Conversations You Can Keep Up With

You want commentary to demo your site? I'll give you commentary. Let's talk solar power. Just how much solar power do we have available, and how does that compare with the energy we in the United States use?

Here is a quick hack. A square meter facing the sun gets about a kilowatt of power on a sunny day. But the land does not face the sun on average. Not by a long shot. Between the tropics the sun is directly overhead for a small part of the day for part of the year. Otherwise, the ground is angled. So the surface of the earth gets less than a kilowatt per square meter.

How much less on average? Here's the hack: the area of a sphere is

$A_{sphere}=4\pi r^2$

But the planet blocks out an area equal to a disk:

$A_{disk}=\pi r^2$

Therefore, on average, a square meter receives a quarter of the peak value. So over the course of a day, each square meter receives on average 6 kilowatt hours per day. Some areas get more than others, of course. Don't expect to power Vermont with solar power.

According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration the United States consumed roughly 4 trillion kilowatt hours in 2022. Assuming perfect storage, solar panels located in the desert, and an optimistic 20%!e(MISSING)fficiency, we get:

$\frac{4\times 10^{12}}{.2*6*365}=9132420091.3242$

There are a million square meters in a kilometer so this comes out to 9132 square kilometers.

Commentary should be interesting. How about some drama:

To be, or not to be, that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles
And by opposing end them. To die—to sleep,
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to: 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep;
To sleep, perchance to dream—ay, there's the rub:
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause—there's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life.
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
Th'oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of dispriz'd love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office, and the spurns
That patient merit of th'unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? Who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscovere'd country, from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will,
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience doth make cowards of us all,
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry
And lose the name of action.

To continue – despite the rude change of subject – to scale the result to U.S. units, we note that a kilometer is roughtly .62 miles, so the area we need is:

$9132\times .62^2=3510squaremiles$

The state of Connecticut is a bit over 5000 square miles. This starts to look doable.

But we probably need to multiply this number severalfold in practice. Even Arizona has winter. And completely covering an area with solar panels might cause environmental problems. And just how efficient are solar panels when they don't face the sun directly? (Tilted panels will shadow each other unless spaced enough to not capture all the sunlight at times of peak sunlight.)

Yikes! This post was supposed to be by Phineas! I'm doing a bad job of sock puppeting! And the ability to remove comments is still on the todo list.

Uncle Phineas, you are such a nerd! This is a social network! Do something social. Like this:

Now that's cute!