I hope they find snail darters*;
The US government is putting a hold on new solar energy projects on public land for two years so it can study the environmental impact of sun-driven plants.
The Bureau of Land Management says the moratorium on solar proposals is needed to determine how a new generation of large-scale projects could affect plants and wildlife on the land it manages.
I suggest we stockpile provisions and ammunition, retire to our compounds, and just turn the moonbats loose to run the planet for the next 5 years.
By that time, the earth will be largely cleansed of them, most by starvation, some by suicide. The plowshare-armed stragglers, we can just shoot.
I suggest we stockpile provisions and ammunition, retire to our compounds, and just turn the moonbats loose to run the planet for the next 5 years.………..I’m good with your first two points . I do not however agree with this blatant endorsement of the Liberal Party of Canada …..
“I suggest we stockpile provisions and ammunition, retire to our compounds, and just turn the moonbats loose to run the planet for the next 5 years.”
Recent Man-made Crises: Global over-population and mass starvation (1970s), global cooling (1970s), global warming (2000+)….
For those who wonder why socialism exists, why it’s counter-productive and doesn’t make sense, and how to deal with it, read Ayn Rand’s epic, Atlas Shrugged over the summer.
If we do not all make it clear that we do not buy this total nonsense and find people whose only agenda once elected is to damn well do what they were voted in to do we are ALL going to Hell in a handbasket fueled by $200 a barrel oil.
Stockpiling and retiring may be the only option left if we continue to put up with these morons running things right into the ground and doing their deal level best to absolutely RUIN the North American economy. You’d think those in Europe would know by now what it has cost THEM. We should be able to see how much more it will cost us. Absolutely EVERYTHING.
I had no idea how far this lunacy had progressed until that convention of U.S. mayors decided to turn up their collective noses at oil sands energy, in the midst of soaring prices and shortages, without consulting their electorates.
BTW, I suspect after five years some of those plowshare wielding types will have started beating their plowshares into weapons; let’s try and save those ones, if possible. If not, well….
This can be described as the inevitable results of the Law of Unintended Consequences.
Environmental laws were passed that require study of ANY development on the natural, SOCIAL and ECONOMIC environments. The need for such environmental assessments IS valid, but the legislation was developed in an idealistic and naive manner.
As is always the case when leftists get involved, the valid process has been bureaucratized and corrupted by envirowackos so that the simplest project requires at least 1 year to approve. It’s just nice to see the envirowackos stumbling over the same roadblocks they put up for everyone else.
And by the way, Kate, in addition to the snail darters, there are hundreds of other pesky little endangered critters including the channel darter, the red-sided dace and (my favourite) the spotted owl. Heck, even ALVAR is protected (basically, a collection of weeds and small plants that grow in thin soil over limestone bedrock…a vegetation community).
Now that’s a head scratcher. File under “believe it or not”.
There’s more than ample evidence of rampant brain damage among environmental zealots.
Here in Canada we have Dion’s plan to shaft us by taxing us out of our jobs and homes. Is that sanity?
Morgan said… “BTW, I suspect after five years some of those plowshare wielding types will have started beating their plowshares into weapons; let’s try and save those ones, if possible.”
Morgan, don’t you realize that leftwing moonbats with weapons are the most dangerous types of moonbats?
Give a moonbat a weapon and that the moonbat is going to use it to (try) seize the rational persons supplies. They will say it’s in order to distribute the supplies to the “deserving needy”, but somehow that always seems to be “only” the moonbats supporters.
My suggestion is much simpler. Starting now, every rational person should set aside some time on Sunday to participate in a religious exercise… at the local shooting range. Learn how to properly double tap a trigger so you can admonish any person who is breaking the Lords commandment that deals with property rights. You know, the one in Exodus 20:2–17 that says “You shall not covet your neighbour’s house; you shall not covet your neighbour’s wife, or ox, or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbour.”
(This is all written with my tongue firmly in my cheek!)
((Mind you, I do like spending time at the shooting range on Sunday…))
I taught environmental engineering for 37 years, and in that time I heard many practitioners predict that any attempt to pave the deserts with solar panels would fail an Environmental Impact Statement review. We can rest assured that the BLM will conclude that the impact of solar panels on the environment is unacceptable. By the way, the panels also fail an engineering/economic analysis, but that is nowadays irrelevant.
BANANA
Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anything (or Anyone).
