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.

High Altitude Wind Turbines Could Completely Power NYC

This is one of the coolest damn things I have ever seen. Though I can foresee a number of problems (when the wind dies, lightning, tangling wires, air traffic, birds) but also many solutions (computer monitoring to recoil extensions during adverse weather, spacing properly, rerouting air traffic), this would be a major techonological breakthrough if only cities were able to get these projects going and zoned.

I think it is pretty common knowledge and makes basic sense that there is far more wind higher up in the sky than at ground level. This is why kites fly higher, blimps move faster in the sky, wind turbines are put up on the top of buildings or on towers, etc. Well, it turns out that, according to new research from the Carnegie Institution for Science and California State University, not only doeshigh altitude winds contain enough energy to meet the world’s global energy demand 100 times over, but they also determined that the best places to capture that wind are over population centers in East Asia and the eastern US. Which means New York City is a prime candidate for high altitude wind energy captured by tethered kite wind turbines.

Inhabitat:

Ken Caldeira of the Carnegie Institution’s Department of Global Ecology and Cristina Archer of California State University, Chico have created the first wind energy maps for high altitudes, and have assessed the potential wind energy density (kW/m²), which factors in both wind speed and air density. Their findings show that wind energy density is highest near populations centers, specifically over Japan and eastern China, the eastern coast of the United States, southern Australia, and north-eastern Africa. In those areas at high altitude, the average wind energy density is 10 kW/m² - compare that to the wind energy at ground level, which is, at best, 1 kW/m².

Ideally, the researchers say, “you would like to be up near the jet streams, around 30,000 feet,” where the “winds blow much more strongly and steadily than near-surface winds.” Jet streams winds are 10 times faster than surface winds making them that much steadier and reliable for renewable energy generation, despite their seasonal shift. A number of technologies have been proposed to capture this steady supply of wind, including tethered wind kites, which could generate up to 40 MW of power with current designs.

The Global Assessment of High-Altitude Wind Power also studied the wind resources of the world’s five largest cities - New York, Tokyo, Seoul, Sao Paulo and Mexico City. The cities located further north (New York, Tokyo, and Seoul) all had better high-altitude resources than Sao Paulo and Mexico City, which are located in tropical latitudes. The northernmost cities are all regularly affected by jet streams, and New York City has the highest wind energy density at 16 kW/m². Naturally though, the wind isn’t blowing constantly in the upper atmosphere and even in the best locations the wind doesn’t blow for 5% of the time. But even still, high-altitude winds could provide an amazing amount of power, if we can develop the wind turbine technology to capture it safely.

Harvesting the Wind

The winners of this year's Next Generation design competition have unearthed an idea that's brilliant in its simplicity: adding wind turbines to already existing electrical towers. The project, aptly called Wind-It, would have wind turbines built on pylons and towers along high voltage lines across the US, sparing the need to build entirely new structures on private or government land--and they'd generate as much as a megawatt of power per tower. Has this concept solved one of the biggest problems with wind power?

The concept is the brainchild of French designers/architects Nicola Delon and Julien Choppin, and Raphaël Ménard, an engineer.

From Metropolis:

Wind-it answers one of the greatest challenges to the development of wind power: where to site wind turbines. Choppin, Delon and Menard's design uses existing infrastructure - the towers and pylons that dot the more than 157,000 miles of high voltage power lines in the U.S. - to locate their turbines, which can be stacked within already sited structures. Moreover, Wind-it solves the problem of linking energy generation and electricity transmission in the same way - by co-locating them.

Wind-it XL calls for new and taller pylons. The design is most promising for developing regions and can generate as much as one megawatt of power.

Wind-it L loads eggbeater turbines onto the core of existing towers
in medium- and high-voltage grids.

Wind-it retrofits low- and medium- voltage pylons for a nominal one to
ten kilowatts of power.

"The genius of the proposal is that it solved probably the biggest issue of wind production," says Alexandros Washburn, New York's chief urban designer and a judge for the Next Generation competition, "which is where to locate these very large structures. By incorporating them into transmission towers, which are already located and of the same scale as wind towers, the idea of how it looks on the landscape is very cleverly integrated."

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.