Re:The Way Humans Get Electricity Is About to Change
by kuschku on Tuesday June 23, 2015 @01:04PM
(#9765972)
Nothing would happen?
Currently that amount of solar energy is converted into heat by reflection.
With solar, it would be converted into electricity, and later back into heat when used in a computer or for cooking.
Re:The Way Humans Get Electricity Is About to Change
by matt4077 on Tuesday June 23, 2015 @12:50PM
(#9765862)
The electricity always ends up as heat.
Re:The Way Humans Get Electricity Is About to Change
by ctdonath on Tuesday June 23, 2015 @01:21PM
(#9766118)
_Where_ is relevant. Point is every kilowatt of solar electricity you use is 1-10 m^2 of ground denied that energy. If the collector is on top of your house, fine - probably will help with your home cooling (gettin' hot here in GA), but over other space you've just deprived a nano-ecosystem its energy supply (no big deal for home use, but significant when it's upwards of a couple thousand square miles).
When scaled up to the hoped-for levels, we face the prospect of "solar strip-mining" whereby vast areas of land where sunlight used to reach ground is now blocked. How bad would it be?
Just to bracket the subject with a SWAG (corrections welcome): total USA electricity consumption is 534,938,184,000 watts. Practical maximum for solar is about 1,000 watts per square meter (a very optimistic collection & conversion rate). That works out to a minimum of 200 square miles (534 km^2) devoted entirely to solar collection, or 2,000 mi^2 for a more realistic solar efficiency. The upside is the latter is just 0.05% of total USA land area, hopefully with most of that being used on already-erected roofs.
What the climactic effect of 534,938,184,000 solar watts being converted into electricity instead of heat or photosynthesis is, I'll hope someone else figures out whilst I do lunch.