Surface Area Required to Power the Whole World With Solar and Wind Power

The picture above has been making the rounds of the internet lately, done by the Land Art Generator Initiative. All the assumptions used to create the solar power pic above (you can click on it to see a bigger version) can be found here, but here are the main ones:

According to the US Department of Energy (Energy Information Administration), the world consumption of energy in all of its forms (barrels of petroleum, cubic meters of natural gas, watts of hydro power, etc.) is projected to reach 678 quadrillion Btu (or 7.15 exajoules) by 2030 - a 44% increase over 2008 levels (levels for 1980 were 283 quadrillion Btu and we stand at around 500 quadrillion Btu today). [...]

Dividing the global yearly demand by 400 kW•h per square meter (198,721,800,000,000 / 400) and we arrive at 496,804,500,000 square meters or 496,805 square kilometers (191,817 square miles) as the area required to power the world with solar panels. [...]

If divided into 5,000 super-site installations around the world (average of 25 per country), it would measure less than 10km a side for each. The UAE has plans to construct 1,500MW of capacity by 2020 which will require a space of 3 km per side. If the UAE constructed the other 7 km per side of that area, it would be able to power itself as a nation completely with solar energy. The USA would require a much larger area and approximately 1,000 of these super-sites.

According to the United Nations 170,000 square kilometers of forest is destroyed each year. If we constructed solar farms at the same rate, we would be finished in 3 years.

They did the same thing with wind power (again, you can click on the pic above to see a bigger version):

A 5 MW turbine can be expected to produce 17 GWh per year (they are 40% effective from their peak rated capacity - 5 MW x 365 x 24 = 43.8 GWh). Therefore, it would require 11,748,294 of the 5 MW capacity turbines to create the same yearly output. There are 500 million cars in the world so it's not like that's an unattainable goal from a manufacturing standpoint. And each 5 MW turbine is a 30 year lifespan money making machine for whoever buys it. The same can not be said for my car. But if we can build 90,000 Cape Wind size installations, we would be there on wind alone. Based on that installation, each turbine requires 1/2 square mile of area for offshore sites. This would require 5.85 million square kilometers for 2030 world energy needs.

Economist: Flying for ever - Solar-powered manned flight

Pretty damn cool if you ask me. The technology is clearly there, we just need the will to do shit.

Economist:

A new solar-powered aircraft attempts to fly around the world with zero emissions

WHEN an airliner takes off for a transatlantic flight it needs to carry some 80 tonnes of fuel, which accounts for around one-fifth of its weight. On really long flights, fuel can account for 40% of a plane’s take-off weight, so that around 20% of the fuel is used to carry the rest of the fuel. Each tonne of fuel burned also produces 3.2 tonnes of carbon dioxide. Yet inside a hanger at a Swiss airfield is the prototype of an aircraft (illustrated above) that does not use any fuel at all. The wings of this aircraft are almost as big as those of an airliner, but they are covered in a film of solar cells that convert sunlight into electricity to drive its engines.

Solar-powered aircraft have flown before. The pioneer was Paul MacCready, whose Gossamer Penguin made the first manned flight in 1980 in California, with his then 13-year-old son at the controls. A derivative, Solar Challenger, crossed the English Channel in 1981. But nothing like HB-SIA, as the Swiss aircraft is known, has ever taken to the air. If it works as expected, another version will be built and this will take off, climb to 10,000 metres and, by storing some of the electricity generated during the day, continue flying through the night. Its pilots, Bertrand Piccard and André Borschberg, plan to cross the Atlantic in it and later to fly it around the world.

The prototype will be unveiled on June 26th by Solar Impulse, a project the aviators run. Mr Piccard helped pilot Orbiter 3, the first balloon to fly non-stop around the world, and comes from a family of adventurers: his grandfather, Auguste, was the first to fly a balloon into the stratosphere and his father, Jacques, plunged to record depths in a bathyscaphe. Mr Borschberg is an engineer and fighter pilot.

Testing to the limit

Although he has flown HB-SIA in a simulator, Mr Borschberg says he will not really know how it performs until the first test flight later this year. The prototype pushes some technologies to their limits, especially in the trade-off between weight and performance. So, although it has a wingspan of 61 metres, HB-SIA has room only for a pilot. It weighs just 1,500 kilograms, making it five times lighter than a high-performance glider would be if made that big.

The complex skeleton of HB-SIA is constructed from carbon-fibre composites formed into honeycomb and sandwich structures. This is covered in plastic film. The film on the upper surfaces of the wings and the horizontal rear stabilisers is embedded with 12,000 photovoltaic cells. These are capable of converting sunlight into electricity with an efficiency of 22%. Cells with slightly better conversion rates are available, but they are heavier.

A quarter of the weight of HB-SIA is accounted for by its lithium-polymer batteries, which will power the four electrically driven propellers during the first test flights. As those flights become longer and higher, the aircraft will start to draw power from its solar cells. It will fly slowly, only at about 70kph in windless conditions. Its electric motors can produce a maximum of 9 kilowatts, or 12 horsepower—which is about the same as the Wright brothers had. With all four engines at full power, HB-SIA is only as powerful as a motor scooter. Yet with careful rationing of its stored energy, it should be possible to achieve the closest thing yet to perpetual manned flight—with man being the limiting factor because of the need to carry food and drink, and to remain awake for long periods.

