How Many Solar Panels Would Be Needed to Power Earth?

[Atmos Duality]

A couple thoughts from a NucE:

INPO and the ANS have stated that, in the United States, nuclear power is not the solution to our energy needs. However, there is no solution without nuclear. A mix of nuclear, solar, wind, natural gas and even fossil fuel is needed. Nuclear is a great way to establish your base load for the power grid. In the PMJ market it was the second cheapest. (Hydro was the cheapest; coal was usually the most expensive) You would then use things like coal or natural gas to load follow.

Nuclear is the ideal base because while it's slow to adjust output to load, it's quite efficient (relatively speaking) and stable once it's at critical.

The "pure renewable" generation methods (solar, wind) definitely have their uses, but need on-site storage to level out their "spiky" production patterns. That, and they aren't the most reliable sources, being at the mercy of local weather patterns and geography.

 

[Made in China]

True, that's a good point. Yet from what i can find out about this. None of the ones that operate solar energy plants seem to be doing this. Maybe it's a cost issue of building that extra?

Solar panels for personal use are generally just the "plant" - the cell that produces electricity. How you maintain it - be it rig a water valve and drain or take a damp cloth to it every week - is up to you. If the government were to commission a field of them, automating the maintenance would be a good way to insure they're working properly at low cost.

In any case, i personally like solar energy. It's fairly efficient, clean and easy to implement in various ways. And a good compliment to nuclear.
But i do get annoyed at ones that claim it's "100% renewable" or "zero carbon emissions". And completely ignoring the environmental impact of building and maintaining them.

The general rule with these things is "Cheap, Eco-friendly, Efficient - choose two". It even applies to paper bags as opposed to plastic bags, which are considered less eco-friendly but producing them harms the environment far less than cutting trees for the paper bags.
Point is, if you're looking far enough, everything is harmful the environment. In the case of solar power, which isn't very efficient and not very cheap in the short term, it's all it has going for it. Even the toxic chemicals that are a byproduct of its manufacturing are recyclable, so it's all good. At least until we start infusing cells with uranium for MOAR POWER!!

 

[Almgandi]

Solar panels have issues. Photovoltaic cells when created produced some nasty by products that were, in some cases, worse than anything created by fission. Has this been solved? Solar farms need lots of space and the ever wonderful NIMBY is going to lead to transmission losses. What happens at night? Or in places where it's overcast frequently? These are questions that need to be answered and, I'm sure, will be some day.

Plus, solar energy uses up quite a bit of water. Some enviro twats like to make wild claims that Solar uses up 0 water..
But they completely forget that solar panels need to be regularly cleaned. Especially ones in desert areas where there is a lot of dust build up. And most of the water used, is lost through evaporation.
Which yet another strike against solars supposed "greeniness".

Still tho. I do support the use of solar as a compliment to nuclear energy. As it's still far cleaner than fossil fuels.

Cleaning outside of extreme areas like deserts will actually be very minimal. Due to the angle/position of the panels they will pretty much just clean themselves with the help of rain and whatnot. The only real problem is bird poop and leafs. Besides the removal of poop and leafs panels won't need to be cleaned more than once a year, maybe even only every second year. It is, however, true that solar panels at the moment aren't 100% CO2 free. Transportation + some things used during the production process (chemicals, gases that are created during the process or used for cleaning etc., and of course the emissions of the silicon production/purification) do result in 50-100 g of CO2 / kWh, which ,however, is still alot lower than your average coal fired plant-

 

[Addendum_Forthcoming]

It seems like a lot of money to spend when nuclear power could supply the most energy hungry nations quickly, efficiently, and at reasonable cost. Solar panels may seem like a renewable energy source, but you still need to *make* the panels, you still need to replace them when they get broken, etc.

It's also somewhat of a joke pretending a solar farm is at all defendable in a warzone, which may leave many parts of the world unable to implement them in the first place due to the difficulty in protecting these assets from sabotage. You can protect a nuclear power plant with a reasonable sized police force. You cannot expect the same of a solar farm.

 

[Pinky's Brain]

Any country which can't defend solar farms won't be allowed to run a nuclear industry. The results of failure to properly defend a nuclear industry or the purposes it can be put to (especially if they have reprocessing capability, ie. plutonium) are somewhat more severe than PV.

 

[Strazdas]

if we assume 20% efficiency of solar panels and account for average sunlight in various places on the world (instead of taking deserts for entire world as too many people do) the entire land surface of earth would not be enough.

The topic starter article has calculations, could you show the part where they made the multiple order of magnitude error you are claiming they made?

Yes. the error is as i have already claimed in the post you are quoting. it is the sun power availability in various areas of the world. see, this assumes ideal atmosphere resistance and a minimum of 70% sun days. this may be true for some areas but it is not for most. In fact, this is only true for very small part of earth. Most of earth has over 50% cloud coverage (though solar panels do work under clouds too nowadays, just produce less power) and atmospheric resistance increased the further to the poles you go. I guess i exagarated a bit with the more than the entire surface in there too, because i did the same mistake and used my location solar power production without accounting that some parts like the mentioned sachara desert will likely create more. though also worth noting that others would produce less (for example in sweden solar panel is night useless)

 

[Schadrach]

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

Cheers!

I'm totally with you on that. Build it in my backyard. Totally cool with that. We don't get earthquakes, we're nowhere near a volcano or shoreline, and the mountains tend to limit the frequency and effects of tornadoes. We really just have the odd flash flood (and all the flood control dams really limit that).

Honestly it seems like a great use for one of those mountaintops they keep flattening to get at the coal. Especially since the area would need something to replace the coal industry that drives the economy.

 

[Schadrach]

Any country which can't defend solar farms won't be allowed to run a nuclear industry. The results of failure to properly defend a nuclear industry or the purposes it can be put to (especially if they have reprocessing capability, ie. plutonium) are somewhat more severe than PV.

You miss the differences in defending the two. One of them is basically a big fortress made of concrete, steel, and lead, the other is massive fields covered in comparatively delicate and fairly expensive things. Defending a large outdoor area exposed to open sky is an entirely different beast that defending a comparatively small reinforced structure.

 

[Pinky's Brain]

No I got that. I'm just looking at a different metric, (difficulty to protect)*(cost of failure to protect).

 

[rednose1]

Nuclear energy will never be more than a supplement to coal/gas in the U.S. It's fun to say nuclear power is the way to go, but it simply will never happen. On paper paper everything looks fine, but like Yogi said, in theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is.