres of desert that can't be used for much anyway and gets plenty of sun all year round so we may as well put some solar panels down on it.

 

[Callate]

Ideally, I think a combination of solar, hydroelectric, wind, geothermal, and nuclear power; the most important factor being the vast reduction of the use of coal and petroleum. Solar and wind should definitely provide more of our power than they do, and the fact that the U.S. still gets about half of its power from coal is pretty deplorable. (Unsurprising, given how important coal mining is to several states, but still horrible; we can and should do better.)

So back to the question: What is need to power the Earth with solar energy? According to an article on Tech Insider, we would only need enough panels to cover an area about the size of Spain, or about 497,000 square kilometers to power the Earth by 2030.

I'm glad Spain is willing to make the sacrifice.

 

[Timedraven 117]

It really is quite unacceptable that we aren't putting more effort into acquiring solar panels.

No it's not, what's unacceptable is that nuclear power, the REAL and only practical solution to ending fossil fuel use in the world, is stigmatized as though it's a legitimate danger to society despite being both the most cost effective and having pretty much the smallest environmental footprint of all forms of power generation.

I always keep teeling this the people of Prypjat, Futaba and Okuma... somehow they seem not to care, I wonder why that is...

Have you been there? Im sure those people didnt take it nice when you told them "hey not many of you died, you only lost your houses and everything you have, and now are condemned to live fearing an invisible thing that kills you slowly".
I dont want to sound judgmental but if you just looked at the victims numbers and went "Oh theyre not much, its ok then" then youre obviously going to fail at convincing people that nuclear power is the best solution for the future. (Which i think is true btw).

It also becomes a problem when you claim nuclear power is "the REAL and only practical solution" within an article thats shows how reasonable is to use the sun energy.

Its hardly Nuclear energy as a whole's fault. Its the Incompetence of the Soviet Administration, an administration who owned their buildings, their places of work, and their farms, live stock, just about everything really.

 

[Scow2]

It really is quite unacceptable that we aren't putting more effort into acquiring solar panels.

No it's not, what's unacceptable is that nuclear power, the REAL and only practical solution to ending fossil fuel use in the world, is stigmatized as though it's a legitimate danger to society despite being both the most cost effective and having pretty much the smallest environmental footprint of all forms of power generation.

I always keep teeling this the people of Prypjat, Futaba and Okuma... somehow they seem not to care, I wonder why that is...

Ah yes, disasters which showed that nuclear power is so safe it takes Soviet level incompetence or decades of mismanagement coupled with a once in a century natural disaster for anything to happen (and funny enough, outside of the area within a few hundred meters around the plants in questions, Chernobyl is literally the only place anywhere the disaster could be called "having any real effect", and that was the result of a plant which was in violation of safety standards that where set by the Soviets. In the 50s.

It's almost as if nuclear power isn't that dangerous, oh wait that's right more people have died from falling off roofs installing solar panels (seems someone else is aware of this here too).

Right it's not like there is some soil that Japan still needs to figure out where to store because for some reason it is considered hazardous.
Not to mention that 2 cities probably will forever be in a restricted area where the world health organization deems it unhealthy to live in. Pure hyperbole.
I mean what could possible go wrong with a little bit more background radiation? Just look at Hiroshima! It is fine there are certainly no risks to your genome whatsoever.

As you said natural disasters are completely irrelevant. I men how many tornados, earth quakes, volcanic eruptions or hurricanes are there per year? Almost none at all.

I'm all for more nuclear power. Especially when it comes from your backyard.

Cheers!

You're trying to be sarcastic and facetious. But you're undermining your own point. Hiroshima IS fine, thank you very much, and it and Nagasaki are both thriving cities.

The biggest killer from these nuclear disasters isn't the radiation itself, but the fear of the radiation (Leading to depression, stress, and alcohol-induced deaths)

It really is quite unacceptable that we aren't putting more effort into acquiring solar panels.

