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Imagine deploying a 12 inch by 12 inch solar panel someday and powering your entire home.
by xwdv 3y ago
Imagine deploying a 12 inch by 12 inch solar panel someday and powering your entire home.
- throwaway5752 3y agoThat is only 15 watts of total potential energy, regardless of pv panel efficiency, which will not power any homes.
- dgacmu 3y agoTotal solar insolation at peak is under about 400 watts per square meter. A one square foot panel at 100% efficiency is never [1] going to beat 40-50W even in the best circumstances, at the equator, and ignoring weather... and nighttime. [1] The sun becoming a red giant is hereby defined as an exception to this statement per the follow-up comments.
- colechristensen 3y agoIt's about 1 kW, not 400 W.
- SketchySeaBeast 3y agoI get annoyed when commenters make back and forth claims without ever providing any citations so I did a Google and found myself on a NASA page. According to that page it's ~1360 W/m^2 at the top of the atmosphere, but by the time it gets to the surface it seems to average out to only about 340 W/m^2[1]. [1] https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/features/EnergyBalance/page2.php https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/features/EnergyBalance/pag...
- fsh 3y agoYou misread the source. The average is for the entire planet, parts of which are covered by clouds, and half of which is at night. 1 kW/m^2 is a typical value for peak insolations outside extreme latitudes. If the atmosphere absorbed significantly more than that, you could not see very far.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- SketchySeaBeast 3y agoYour right - I said average but didn't go into specifics and so my message was unclear. But it's helpful to have a source to discuss, isn't it?
- dgacmu 3y agoThank you, you're right, but I can't update my post now. Argh. I shouldn't have added "ignoring ..."
- perihelions 3y ago- "never" technically - "...heating due to gravitational contraction will also lead to hydrogen fusion in a shell just outside the core, where unfused hydrogen remains, contributing to the increased luminosity, which will eventually reach more than 1,000 times its present luminosity...[135]" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun#Life_phases https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun#Life_phases 1.3 megawatts per square meter! An entire nuclear power plant on your roof, provided the weather allows, provided weather still exists. The future is bright.
- peteradio 3y agoAbout as useful as citing heat death when refuting climate change being caused by humans.
- idiotsecant 3y agoFutures so bright, I gotta wear 7.3 km thick ablative lead shielding!
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- ketralnis 3y agolike every "well technically" you should read it is "not really"
- avmich 3y agoOh, you're on HN! How many technical advancements started with "technically" looking not too realistic at the moment?
- mr_toad 3y agoChances are that the expansion of the sun will have stripped away the weather, along with the roof, the house, and any of the lighter elements of the Earth’s surface.
- xwdv 3y agoYou are forgetting the efficiency gains future homes will make so they require less power. Partly thanks to the rise of room temperature superconducting.