While it would take a while to build a global power grid, we have the capacity to produce approximately ten thousand times our current global power usage from ground-level PV.
I'm a bit skeptical, but in any case consider a thing: we need to count an initial construction BUT also a regular substitution of old modules, managing their disposal (witch actually is just shred and bury in most cases) and in doing so we need to count the life cycle: if we construct something slowly things reach EOL in small batches so we can keep a regular production since the initial demand is not hyper-big and the future substitution rate start BEFORE the initial demand finished and keep a slow rate. If we are quick:
- we need a monster production to satisfy the demand
- then the demand drops equally sharply and you get hyper-big factories who do almost nothing
- the the demand skyrocket again
If you think it's theoretical see actual Italy: a gazillion of CA infra was built quickly in few years after WWII, now are en equal batch EOL... There is a reason, more than one, why almost any big project end up badly while most small succeed...
1.740 × 10^17 W ≈ total power received by Earth from the Sun
1.91 × 10^13 ≈ average total power consumption of the human world in 2019
> If we are quick
I don't know about the growth of batteries other than "factories are being made as fast as they can be, and car companies are investing in mines now", the growth of PV is still approximately exponential. Also, if PV production switches from growth to fixed output at the end of this year, given how long the stuff lasts, it would end up in a steady state of about 8 TW nameplate capacity; given what the capacity factor is like, in practice that would be enough to make all electricity green but not enough to electrify everything else.
I'm not expecting the exponential to come to a sudden stop at the end of this year.
> most small succeed...
Do they, though? I think you're just not hearing about most of the small failures because they're boring.
About projects, in any field, big, complex projects normally never get done well, smaller normally succeed. That's is. Since it's valid from IT to A&D why it should be different for something else?
Off topic, but why do you consistently spell "which" as "witch"? I sympathise if it's ESL, but if so: the latter refers to pointy hats and pentagrams, not a determiner.
So no, if you want a world that run on p.v. you need a global grid to harvest enough energy AND I doubt even if such monster can be done in a snap and work flawlessly that we can even harvest enough power at ground level.
Harvesting from orbit beside the fact it's so far mere theory have various major issues, not just in environmental terms (a catastrophic impact, probably higher than a nuclear war on ground) but in mere technical terms: without the atmospheric shield anything in orbit at a certain scale have a very short life span. Substitute them demand a very big quantity of fossils and an industrial capacity we do not have in the entire world so far.
Nuclear fusion on ground is the most promising tech but so far it's far from being ready, seen the actual status PERHAPS we can have it at an initial general availability around 2060-2070. Before we have just fission. Now if we invest in fission witch is far from cheap and simple to build on scale it's a nonsense also investing in p.v. witch is far less expensive but for what? Once a reactor is started you consume uranium anyway, producing energy from steam or not. p.v. might play a role in averaging the load, theoretically, that means "please all loads that can be run just when the Sun shine do run them only with it", but doing so for now is pure theory and at a nationwide grid scale it's already almost impossible. Beside that we have an enormous issue: climate change. Did you know how vulnerable are infra on ground?
We try the small reactor path NOT because they are safe (it's the opposite), not because they are cheap (again, it's the opposite), but because they are flexible: instead of depend on LARGE infra we can deploy small one so reducing the impact of any outage.
In the nearer future we have the nightmarish problem of replace oil and gas sparing them for the use we do not know how to do without them. In the mid-term future we need resiliency and nuclear fission, another nightmare. In a mid-long term we hope for fusion, but we do not really know and we anyway need to essentially rebuild the changing world coping with sea levels rises, floods, landslides etc that push people in altitude locally and world-scale migration in general. That's the actual sore reality for what we can see directly and read from so many sources with contrasting interest to being able to call them very likely true.