3 ms·
Thanks, despites it is a bit different for the night: asphalt has an inertia that returns the heat at night. The solar panels are rather thin to have such inert
by illys 6y ago
Thanks, despites it is a bit different for the night: asphalt has an inertia that returns the heat at night. The solar panels are rather thin to have such inertia.
I kept looking and I have found some albedo figures: deserts have a typical albedo of 0.25-0.40 (let's round it at 0.33 / source in French: https://www.lelivrescolaire.fr/page/6761182 https://www.lelivrescolaire.fr/page/6761182).
Current commercial solar panels yield 15-20% (let's retain 18%) of the received energy into electricity (the purpose) and the rest into local heat. No reflection (they are black), so albedo close to 0, but let's consider the extraction of electricity like a reflection (the energy is not absorbed locally): albedo 0.18.
That means making a desert into a solar park changes the albedo of the covered surface from 0.33 to 0.18. It means the absorbed light turned into heat goes from 0.67 to 0.82: +22% sunlight turned into heat.
I would be curious to find a modelization that considers all warming effects of solar panels (carbon and non-carbon) to know if it is a good idea to rush into covering deserts like Apple does here.