If the prototype succeeds in flying through the night then the design of its successor will be finalised. This aircraft, HB-SIB, is intended to operate in stints of around five days and nights. If it succeeds in crossing the Atlantic, it will then try to circle the globe, following the Tropic of Cancer and landing on each continent.

This will involve some daring, with the aircraft spending all day climbing as its batteries are recharged and then descending slowly under power throughout the night to conserve energy. It means keeping a close eye on the weather and navigating around windy areas. The team has experimented with simulated flights using real-time meteorological data. Encountering a headwind at night is a worry. “It could make the night much longer and cause you to run out of energy before sunrise, which would be a disaster,” says Mr Borschberg. Success means a flight plan which ensures that “every morning you are in sunshine”.

A number of companies and groups are sponsoring Solar Impulse, including the International Air Transport Association (IATA). At its annual meeting in Kuala Lumpur this week, the trade group pledged to cap emissions from aviation in 2020. A solar-powered airliner is still a distant dream, but IATA knows that pushing the boundaries of technology will be necessary to help clean up air travel.

AFP: German firms eye huge African solar project

It's always great to hear about big renewable energy investments by the private sector. It offers hope for the future. I read a report recently that estimated that a great deal (dont remember statistics) of the power in Europe could be supplied by solar thermal plants in the Sahara like this one.

Potential problems include:

-New colonialization of developing countries by global corporations.

-Risk perception in attracting investment is one, even though from an insurance perspective North Africa is less risky than other areas of the world consistently receiving investments in the energy projects.

-Regulatory hurdles in North Africa are another. In the region most energy projects have a significant degree of state involvement, which undoubtedly adds a layer of complexity and hassle.

-Perhaps the biggest challenge is actually getting the electricity back to Europe, though not from a technical perspective. Speaking last March in Copenhagen, Anthony Patt of the International Institute of Applied Systems Analysis pointed out that Europe's electricity distribution system is really a collection of 27 different systems. Until these are more fully integrated, distributing the Sahara's electricity could be difficult.

AFP:

German firms plan to club together next month to turn into reality a dream to generate electricity for Europe in the deserts of north Africa using solar power, a newspaper report said Tuesday.
The 20 or so firms will form on July 13 a consortium that aims to attract an enormous 400 billion euros (560 billion dollars) in investment in the project, known as Desertec, the Suedeutsche Zeitung daily reported.
It wants to place solar power installations in several countries in the region, provided they are politically stable, the paper said, quoting Torsten Jeworek, a board member of insurance giant and consortium head Munich Re.
He also said that he was "very optimistic" that other countries including Italy and Spain would join, and that there had been "positive signals" from North America as well.
"We want to create an initiative that will put on the table concrete implementation plans in the next two or three years," Jeworek said. "Technologically, the project is practicable."
He added that Desertec could provide around 15 percent of Europe's electricity needs. The Suedeutsche Zeitung said that the first electricity could begin flowing to Europe in 10 years.
A spokeswoman for German engineering giant Siemens, which the paper said would be a member of the consortium, told AFP that Desertec was a "very exciting project."
If fully realised, the project could generate 100 gigawatts of electricity, the equivalent of 100 power plants, the Siemens spokeswoman added.

Kinesis K3 Charger

Ok, so I'm admittedly a gadget hound, and if you've seen my car or my ebay bidding record, I love solar-powered stuff. Ideally, I'd like to set up my house, car, ipod, computer, cell, life, etc. with renewable energy generating gadgets, and the Kinesis K3 Charger will get me that much closer.

This thing is cool as hell.

K3 FEATURES:
* 2 in 1 dual charging ability for collecting sun, wind, or both
* The largest rechargable battery capacity of its group - ready to use over and over again
* USB port built in with available adapter tips to charge various devices
* Stand up, lay down, or hang the K3 - works in any charging environment
* Always know your power status by LED level indicators with the press of a button
* Durable, weatherproof design you can take anywhere
* Storage inside for multiple device adapter tips
* AC adapter included for pre-charging before you go
* Utilize the FREE power of the sun and wind now within your reach!

Not only would it be useful to take sailing, camping, picnics, etc, but would be ideal in disaster relief when power lines are down. I have read about villagers in rural Africa who walk miles to charge their cell phones/computers because they do not have power in their villages.

It will be available in June 2009 and I'll be the first in line.

Center for Global Development: Desert Power: The Economics of Solar Thermal Electricity for Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East - Working Paper

Really good paper by CGDev:

A climate crisis is inevitable unless developing countries limit carbon emissions from the power sector in the near future. This will happen only if the costs of low-carbon power production become competitive with fossil fuel power.

In this CGD working paper, Kevin Ummel and senior fellow David Wheeler focus on a leading candidate for investment: solar thermal or concentrating solar power (CSP), a commercially available technology that uses direct sunlight and mirrors to boil water and drive conventional steam turbines. Solar thermal power production in North Africa and the Middle East could provide enough power to Europe to meet the needs of 35 million people by 2020.

Ummel and Wheeler compute the subsidies needed to bring CSP to financial parity with fossil-fuel alternatives. They conclude that large-scale deployment of CSP is attainable with subsidy levels that are modest, given the planetary stakes. By the end of the program, unsubsidized CSP projects are likely to be competitive with coal- and gas-based power production in Europe.

The question is not whether CSP is feasible but whether programs using CSP technology will be operational in time to prevent catastrophic climate change. For such programs to spur the clean energy revolution, efforts to arrange financing should begin right away, with site acquisition and construction to follow within a year.