One of the MAJOR keys is efficiency, I see people with lights all over the outside of their house lighting it up, that makes NO sense at all, burn baby burn.
Appliances and lights are not built to be efficient, houses are not built to be efficient. We don't NEED to live in 4,000 square foot homes, we just WANT to. http://www.tumbleweedhouses.com/home.htm If everyone in America lived in one of these with solar strapped to the roof, that 2X10^13 would drop quite a bit. Then look at multiple sources for energy, wind, solar, wave, breeder reactors - (breeders could make the much hyped pipe dream of the current tyrant.. er... I mean Bush administration "hydrogen economy" a reality) My next home may be one of these depending on where my job/future takes me as I'm already invested in a home. In the end, if you want to do no damage to the environment, stop having kids, the size of the human population has the biggest impact of all. -----Original Message----- From: Mixon Bill [mailto:bmixon...@austin.rr.com] Sent: Tuesday, October 30, 2007 3:16 PM To: Cavers Texas Subject: [Texascavers] solar power Well, let's see... The dry surface of the earth is about 350 million square kilometers. Average insolation (light power available at the surface, averaging over latitudes, day/night, etc.) is about 250 watts per square meter. This means the total available solar power on land would be about 10^17 watts. On 10 percent of the land at an efficiency of 25% one could get 2x10^15. Current world energy use by man is about 2x10^13 watts, so the answer is yes, but not by as large a factor as one might want. Whose 10 percent of the earth do you want to cover with solar cells? Or even figuring 0.1 percent of the area, which would give the current energy use, that would cost about a million billion dollars, making a very optimistic estimate that the whole electrical system (including storage for night and rainy days, etc.) could be built for $2000 a square meter. Donations invited.... -- Bill Mixon --------------------------------------------------------------------- Visit our website: http://texascavers.com To unsubscribe, e-mail: texascavers-unsubscr...@texascavers.com For additional commands, e-mail: texascavers-h...@texascavers.com --------------------------------------------------------------------- Visit our website: http://texascavers.com To unsubscribe, e-mail: texascavers-unsubscr...@texascavers.com For additional commands, e-mail: texascavers-h...@texascavers.com
