3 ms·
Surface Area Required to Power the World with Solar
- TrevorJ 17y agoThis is pretty interesting. I wonder if the projections take into account increased efficiency of the panel technology over time?
- hughprime 17y agoMissing from this: any mention of cost, so out of interest I went and figured it out. Assuming a cost of $200 per square metre, carpeting the 336,000 odd square km required for 2008's energy usage would cost... 67 trillion dollars. Factor in a bunch more for transmission and storage.
- jamesk2 17y agoWouldn't the cost per square metre fall with efficiencies of scale alone? While it might cost $200 per square metre in the beginning, the costs would fall over time. Non-standard parts installed by huge amounts of human labor vs. standardized solar panel installations dropped on site a la prefab housing?