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Has anyone come across a calculation on how this affects the local climate? Won't this system be sucking 390MW of energy out of the environment to convert to m
by parfe 16y ago
Has anyone come across a calculation on how this affects the local climate? Won't this system be sucking 390MW of energy out of the environment to convert to mechanical energy?
The effect must be noticeable. I get the same feeling about wind. If solar ever became large scale wouldn't we be directly countering global warming? And won't solar panels/mirrors be directly competing for the solar energy that wind uses?
- gregable 16y agoIt's quite tiny as a fraction of the total solar energy. Remember also that all energy we are collecting by burning coal, gas, and oil today was once solar energy as well.
- afterburner 16y agoTotal energy consumption of the world: 474 exajoules. Total solar energy absorbed by earth: 3,850,000 exajoules But your argument is even more rudimentally answered as such: energy captured by solar panels is still in the Earth's atmosphere. It'll appear later as heat anyways, once its energy is used practically. If you want to counter global warming with solar panels directly, they would have to be situated above the atmosphere, and NOT transmit any energy down to the surface.