“Solar plants”, now that’s sweet, could that be plants that grow in the sun?, like just about everything but a mushroom?
Never mind that the BLM leases vast amounts of its acreage to cattle ranchers. What’s to study, it’s not like solar panels will suck the solar rays out of the atmosphere or singe the leaves off trees.
We’ve decended into the Age of Flaming Idiots where the cadre of bureaucratic morons in place don’t the mental capacity to solve the problems of our times like terrorism or the energy crisis.
It’s time to throw these little envirno Luddites off of the grid. After they turn in their cellphones and pc’s they can forage for food, weave their clothes out of hemp and scratch out cave drawings.
BOB S, could you be more specific about solar panels failing an Environmental Impact Statement review? Why? I mean besides the economics.
I just installed a solar panel on the roof of my boat.
It will work fine to keep my 4 batteries topped up so we can run low voltage appliances(laptop, ipod charger, coffee pot, etc).
But to think that they will be the answer to our problems is, well, ummmm, NO!
There are only three words that will solve our energy crisis.
NUCLEAR NUCLEAR NUCLEAR
Politicians find the biggest crowd and run in front of it, shouting “I’m your leader”. The attitude of the people has to change in order to effect a government policy change. Thanks to reasonable voices like SDA, the public attitude is changing. Finally.
The Monster Begins to Consume Itself, the title of this thread says it all, and the self-consumption is evident beyond Y2Kyoto. The “left”, in general, seems to be heading toward disarray; hopefully the pendulum has reached its extreme and perhaps will soon reverse direction.
At long last someone is calling the greenie-weenies on what I have been calling for a long time, “shade pollution”. The arrogance to think that we could take arable land out of the eco-system and convert it to a much less efficient use. To quote Glen Beck, “It makes blood shoot out of my eyes”.
To answer some that seem to express incredulity over the enviro-whackos train of thought, the only thing that indicates consistency is to realize that their beginning thesis is that man (us) is an intruder on this whole planet. If only mankind could be removed, everything would tick along like clockwork. It begs comparison to God’s words in Genesis where He gives man dominion over the birds of the air, the beasts of the field, etc. Their mindset is in direct contradiction to this and is indicative of the REAL force behind all this sturm und drang.
Penny: I’m not Bob S, but that’s an easy one.
All the desert plants and animals, the entire ecosystem, have adapted to a continuous high-intensity flow of sunlight. And because it’s a nasty place to be, there isn’t much traffic from other ecosystems (including people).
Solar panels require a huge area to get any useful amount of energy — in the mid-US, figure a litte under 250 watts per square meter or a little over 200 watts per square yard. And none of the sunlight that hits the solar panel reaches the ground, where the plants and animals expect it and depend on it.
So basically you’re talking a huge intrusion of people and machines, stirring up the ground and trampling the plants, and leaving behind an impenetrable roof over ground that will now be in the dark forever. A better example of “environmental destruction” would be hard to find.
Regards,
Ric
I can tell the Bureau of Land Management what the impact will be, right from the comfort of my work chair here in my office.
The gazelles are probably going to be a tad inconvenienced.
There is another societal benefit I foresee that perhaps others do not: a new opportunity for squeegie kidz to clean the bird poop off the panels. Ought to consider it for community service punishments.
I think it would be just swell to find an island somewhere and turn it over to the moonbats. Let them run it as they wish. On a rotational basis, reporters will have a tour of duty, but will be restricted to filing their reports on clay tablets (100% recyclable). The circumstances of the devoted moonbats, in their short lives, will serve to dissuade the urban wannabe moonbats from pulling up stakes, swearing off their arts council grants and joining the enlightened ones.
Somehow, though, as it all falls apart, the moonbat intelligentsia will find a way to blame GWB for their failure.
This is a beauty payback for the Pierson’s Milk Vetch.
This is a -poisonous- plant that grows in the sand dunes in Southern California. Some enterprising “environmentalists” managed to get it put on the endangered list, even though it grows widely in southern Cal deserts and in Utah.
Mostly they wanted to get all those horrible dune buggies off the nice pristine sand dunes. Not so they could use the dunes themselves, of course, but so that -nobody- could use them. That’s the kind of people they are.
Well, all those people with the horrible dune buggies got seriously pissed off when the cops started stringing up fences all over the place to protect this pernicious weed. Anybody who has spent any time at all in the dunes knows the stuff grows MORE where the traffic is, not less.
