Powering the World with Solar

Frequent commenter/contributor Cameron Atwood asks: What are your thoughts on this?  Here’s how much of the world would need to be covered in solar panels to power Earth.

There are three main issues that this analysis overlooks:

1) Capacity factor, which is about 20%, i.e., the average ratio of actual energy generated to the ideal, due to factors like the sun’s not shining at night.

2) The massive amounts of storage required to make use of all this energy.

3) Grid reliability. If you want the same level of up-time that we currently enjoy, you’d need to overbuild this solar idea hugely.

So, while this is an interesting exercise, it’s kind of fanciful.  Of course, this also assumes that this is somehow feasible politically, which is fanciful in the extreme, considering that there are 200+ sovereign nations on Earth, each with its own “leadership,” much of which is corrupt.

In any case, if we get to a sustainable approach to global energy with the technologies available today, it will feature:

• different flavors of renewables

• geographically distributed

• some level of storage

• far better power transmission capabilities

• natural gas backup

• microgrids, as the utility model isn’t right for all areas of a globe, especially the developing world

We also want to electrify our transportation, which means bumping all this up by about 14%.

At the same time, we need to consider that “today’s technology” is constantly improving in terms of important parameters: cost-effectiveness, carbon footprint, operational safety, etc., and that includes nuclear as well.