Windfarms are POINTLESS!

[Solly]

Originally posted by Adrian Hon


If the cost for the solar panels, according to your calculations, is $6.484 quadrillion, and the US GNP is $15 trillion, then it would take 432 years of the GNP to pay.

However, if the cost came down to 1/1000th, then it would take a mere 0.432 years.

Irrational assumptions

[Adrian Hon]

I'm not the guy who came up with the numbers, just pointing out that if the price of solar power really did come down by a few orders of magnitude (which I doubt) then it wouldn't take 100 years, it'd take rather less time than that.

There's always going to be a mix of power, especially since people seem to like the idea of making micropower generation, carbon-neutral houses, etc, which would all necessitate things like solar panels and turbines.

[Dinner]

Originally posted by Doddler
What plant are you going to use to generate through the peak hours in order that generation matched the daily demand profile?

You need gas and coal.

Nuclear or hydro would both also work. Nuclear scales very well with demand.

[Dinner]

Originally posted by Adrian Hon
There's always going to be a mix of power, especially since people seem to like the idea of making micropower generation, carbon-neutral houses, etc, which would all necessitate things like solar panels and turbines.

OK, thanks for the math correction. BTW nuclear power is carbon neutral and it is much, much, much, much, much more cost effective then solar or wind.

[Solly]

Originally posted by Oerdin


Nuclear or hydro would both also work. Nuclear scales very well with demand.

Nuclear would not work. Hydro is much more expensive than coal or oil.

[KrazyHorse]

Originally posted by Oerdin


Let's double check it using some simple math. Here's the specs for a solar panel made by Kyocera Corp of Japan which is actually quite good.

http://www.emarineinc.com/products/solar_panels/kyocera_panels.html

The panel takes up 10 sq ft and has a max power rating of 130 watts. Unfortunately, solar panels never produce the max power and certainly not for an extended period of time there for a good rule of thumb is that the average daily output in a sunny mid-latitude place will be 25% of the max capacity. That gives us 32.5 watts per hour from 10 sq ft of solar panels.

Total US consumption of electricity in 1999 was 281 billion kilowatt hours (demand has undoubtly gone up considerably in the last 7-8 years but we'll make it easy on you and use this lower number).

http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2744/is_1999_Sept/ai_56249948

1 kw-hour = 1000 watt-hour so we'll need 281,000,000,000,000 watt-hour to satisfy US demand in 1999. Dividing that number by 32.5 will give use the total number of solar panels needed to produce that amount which is 8,646,153,846,153.85 solar panels but since we can't have part of a solar panel we'll round that up to the nearest whole number. Since each panel takes up 10 sq ft we will need 86,461,538,461,540 sq ft.

1 square mile = 27 878 400 square foot

So we'll need 310,139 sq miles of solar panels assuming there is no transmition lose, that none of the panels ever breaks, and assuming that they do indeed produce 25% of their max power output every single day rain or shine. That's not to bad in terms of surface area (about 120% the size of the state of Texas). The cost for just the solar panels not counting installation or maintance would be $6,484,615,384,615,500 That's about $6.484 quadrillion! The entire US GNP is only around $15 trillion per year! All that money and we still won't have any electricity at night.

This calculation would be true...if we were only allowed to turn on each solar panel for one hour a year.





Divide by 8760 to get the number of hours in a year.

[Solly]

Originally posted by Oerdin


OK, thanks for the math correction. BTW nuclear power is much, much, much, much, much more cost effective then solar or wind.

[Adrian Hon]

Nuclear Our best and cheapest bet at reducing carbon emissions. Unfortunately at the moment it seems politically tricky, due to the stupidity of some environmental organisations and the public.

I read something interesting about the fact that pricing information about electricity is beginning to find its way to consumers. This means that they can see peak-time power in the summer is many times more expensive than off-peak, and thus plan their electricity usage more efficiently - saving money for themselves and also reducing the peak power requirements.

There's also been a suggestion in the UK that people shouldn't pay for power by the watt, but simply pay a standard monthly fee for being provided with whatever power they use. This would give the power companies an incentive to actually try and save power rather than not care.

[LordShiva]

Originally posted by KrazyHorse


This calculation would be true...if we were only allowed to turn on each solar panel for one hour a year.





Divide by 8760 to get the number of hours in a year.

[Dinner]

It's rated in watt-hour which is directly convertable to kilowatt-hour. Please explain how this is not true.

[KrazyHorse]

It's rated in watts, not watt-hours per year, dude.

Watts are a measure of power. Watt-hours are a measure of energy.

[KrazyHorse]

Maximum Power
130 watts

125 watts

85 watts

65 watts

54 watts

43 watts

[BlackCat]

Originally posted by KrazyHorse


This calculation would be true...if we were only allowed to turn on each solar panel for one hour a year.





Divide by 8760 to get the number of hours in a year.

But if I were you I would reduce it to 2920 - the sun doesn't shine much during the night

[Dinner]

OK, then it would have to be adjusted for the number of day light hours in a year.

[Zkribbler]

Reducing 310,139 sq miles of solar panels by the number of daylight hours/year (8760/2 = 4380) equals 70.8 square miles.