The good news is that the thing is getting taken off the endangered list, because lots of duners raised all kinds of hell about it. The bad news is it cost a bunch of people a bunch of money. Lawyers were happy, more bad news.
Out of interest on the topic of solar panels, what size area would be required to supply all the energy needs of the US? anyone know some sort of calculation. I bet its a huge mother of an area.
“By that time, the earth will be largely cleansed of them, most by starvation, some by suicide. The plowshare-armed stragglers, we can just shoot.”
Hey I get to pick off the ones frying on the HV perimeter wire trying to break in and steal our compound supplies. Gotta put them out of their misery, hell we’d do that much for a dog.
Let us hope that this discouraging news does not reach the Oppressed-Canadians here in Toronto. This may trigger another round of youth violence, fueled by despair over racism, poverty, and the legacy of white colonial rule in Africa.
The next kid, turning his life around despite the obstacles placed in his path by the dominant paradigm of despair, who gets shot in the head by a gangbanger using a gun supplied by evil heteronormative Albertan farmers, is really a victim of lack of progress on this vital front in the battle against Global Warming.
More funding is called for, for research and a better vacation package for street activists. Do not forget the safe injection sites at Womens shelters, either.
Well, bob, to answer that, you need only to know what average energy delivered to a square metre of the earth’s surface by the sun.
Why, I bet it’s enough to power several… oh, wait.
[quote] A better example of “environmental destruction” would be hard to find.[/quote]
Ric,
Your not saying that the “Green Shaft” is an alias for “Agent Orange”? or that to protect the AIR the EPA must destroy our water… or food supply?
If we got rid of all the DAM’s.. We would be good Greens.
BTW: Bill C machine has struck back… Massive voter fraud is discovered in Alabama…Absentee Ballots… Democratic! The Courts are engaged! I love a fight between the ethics challenged top dogs. (Poor Abama thought it was going to be easy)
Sustainable Energy – Without the Hot Air
A physics professor in Britain has done the analysis of various solutions for sustainable energy without oil and gas. It’s quite entertaining as all of the “green” solutions involve massive infrastructure but are still insufficient to provide all of Britain’s energy needs and thus involve importing energy on a huge scale.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/06/20/mackay_on_carbon_free_uk/print.html
*
“Fenris says… Let us hope that this discouraging news does
not reach the Oppressed-Canadians here in Toronto.”
uh-huh… because gaia knows… they’ve already felt the lash
of oh-so-cruel canadian society.
*
U.S. mayors convention. The word is that it was held on a cruise ship. ( It takes one gallon of fuel to move the vessel 6″ forward)
HYPOCRITES!!!
I suggest we stockpile provisions and ammunition, retire to our compounds, and just turn the moonbats loose to run the planet for the next 5 years.
A variation on my earlier idea of following H.L. Menken’s comment by giving the eco-loons exactly what they’ve been demanding. The government could have blown Kyoto right out of the water by introducing a bill to implement it in spades – confiscating all prvate cars, rationing heating fuel in winter, shutting down all energy-intensive industries – and dare anyone to support it.
But now, Dion has done much the same thing with his latest cock-up, and people have realized that there really are consequences to all this idiocy.
At least, some people have learned …
From the Liberal Party’s own website as of this moment:
“A Liberal Government will act. We will set out a price in regulation for each tonne of carbon pollution (one tonne of carbon
dioxide equivalent) that is over a company’s carbon budget, starting on January 1, 2008, as follows:
Year Price (per tonne of carbon dioxide equivalent)
2008 $20
2009 $25
2010 $25
2011 $30
2012 $30
We do not favour a Carbon Tax where money is transferred from companies to the federal government and is lost in general revenue. Under our approach companies will have access to every penny of their money to make investments in their own green projects.
Rather than paying money to the government for their excess carbon pollution companies will be required to make a
deposit in their Green Investment Account (GIA) that will be held in trust for them by an independent operating agency.”
http://www.liberal.ca/pdf/docs/whitepaper_EN.pdf
I’m going outside right now to cut down some of my solar plants.
Hey, it’s not raining and the grass needs cuttin 🙂
Bob asks an interesting question: “what size area would be required to supply all the energy needs of the US?”
Last numbers I saw for that the answer is: an area larger than the United States. Wonder what the environmental impact on that sucker would be?
