3 ms·
Land use of solar prevents it ever getting really cheap. According to the UK solar power portal [1]: "If solar covered one percent of the UK it would meet the c
by keanzu 7y ago
Land use of solar prevents it ever getting really cheap. According to the UK solar power portal [1]: "If solar covered one percent of the UK it would meet the country’s entire power demand".
> just build twice as much solar capacity
This would increase the land use from 1% to 2%. That's a huge amount of the country to give over to power production.
[1] https://www.solarpowerportal.co.uk/news/if_solar_covered_one_percent_of_the_uk_it_would_meet_the_countrys_2356 https://www.solarpowerportal.co.uk/news/if_solar_covered_one...
- kortilla 7y agoDoes the UK not experience night time?
- ourlordcaffeine 7y agoOverprovisioning in the case of the UK really applies to wind rather than solar.
- pjc50 7y agoIt's a reasonable fraction of total roof area, I believe. But the real problem with the UK and solar is not nighttime but seasonality. No, we need to keep going with the wind buildout and not drop the tidal energy programme. We're getting there: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/jun/21/zero-carbon-energy-overtakes-fossil-fuels-as-the-uks-largest-electricity-source https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/jun/21/zero-carbon...
- esotericn 7y agoThe UK has a lot of unused land on a percentage basis. Granted, half of that will be in Scotland and ideally your solar would be further south, but even then, you're probably talking about switching less than 5% of the arable land to solar.