[Whitley]

Originally Posted by Blueblaze

Funny! And it makes exactly as as much sense as setting them up under a 100 mile blanket of atmosphere!

If anybody ever bothered to do the math, they would discover that solar cells are so inefficient that it would take a solar farm the size of Texas, Oklahoma, and New Mexico to replace our CURRENT electrical needs -- not to mention all those electric cars they want us charging in our garages every night by 2035.

The Sun literally rains more energy on our planet every day that mankind has consumed since the beginning of time. If only we had a bucket to catch it! NASA actually engineered that bucket back in the 60's, when solar cells were half as efficient as they are today -- put them on a satellite and beam the energy back to earth as microwaves. The idea went nowhere.

In fact, we've known how to end petrochemical electricity generation for 60 years, but for some unknown reason, "Climate Change" demands that we destroy the ecology of entire states rather than build a bucket to capture all that free energy raining down a mere 100 miles from here -- straight up, where the sun always shines and there are no hail storms.

I have heard/read from a couple of sources, most recently Elon Musk, that to meet the needs of the entire US, we would only need a piece of land 100 miles by 100 miles.

[tuccillo]

It is not a puzzler to me. The energy density of wind turbine farms is about an order of magnitude less than solar farms, IIRC. It takes a lot more land to support wind turbines than solar panels. I was responding to your post about the area of solar panels needed to generate the 4T kWhs that the US generates each year. I really don't care about the other stuff you brought up.

Originally Posted by Blueblaze

It says that we currently have 7.1 million acres in wind and solar farms. An acre is 1/640th of a mile. So that means we ALREADY HAVE 11,094 square miles dedicated to "green energy". Maybe you could ask Elon how come we haven't already arrived at his energy nirvana? It's a puzzler!

[tuccillo]

I guess you didn't read post #10 and #12.

Originally Posted by Whitley

I have heard/read from a couple of sources, most recently Elon Musk, that to meet the needs of the entire US, we would only need a piece of land 100 miles by 100 miles.

[sounding]

Originally Posted by CoachKandSportsguy

Baseball-Sized Hail Smashing Into Panels At 150 MPH Destroys Scottsbluff Solar Farm | Your Wyoming News Source

Wow! that just annihilated the entire solar generating plant. .

This is no problem. Green energy is supposed to be renewable - our government said so. I have no doubt those solar panels will renew themselves. Just wait and see.

[Blueblaze]

Originally Posted by tuccillo

It is not a puzzler to me. The energy density of wind turbine farms is about an order of magnitude less than solar farms, IIRC. It takes a lot more land to support wind turbines than solar panels. I was responding to your post about the area of solar panels needed to generate the 4T kWhs that the US generates each year. I really don't care about the other stuff you brought up.

Actually, I think you might have that exactly backwards. According to this article by "Elemental Green", "one wind turbine can generate the same amount of electricity per kWh as about 48,704 solar panels." A single windmill takes about one acre. 48,704 solar panels would consume 19.26 acres. And windmills can even make electricity at night!

Wind vs. Solar — Which Power Source Is Better?.

But the really interesting statistic is the equivalent Kwh of a single natural gas well, which also takes about one acre: The average well produces 20 million cubic ft per day. At .29 Kwh to the cubic foot, that means a single acre of natural gas production gives us 5.8 MILLION kWhs PER DAY!

Personally, I prefer the option that doesn't require leveling forests and mountains and ruining the ecology of entire states. If that means the world's average temperature is 2 degrees higher 100 years for now, I still call that a win.

[tuccillo]

From

ShieldSquare Captcha

Abstract
Power density is the rate of energy generation per unit of land surface area occupied by an energy system. The power density of low-carbon energy sources will play an important role in mediating the environmental consequences of energy system decarbonization as the world transitions away from high power-density fossil fuels. All else equal, lower power densities mean larger land and environmental footprints. The power density of solar and wind power remain surprisingly uncertain: estimates of realizable generation rates per unit area for wind and solar power span 0.3–47 We m−2 and 10–120 We m−2 respectively. We refine this range using US data from 1990–2016. We estimate wind power density from primary data, and solar power density from primary plant-level data and prior datasets on capacity density. The mean power density of 411 onshore wind power plants in 2016 was 0.50 We m−2. Wind plants with the largest areas have the lowest power densities. Wind power capacity factors are increasing, but that increase is associated with a decrease in capacity densities, so power densities are stable or declining. If wind power expands away from the best locations and the areas of wind power plants keep increasing, it seems likely that wind's power density will decrease as total wind generation increases. The mean 2016 power density of 1150 solar power plants was 5.4 We m−2. Solar capacity factors and (likely) power densities are increasing with time driven, in part, by improved panel efficiencies. Wind power has a 10-fold lower power density than solar, but wind power installations directly occupy much less of the land within their boundaries. The environmental and social consequences of these divergent land occupancy patterns need further study.

I doubt you will find anyone who will argue that the energy density of fossil fuels is very high.

Originally Posted by Blueblaze

Actually, I think you might have that exactly backwards. According to this article by "Elemental Green", "one wind turbine can generate the same amount of electricity per kWh as about 48,704 solar panels." A single windmill takes about one acre. 48,704 solar panels would consume 19.26 acres. And windmills can even make electricity at night!

Wind vs. Solar — Which Power Source Is Better?.

But the really interesting statistic is the equivalent Kwh of a single natural gas well, which also takes about one acre: The average well produces 20 million cubic ft per day. At .29 Kwh to the cubic foot, that means a single acre of natural gas production gives us 5.8 MILLION kWhs PER DAY!

Personally, I prefer the option that doesn't require leveling forests and mountains and ruining the ecology of entire states. If that means the world's average temperature is 2 degrees higher 100 years for now, I still call that a win.