Wonder how the ecoweenies would feel about doing war on other countries to get more land to set up solar panels on? I mean, why roof-over America when you can do it in Africa? Or China? Hey, kill two birds with one stone there, you get nice clean solar power and remove a billion and a half coal burning human viruses from Gaia. That’s a win-win!
Gosh, I wonder which financial institution will be the first to facilitate the “Green Investment Account (GIA)” into which corporations will be “required” to deposit?
The Greens (watermelons) have ensured that their pipe dream alternatives to carbon-based energy will not evolve due to the legislative legacy of stasis promotion. Federal land “management” in the US consists of “stand and stare” because everything else will be legislated or litigated from happening under the Endangered Species Act.
Although being discussed more now as a green alternative (that its always been and the only serious one) in wider circles, nuclear power is a long way from overcoming the expansion setbacks sustained over the last 35 years. Yucca mountain (permanent waste storage facility) is still in the permit application stage (its only taken 20 years and 200,000 pages so far – federal bureaucrats applying to federal agencies for use of federal land) and permitting without litigation would take another 3 years minimum.
The choice is continued carbon based fuel for the foreseeable future or continued domestic deindustrialization (green’s choice for everybody but themselves) and Congress can blame the oil companies either way and get elected.
Where is Kate’s (Galt’s) Gulch?
I must be a little slow as I now finally get the juxtaposition of the dead gophers.
Ric Locke, your point is well taken, but, I could point out plenty of space in southern New Mexico along lava beds where there are’t much more than rattle snakes making a home. The article gives no sense of how big the largest solar field would be. A few years moritorium to study this is stupid.
Never entering the minds of these vacuous pristine-nature-at-all-costs shills is that because of their obstruction of nuclear and more offshore/Alaskan drilling they are driving the price of oil up. Oil is priced on the futures market which by its very nature prices in future sources of energy picking up the pace. More energy coming on line drops the present price. Hey, but, when has economics or hard science ever gotten in the way of a lefty’s mental utopian world construct.
If you want to get into the technical minutiae of solar power I would recommend Howard C. Hayden’s book “The Solar Fraud”. A silicon based Photo Voltaic solar panel will convert about 10% of the sunlight that strikes it into electricity. The scientific process of conversion is known as the “quantum leap”. Higher efficiency panels require vast amounts of scarce elements such as germanium, gallium, antimony, indium and cadmium. In addition to rare ingredients any solar panel loses it efficiency without regular cleaning. If BOB S comes back he can probably offer a more detailed explanation. Otherwise, curious readers who find the subject matter too complex can defer to Jack Layton for a more simplistic explanation.
“Save a tree, wipe your ass with an owl”
http://www.zazzle.com/save_a_tree_wipe_your_ass_with_an_owl_shirt-235755209860021475
Give me a solar panel big enough and a place to stand and I’ll …
– Archimedes
Ahhh Kate no fair. When you talk like this, it stirs a mans blood. Fine rant. I too have had similar thoughts. Only I would have them all moved to another planet & watch as they become scavengers like rats, with no one to loot who actually produces. You shouldn’t talk so sexy! (O:}
how much area in solar panels is needed?????
is that on a sunny day or a cloudy day, and will thisunnatural intrussion change the local climate to more sunny or more cloudy?????
as I wuz reading this page a friend came and gave me a T shirt with the caption (she buys me these all the time:-))))
“STUPID KILLS”
” but not enough to realy help”
it is suitable for the eco-wierdos
solar panels.
this will give you a sense of scale. I think there are about 6 occupants and no cloud cover.
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap080623.html
Penny;
“plenty of space in southern New Mexico”
The problem with electricity is moving it around (distribution) The farther you move it the more loss there is:
line loss
Energy waste resulting from the transmission of electrical energy across power lines; usually refers to losses within transmission systems but occasionally refers to the same losses when they occur in distribution systems. These losses occur due to the conversion of electricity to heat and electromagnetic energy. A small amount of loss occurs even in the most efficiently engineered systems.
Transmission and distribution losses are related to how heavily the system is loaded. U.S.-wide transmission and distribution losses were about 5% in 1970, and grew to 9.5% in 2001, due to heavier utilization and more frequent congestion.”
( http://www.energetics.com/gridworks/grid.html )
This is one reason I never advocated solar as an alternative energy source for electrical power in very high demand ares. ( the areas of high demand don’t have the space for the “solar farms” ]
Thanks, G, from everything I’ve read I’ve come to the conclusion that with the exception of more oil drilled, oil sands processed at the right price, nuclear and cleaner coal technology coming on line the rest of the alternative energy proposals are just mindless window dressings.