No it's not, what's unacceptable is that nuclear power, the REAL and only practical solution to ending fossil fuel use in the world, is stigmatized as though it's a legitimate danger to society despite being both the most cost effective and having pretty much the smallest environmental footprint of all forms of power generation.

I always keep teeling this the people of Prypjat, Futaba and Okuma... somehow they seem not to care, I wonder why that is...

Have you been there? Im sure those people didnt take it nice when you told them "hey not many of you died, you only lost your houses and everything you have, and now are condemned to live fearing an invisible thing that kills you slowly".
I dont want to sound judgmental but if you just looked at the victims numbers and went "Oh theyre not much, its ok then" then youre obviously going to fail at convincing people that nuclear power is the best solution for the future. (Which i think is true btw).

He was being facetious, and saying those people don't care how safe you say nuclear power is because they've been affected.

It also becomes a problem when you claim nuclear power is "the REAL and only practical solution" within an article thats shows how reasonable is to use the sun energy.

If by "How reasonable it is to use the sun's energy", you mean the article proved "Not at all"... I fail to see your point.

 

[AndreiCC]

Ye, at 2 panels/sq meter that's only 1 trillion panels needed. Yep 994 billion to be exact. Piece of cake.

 

[Wiggum Esquilax]

As long as it's not fossil fuel power generation, we have nowhere to go but up.

 

[Major_Tom]

Just don't put them on the fucking roads.

 

[lacktheknack]

Ye, at 2 panels/sq meter that's only 1 trillion panels needed. Yep 994 billion to be exact. Piece of cake.

That's... a lot fewer than I expected. Heck, that even looks doable. O__O

 

[immortalfrieza]

Ideally, I think a combination of solar, hydroelectric, wind, geothermal, and nuclear power; the most important factor being the vast reduction of the use of coal and petroleum. Solar and wind should definitely provide more of our power than they do, and the fact that the U.S. still gets about half of its power from coal is pretty deplorable. (Unsurprising, given how important coal mining is to several states, but still horrible; we can and should do better.)

Ideally yes, but there are only a couple things that are really true about humanity as a whole it's that we won't ever do anything about a problem until it's so big we can't ignore it anymore. We won't bother to find an alternate fuel source that actually works until we've run pretty much completely out of oil, and we won't really start using solar or wind or nuclear power or anything like that until we've run out of coal. However, fortunately the OTHER thing that is true about most all of humanity is that when we get off our collective butts and actually tackle a problem we solve it in no time flat. If we did run out of coal we'd find the best energy source to use and have a working plan of what to do with it within a week or two, give it a few months tops before we implemented and succeeded with that plan.

 

[gact]

what I find most upsetting is that there are countries that have special taxes for people who use solar power and try to live off the grid. If someone knows why is this reasonable ,could you explain to me please?.

 

[Pyrian]

I'm a big fan of increasing decentralized power generation. Power transportation on the grid is not especially efficient, when it has problems it shuts down whole regions at a time, and the individual homeowner ends up more or less at the mercy of the combination of government and private industry bureaucrats. Any long time Californians here know exactly what I'm talking about...

What happens during an eclipse? If it's cloudy? If the solar panels get dirty or damaged due natural disasters (assuming they're properly maintained)? More commonly, what happens during the night?

Tesla Powerwall [http://www.teslamotors.com/powerwall], just for starters.

We have solar panels for instance, but, the energy from them does not go into our house, but instead into the grid, you only get the effect of they energy from your panel at the lowest rate, so any power you do use over what the panels generate can often cost more (if you go into a higher tier of energy usage, even if it's only during a short period). Power outages still affect you, and you don't gain any money/credit for additional energy that goes into the grid that you don't use.

You got a remarkably terrible deal on that setup.

EDIT:

what I find most upsetting is that there are countries that have special taxes for people who use solar power and try to live off the grid. If someone knows why is this reasonable ,could you explain to me please?.

Actually, I don't think it's entirely unreasonable to have an "insurance" fee for people who only use the grid for emergencies. Maintaining the grid is expensive over and above the power itself, and even in the optimistic future where people generally aren't using the grid, it's sure nice to have it when you need it.

