Is it possible to power the whole United States by solar power?
I saw a movie at school a while ago that said we could power the whole united states if we made a certain state all solar power (I can't remember which state). Also how many watts does the united states use that way i can calculate how many solar panels would be needed.
Best Answer
Yes, of the 174 PW of energy that strikes the Earth 86,000 TW reaches the surface. Our global energy consumption is currently 15 TW. True, our current technology can only recover a small fraction of the energy that is available but this is the only source of energy that is greater than the amount of energy that we currently consume.
Current Photovoltaic technology only captures energy in a single wavelength determined by the valence electron shells of the semiconductors used, multiple layer cells can capture more wavelengths by using different semiconductor materials and both dye and quantum dot technology absorbs different frequencies and reemits the energy in the desired frequency. In the past few years, we've seen the efficiency of photovoltaics go from 10% to 42% and 65% is expected soon.
Energy can be stored in numerous ways including chemically in forms that can be used by our current infrastructure. Sandia Labs uses a solar furnace to produce methane, methanol, synthetic gasoline and synthetic diesel from CO2 and H2O.
Nano tubes promises to make artificial photosynthesis a reality and there are several other approaches that are promising.
Keep in mind that all sources of energy on Earth with the exception of nuclear and tidal are solar energy. Very inefficient solar energy and with the case of fossil fuels, accumulated over a long period of time. Also, most of the energy we use was collected by plants through photosynthesis which has a maximum efficiency of 6.6%. This means that current fossil fuels, biofuels, biomass, wave and wind energy are all forms of solar energy at efficiencies of much less than 1%. We only have to achieve minimal improvements of efficiencies in our chemical energy storage methods or other energy storage strategies to access a greater source of energy that what we currently use today.
Theoretically, we should be able to provide for our energy needs through solar power for the foreseeable future and we wouldn't even have to change our cars and factories as the energy could be stored as synthetic liquid fuels. Solar is the only available source of energy that will allow us to grow our industrial and economic base but Solar does require a lot more research and development and the public needs to be educated as to what is possible with solar power and with chemical energy storage.
For economic reasons, other alternate energy forms such as biomass/fuels, hydro, and wind will play a part in our near future but ultimately solar is the only game in town. Note that the use of fourth generation bio-fuels from pyrolysis/gasification of biomass and with biochar carbon sequestration of the pyrolysis/gasification charcoal byproduct will actually be carbon negative and undo some of the damage we've already done to our environment so it's actually necessary to have some gas guzzlers to help undo the damage.
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