Ethanol is a disaster, a stupid pork barrel bone thrown to corn farmers, wind and solar will never get us there. Fuel cells are a joke. Or maybe I’m missing something?
We’ve been threw this drill before with Carter who did everythibg wrong with price controls and taxing Big Oil. Bottomline, the free market will decide the least cost effective and most efficient winners. Smaller cars are back just like before. People aren’t the idiots that the moronic lefties in this issue feel a need to protect from themselves.
Among friends, I discovered the CWEI board at Investorvillage.com(free), they had a home on Yahoo for years and moved. How I found it I forget. If you want an education on energy, and I mean real players in the oil fields and very savvy investors both American and Canadian, please spend some time there.
Oh, how my IRA wished I had paid more attention to them over the years.
They are an education. And, thanks to the internet, free.
Penny,
Before you dismiss everything that’s not nuclear or fossil please check out what BC Hydro is doing with it’s Green Call for Power. I’m the engineer on 4 run of river hydro projects and I’m pretty sure that what we’re doing is better, cleaner, cheaper and more robust. Also check out NaiKun energy if you’re looking for a wind power plan that will be incredibly profitable.
I’m not an internet expert on sustainable energy… I just play one in real life.
Im an expert on sustainable energy too, I drill and produce the part that contributes 60% to the worlds energy use. not the miniscule river run part of the 3% hydro supplies.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_resources_and_consumption
Jon
There’s no question that BC, fortunately has the potential to bring on a few hundred megawatts here and there with Run-of-the-river Hydro.
Good luck staying ahead of the river crazies!
Talk about windfarms after they’re built and online and profitable.
Jon
Hydro IS a blessing Canada has. We have the areas to flood for sutainable resevoirs to increase to potential energy areas of dams. This offsets transmission loss therby making it economical to move it great distances. ( I know you knew that )
But as John Chittick points out, The “river crazies” wouldn’t permit Quebec Hydro from ever developing Le Grand now.
Getting investment capital in Hydro should be a cinch in Canada. But not at the expense of Oil development. We have both. trading off Oil for Hydro is a scam and not to Canadas overall benifit
Eeyore: “As is always the case when leftists get involved, the valid process has been bureaucratized and corrupted by envirowackos so that the simplest project requires at least 1 year to approve.”
This is of course absolutely true, and it displays neatly the complete lack of self-confidence in America today. When JFK said that the US would put a man on the moon by the end of the decade in 1961, it was only two weeks after Alan Shepard had briefly orbited the earth. This morning, on one of the US political talk shows, I saw some moonbat deride McCain’s plan to build 45 reactors in the next 22 years (approx. 2 per year) as “not possible” (note: he didn’t say environmentally unsound, or economically impractical – he said it wasn’t possible).
In the moon race, America had to invent, test, and deploy new rockets, new electronics, new space suits, new everything. It took just over 8 years. Nuclear power, on the other hand, has been in existence for over 40 years, many improvements have been made to the original designs, and this bozo is saying we can’t duplicate what we’ve already done twice a year for the next two decades?
America used to have a “Can Do!” attitude; it seems to have swapped that for a “May We?” approach. (Not that Canada’s any better; since WWII, we’ve swapped “Ready, aye, ready!” for “Let me take a poll, and get back to you”.)
Bob S:
Re: “By the way, the panels also fail an engineering/economic analysis, but that is nowadays irrelevant.”
I believe the model being followed in the U.S. southwest isn’t solar photovoltaics, rather it’s solar thermal. This article in Technology Review gives a pretty good summary:
“Major utilities are buying the idea. In July, the Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) signed a 25-year deal with Ausra competitor Solel Solar Systems of Beit Shemesh, Israel, to buy power from a 553-megawatt solar-thermal plant that Solel is developing in California’s Mojave Desert.”
“The bottom line is that Mills vows that adding storage plus savings from economies of scale and lower cost of capital (as banks become familiar with solar-thermal technology) will cut Ausra’s current 10 to 11 cents per kilowatt-hour cost of power in half. By 2010, he expects solar thermal to provide California with baseline power cheaper than natural gas, currently set by the state at 9.2 cents per kilowatt-hour.”