 

[Zontar]

what I find most upsetting is that there are countries that have special taxes for people who use solar power and try to live off the grid. If someone knows why is this reasonable ,could you explain to me please?.

Can't speak for those places specifically, but here in Quebec we can't get money given to us for energy pumped into the grid if we are independent as a result of our energy provider being Hydro Quebec, a crown corporation, has a monopoly on power (we have the cheapest power in North America, paying 25% of our neighbours in Ontario and 10% of those in New York, both of which are places we export a lot of power to).

 

[Redlin5_v1legacy]

But the sun isn't finite and you can't control it as a source; it hits the surface evenly like a gigantic Lenin eyeball glowering down in the sky! D:

 

[Areloch]

I wonder if they've done any modeling as to the local environmental impact such giant reflective surface areas would have. They would definitely cause a difference in the local ambient heat cycle because more light would be reflected back from the panels than the comparatively matte ground, and given each suggested area is so huge, I can't help but imagine that could have an impact on local weather patterns.

 

[renegade7]

They still need a few decades of research to yield any potential. I would rather have Fusion over solar Panels tbh.

If you're talking "decades of research", sustainable fusion as a useful power source hasn't even been shown to be physically possible yet.

OT: What I'm concerned about is the current state of the silicon mining industry. Until we can be guaranteed conflict-free minerals, ie silicon, tungsten, wolfram, etc, that didn't all get mined by child-slaves to fund warlords in unstable countries, we cannot be guaranteed a sustainable solar-powered future. I also don't even know if the global reserve of silicon is even capable of supplying a project of that scale.

I really think we should hold off until we have reliable means to mass-produce graphene that don't involve scotch tape, in the meantime we should focus on reducing power needs to mitigate ecological impact, since that's something we can all do right now.

 

[Dango]

I now wonder if we could fuel all of the US with solar panels covering land the size of New Jersey.

And by land the size of New Jersey, I just mean New Jersey.

I don't like New Jersey.

 

[Smooth Operator]

Oh dear fucking christ the misinformation... people seem to fear photovoltaics more then the "heinous" nuclear plants.

Then let's take a moment for current reality here folks, you can call up a local solar panel installer and have a 3kW system ordered for around 3000-5000 dollars(price will depend on region and how fancy you want the install). And that 3kW system will supply the average family household, depending on your electric company policy that might zero your bill or in case of a really nasty scammers it might only make a dent (sorry Australians).
Video of an electric engineer running one of these systems with all the data he could gather:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gq0f6FXjyMk

If you find yourself freaking out about solar panels perhaps take a moment to consider you might be talking out of your ass, shit is doable on a very realistic scale. And this is just standard old photovoltaics, solar heat towers could supplement fuel on every coal and nuclear power station because they all operate with steam generators.

 

[Eri]

It's nice to imagine a world powered only by solar. Imagine if we could harness even 50% of the sun's rays.

 

[Made in China]

*power storage questions snip*

Tesla Powerwall [http://www.teslamotors.com/powerwall], just for starters.

That's cute, but that's per household, not per nation. The solution we need is something in the MWh or even GWh (pure fantasy right now) section, not KWh. Look at Donald Sadoway's liquid metal batteries.
The reason for that is that it allows the power companies to retain control of the power grid constantly and doesn't shift the responsibility towards the consumer. Another reason is that large-scale users, large universities, hospitals and businesses can't be expected to rely on those very small batteries, not to mention that in the future our power consumption is expected to grow. We need more than just 10 KWh per household, and for those stormy winters, we need more than 100 MWh per nation per night.

 

[Atmos Duality]

I mean what could possible go wrong with a little bit more background radiation? Just look at Hiroshima! It is fine there are certainly no risks to your genome whatsoever.

...You just equated the risk of fallout from a commercial reactor meltdown to thermonuclear weaponry.
That's like comparing spoiled cottage cheese to anthrax.

Well, thanks for the laugh.