4 ms·

Apparently, about 12% of the land or 29,690 sq km in order to meet current energy demands (electricity, petrol, oil and gas). Apparently, only 6% of the country

by spuz 5y ago

Apparently, about 12% of the land or 29,690 sq km in order to meet current energy demands (electricity, petrol, oil and gas). Apparently, only 6% of the country is currently built on which suggests that for any country of a similar latitude, you can estimate a land total of double that currently used per person. This does not take into account energy storage and assumes no energy is generated at night. https://www.finder.com/uk/solar-power-potential https://www.finder.com/uk/solar-power-potential

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
rlt 5y ago
Of course that 6% only counts land usage by humans. How many (additional) non-human habitats would you have to decimate to cover 12% of the land with (ugly) solar panels? Maybe thats acceptable in some deserts, but pretty terrible in other places. 1 step forward, 1 step back. Plus that figure is for our current energy usage, which is only going to increase over time.
- D-Coder 5y ago
  Put the solar panels over parking lots. Production is very near the usage sites (for BEVs, very near). It keeps the cars cooler in summer. And you can't make the parking lots any uglier. (I am aware there aren't enough parking lots, but this deals with a fraction of the needed space.)
- formvoltron 5y ago
  Curious, do you find server farms also ugly to look at? To me both server racks and solar panels look like modern technology.
kolinko 5y ago
1 sq km = 100 hectares = 100 GWh of energy produced per year in northern Europe. 29000 sq km = 2900 TWh Which is 10x the current electricity use of UK. I think they may be overestimating the numbers by taking the petrol, oil and gas verbatim - whereas they should consider that electric cars have way higher efficiency, and electric heating can be done also way more efficiently than gas heating (because heat pumps).
- formvoltron 5y ago
  This guy electrodacus.com swears that panels are so cheap now that it really only makes sense to heat with PV directly. He stores extra into an array of concrete slabs which then radiate out over the night. He built a special type of MPPT to orchestrate this flow of energy from PV into thermal mass. He lives in deep freeze Canada.
  - kolinko 5y ago
    Interesting. In Poland, where I live, I researched this recently, for my mother's house - and it won't work. The heat is needed from October until April, and most of that time solar panels generate close to zero electricity. In the end, my mother will have a significant surplus of power during summer (even with storage), and will still need to heat up house in winter using gas, or grid electricity (coal :/). I read about some Nordic researchers developing long-term heat storage, which would be way better.

by spuz 5y ago

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

rlt 5y ago

Of course that 6% only counts land usage by humans. How many (additional) non-human habitats would you have to decimate to cover 12% of the land with (ugly) solar panels? Maybe thats acceptable in some deserts, but pretty terrible in other places. 1 step forward, 1 step back. Plus that figure is for our current energy usage, which is only going to increase over time.

D-Coder 5y ago
Put the solar panels over parking lots. Production is very near the usage sites (for BEVs, very near). It keeps the cars cooler in summer. And you can't make the parking lots any uglier. (I am aware there aren't enough parking lots, but this deals with a fraction of the needed space.)
formvoltron 5y ago
Curious, do you find server farms also ugly to look at? To me both server racks and solar panels look like modern technology.

kolinko 5y ago

1 sq km = 100 hectares = 100 GWh of energy produced per year in northern Europe. 29000 sq km = 2900 TWh Which is 10x the current electricity use of UK. I think they may be overestimating the numbers by taking the petrol, oil and gas verbatim - whereas they should consider that electric cars have way higher efficiency, and electric heating can be done also way more efficiently than gas heating (because heat pumps).

formvoltron 5y ago
This guy electrodacus.com swears that panels are so cheap now that it really only makes sense to heat with PV directly. He stores extra into an array of concrete slabs which then radiate out over the night. He built a special type of MPPT to orchestrate this flow of energy from PV into thermal mass. He lives in deep freeze Canada.
- kolinko 5y ago
  Interesting. In Poland, where I live, I researched this recently, for my mother's house - and it won't work. The heat is needed from October until April, and most of that time solar panels generate close to zero electricity. In the end, my mother will have a significant surplus of power during summer (even with storage), and will still need to heat up house in winter using gas, or grid electricity (coal :/). I read about some Nordic researchers developing long-term heat storage, which would be way better.