The project proposes to store energy as heat for overnight use – one possibility is using molten salt.
http://www.technologyreview.com/Energy/19440/page1/
Electricity consumption by 107 million U.S. households in 2001 totaled . U. S. Department of Energy
You can find various numbers for the amount of solar energy available, but a good rule of thumb is one horsepower per square meter: 750 w/m2.
Solar cells available in large enough quantities to be useful are about 15% efficient. 15% of 750 is 112.5, call it 120 for more even numbers (being generous).
The sun isn’t directly overhead all day. It follows a circular path, so the average is the average value of a sine wave, or 0.7 of the peak. 0.7 of 120 is 84. (Yes, we rotate the solar panels to face the sun, but that’s to maintain efficiency. This is obviously going to be a large area, and you won’t rotate the whole thing; it’s too big.)
The sun isn’t ever directly overhead anywhere in the United States or Canada. Most of the good solar energy sites in the US are around 30 – 32 degrees North latitude. We have to size the array for maximum usage, meaning when the Sun is farthest South, which adds 23 degrees; call it a total of 50 to 55 degrees, depending on actual location, meaning that the array gets a little more than half (0.57) the “overhead” value. 84 x 0.57 = 48.
So our net energy production from solar panels is 48 watts per square meter.
At 30 degrees North, the average length of day in December (worst case, remember) is 10 hours 14 minutes, or 10.23 hours. 48 watts per square meter times 10.23 hours gives 491.04 watt-hours per square meter per day. Round up to 500, half a kilowatt-hour.
Back to the top: 1,140 billion kWh divided by 0.5 kwh/m2 gives 2.24 billion square meters, or 2.24 thousand square kilometers. That’s a little bit more than two-thirds the area of the State of Rhode Island, which doesn’t sound too bad — until you realize that those calculations assume an impenetrable roof over that entire area. If you want any of that area to ever see the Sun again, double it or better. It also doesn’t factor in the efficiency of energy storage — the only storage device(s) available in those sort of quantities are lead-acid storage batteries, which are about 60% efficient overall, meaning not quite doubling the area again. You might also amuse yourself by going back and calculating the peak energy from the array, then figuring out how much lead you need for that many batteries and comparing it to world lead production.
Oh, and you get to fill out the EIR.
Regards,
Ric
Electricity consumption by 107 million U.S. households in 2001 totaled . U. S. Department of Energy
You can find various numbers for the amount of solar energy available, but a good rule of thumb is one horsepower per square meter: 750 w/m2.
Solar cells available in large enough quantities to be useful are about 15% efficient. 15% of 750 is 112.5, call it 120 for more even numbers (being generous).
The sun isn’t directly overhead all day. It follows a circular path, so the average is the average value of a sine wave, or 0.7 of the peak. 0.7 of 120 is 84. (Yes, we rotate the solar panels to face the sun, but that’s to maintain efficiency. This is obviously going to be a large area, and you won’t rotate the whole thing; it’s too big.)
The sun isn’t ever directly overhead anywhere in the United States or Canada. Most of the good solar energy sites in the US are around 30 – 32 degrees North latitude. We have to size the array for maximum usage, meaning when the Sun is farthest South, which adds 23 degrees; call it a total of 50 to 55 degrees, depending on actual location, meaning that the array gets a little more than half (0.57) the “overhead” value. 84 x 0.57 = 48.
So our net energy production from solar panels is 48 watts per square meter.
At 30 degrees North, the average length of day in December (worst case, remember) is 10 hours 14 minutes, or 10.23 hours. 48 watts per square meter times 10.23 hours gives 491.04 watt-hours per square meter per day. Round up to 500, half a kilowatt-hour.
Back to the top: 1,140 billion kWh divided by 0.5 kwh/m2 gives 2.24 billion square meters, or 2.24 thousand square kilometers. That’s a little bit more than two-thirds the area of the State of Rhode Island, which doesn’t sound too bad — until you realize that those calculations assume an impenetrable roof over that entire area. If you want any of that area to ever see the Sun again, double it or better. It also doesn’t factor in the efficiency of energy storage — the only storage device(s) available in those sort of quantities are lead-acid storage batteries, which are about 60% efficient overall, meaning not quite doubling the area again. You might also amuse yourself by going back and calculating the peak energy from the array, then figuring out how much lead you need for that many batteries and comparing it to world lead production.
Oh, and you get to fill out the EIR.
Regards,
Ric
Apologies for the double post. My Internet connection is acting up, and I sometimes don’t know when something has gone through. Feel free to delete one of them.
Regards,
Ric