4 ms·

The US per-capita power consumption is 10kw. That's 10kw of continuous draw every minute, every day. And that's not household use, that's per capital.. so a h

The US per-capita power consumption is 10kw. That's 10kw of continuous draw every minute, every day. And that's not household use, that's per capital.. so a household of 4 is using about 1 megawatt-hours /day. Where do you plan to find that in your non-lifestyle change world? Solar? That's 8000sqft of installed solar with the highest efficiency panels. That needs to be coupled with hundreds of kwh storage. Total cost : hundreds of thousands of dollars. Good luck on that.

adrianN 7y ago
The numbers cited here seemed high to me, so I checked them. Primary energy consumption in the US[1] ~1 * 10 ^ 20 Joules. Divided by population and number of seconds in a year[2] is about 10000 Joules per person-second, so about 10kW per person. A kilowatt of peak solar power requires about 8 square meters of panels[3]. Since the sun doesn't shine all the time and you don't get peak output all the time 750 square meters per person doesn't seem terribly unrealistic. That being said, there is a lot of space where nobody lives in the US. There are some 28000 square meters per person in the US. Dedicating about 3% of that to solar panels doesn't seem impossible. Some energy saving is also possible without changing the average lifestyle too much. Insulating homes helps quite a bit. Electric cars are more efficient that gas cars. [1] https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/?page=us_energy_home https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/?page=us_energy_home [2] https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=10%5E20+joules+%2F+(3.1415*10%5E7+seconds)+%2F+(population+of+the+usa) https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=10%5E20+joules+%2F+(3.... [3] https://www.quora.com/How-much-solar-energy-can-be-tapped-in-1-sq-meter-on-a-roof https://www.quora.com/How-much-solar-energy-can-be-tapped-in...
- jdietrich 7y ago
  >Since the sun doesn't shine all the time and you don't get peak output all the time 750 square meters per person doesn't seem terribly unrealistic. At current prices, that much PV capacity would cost around 25 trillion dollars. That price doesn't include any storage capacity. The climate is changing far too rapidly for us to hope for science fiction solutions. We need a major reduction in emissions now, which means both a vast increase in renewable production and a vast reduction in overall consumption.
  - electricityUser 7y ago
    You only need a third of that to get the same amount of electricity out of them as by burning 10 kW of fossil fuels. Spread over 20 to 30 years that's suddenly not so much anymore. How much does the US spend on energy each year now? How much to secure the imports?
- electricityUser 7y ago
  You forgot that this is primary energy consumption you two are writing about. 10 kW of primary energy consumption if replaced with solar requires only about a third of that to yield the same results since about two thirds are heat losses when converting fossil fuels to useable energy.
dTal 7y ago
Jesus, that's incredible. If we regard modern automation as effectively replacing slave labor, that's the equivalent of having 100 human slaves doing hard physical graft on behalf of each and every person 24 hours a day.
pdonis 7y ago
> Where do you plan to find that in your non-lifestyle change world? Nuclear.
- anonuser123456 7y ago
  You mean that nucular radioactive stuff emitted by my microwave? Not in my backyard.

adrianN 7y ago

The numbers cited here seemed high to me, so I checked them. Primary energy consumption in the US[1] ~1 * 10 ^ 20 Joules. Divided by population and number of seconds in a year[2] is about 10000 Joules per person-second, so about 10kW per person. A kilowatt of peak solar power requires about 8 square meters of panels[3]. Since the sun doesn't shine all the time and you don't get peak output all the time 750 square meters per person doesn't seem terribly unrealistic. That being said, there is a lot of space where nobody lives in the US. There are some 28000 square meters per person in the US. Dedicating about 3% of that to solar panels doesn't seem impossible. Some energy saving is also possible without changing the average lifestyle too much. Insulating homes helps quite a bit. Electric cars are more efficient that gas cars. [1] https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/?page=us_energy_home https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/?page=us_energy_home [2] https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=10%5E20+joules+%2F+(3.1415*10%5E7+seconds)+%2F+(population+of+the+usa) https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=10%5E20+joules+%2F+(3.... [3] https://www.quora.com/How-much-solar-energy-can-be-tapped-in-1-sq-meter-on-a-roof https://www.quora.com/How-much-solar-energy-can-be-tapped-in...

jdietrich 7y ago
>Since the sun doesn't shine all the time and you don't get peak output all the time 750 square meters per person doesn't seem terribly unrealistic. At current prices, that much PV capacity would cost around 25 trillion dollars. That price doesn't include any storage capacity. The climate is changing far too rapidly for us to hope for science fiction solutions. We need a major reduction in emissions now, which means both a vast increase in renewable production and a vast reduction in overall consumption.
- electricityUser 7y ago
  You only need a third of that to get the same amount of electricity out of them as by burning 10 kW of fossil fuels. Spread over 20 to 30 years that's suddenly not so much anymore. How much does the US spend on energy each year now? How much to secure the imports?
electricityUser 7y ago
You forgot that this is primary energy consumption you two are writing about. 10 kW of primary energy consumption if replaced with solar requires only about a third of that to yield the same results since about two thirds are heat losses when converting fossil fuels to useable energy.

dTal 7y ago

Jesus, that's incredible. If we regard modern automation as effectively replacing slave labor, that's the equivalent of having 100 human slaves doing hard physical graft on behalf of each and every person 24 hours a day.

pdonis 7y ago

> Where do you plan to find that in your non-lifestyle change world? Nuclear.

anonuser123456 7y ago
You mean that nucular radioactive stuff emitted by my microwave? Not in my backyard.