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Why does this keep coming up? (The Renewable Energy Land Rush Could Threaten Food Security)

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US power consumption is about 750 gigawatts in the peak hours in the middle of the summer.

Divide 750,000,000,000 by 250 watts per square meter, one gets 3 billion square meters. 3 billion divided by 1 million - 3000 square kilometers. The square root of 3000 is roughly 55 kilometers on a side. This times .6 is 33 miles. A typical county in the US is 40 miles north to south by 40 miles east to west.

Average power consumption over a 24 hour period is about 12Terawatt-Hours, or 12Twh. This is roughly 500 gigawatt-hours times 24.

12Twh/5 hours of 'peak-equivalent' is 2.4Terawatts. 2.4Tw/750Gw is 3.2, so the 3000 square kilometers mentioned above would have to scale up to 9600 square kilometers. Square root of that is 98 kilometers on a side or 58 miles, so a square 60 miles x  60 miles is enough to run the entire country on solar.

The Nevada Test Site (for nuclear weapons) is about 80 miles by 80 miles. There isn't going to be much agriculture there in our lifetimes.

Keyword search 'agrivoltaics'. This is an integration of solar and agriculture on the same land. It works great for many crops and also for pasture. Pastureland in the US covers 1 million square miles out of the 5.1 million square miles of the US, including Alaska.

One finds a lot of crop land situated directly under wind turbines. The agricultural land around Portland, Texas (near Corpus Christi) is one good example of this.

Some people might be buying up land, but solar is going to peak before it makes much dent in US land area. Even in densely populated countries like India, China, and Japan there's still plenty of room.

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On 5/7/2024 at 6:33 PM, Meredith Poor said:

US power consumption is about 750 gigawatts in the peak hours in the middle of the summer.

It keeps coming up because people like you either

  1. CONTINUALLY LIE regarding the BOLDED statement as you know better. 
  2. Or are an utter ignorant. 

Electricity is the MINORITY of power consumed in the USA or most any country. 

That being said: Yes, if one ONLY looks at average electricity, ignore things like weeks/months of continuous cloudy weather, and the simple changing of the seasons and include miracle battery production criteria, it can work. 

Until you honestly approach with 100% power load replacement working in ALL scenarios to maximums and minimums and ONLY count the portion of solar which can accomplish this task without crutches of NG/Coal/Nuclear.then and only then will we see prices drop. 

Requiring 2 systems or 3 systems procurement/maintenance  to do the job of 1 system is economically suicide. 

PS: No, 4 hour battery "backup" is not viable.  24 hour battery backup is not viable.  Ask anyone who went offgrid with solar.  You need 3 days minimum even in the tropics, or an IMMENSE over build of solar which is 8X too large for summer.  Unless we play make believe we are going to ship Terrawatts of power around from Southern New Mexico/Arizona... Or in Europe's case the Sahara assuming Morocco/Tunis/Algeria will cooperate.  Or Australia/Egypt/Saudi Arabia can produce a form of fuel from solar and ship it around the world which is not explosive such as NG(no one will ever use Ammonia as a power source--> Hello Beirut)We can dream of superconductors, but we don't have any room temp ones yet. 

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1 hour ago, footeab@yahoo.com said:

Electricity is the MINORITY of power consumed in the USA or most any country. 

 

It was clear that in this context power meant electricity.  You should say energy.

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On 5/9/2024 at 7:38 PM, footeab@yahoo.com said:

It keeps coming up because people like you either

  1. CONTINUALLY LIE regarding the BOLDED statement as you know better. 
  2. Or are an utter ignorant. 

Electricity is the MINORITY of power consumed in the USA or most any country. 

That being said: Yes, if one ONLY looks at average electricity, ignore things like weeks/months of continuous cloudy weather, and the simple changing of the seasons and include miracle battery production criteria, it can work. 

Until you honestly approach with 100% power load replacement working in ALL scenarios to maximums and minimums and ONLY count the portion of solar which can accomplish this task without crutches of NG/Coal/Nuclear.then and only then will we see prices drop. 

Requiring 2 systems or 3 systems procurement/maintenance  to do the job of 1 system is economically suicide. 

PS: No, 4 hour battery "backup" is not viable.  24 hour battery backup is not viable.  Ask anyone who went offgrid with solar.  You need 3 days minimum even in the tropics, or an IMMENSE over build of solar which is 8X too large for summer.  Unless we play make believe we are going to ship Terrawatts of power around from Southern New Mexico/Arizona... Or in Europe's case the Sahara assuming Morocco/Tunis/Algeria will cooperate.  Or Australia/Egypt/Saudi Arabia can produce a form of fuel from solar and ship it around the world which is not explosive such as NG(no one will ever use Ammonia as a power source--> Hello Beirut)We can dream of superconductors, but we don't have any room temp ones yet. 

This certainly looks like a tantrum.

Show me your numbers.

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11 hours ago, Meredith Poor said:

This certainly looks like a tantrum.

Show me your numbers.

Did, months ago, you never replied... Of course anyone with a brain could address what I did all on their own if they weren't liars. 

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On 5/12/2024 at 3:33 AM, footeab@yahoo.com said:

Did, months ago, you never replied... Of course anyone with a brain could address what I did all on their own if they weren't liars. 

Paste the link.

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(edited)

On 5/13/2024 at 7:45 AM, Meredith Poor said:

Paste the link.

I'm not your daddy, changing your diapers, nor am I your baby sitter

START: HERE

Grow up, learn basic analysis. 

PS: No engineer gives a damn about averages.  Utterly useless.  You design to maximum + buffer and Minimum + buffer for maintenance and Murphy knocking on your door

Edited by footeab@yahoo.com

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Rome was not built over night..............

at the end of 2023 20 percent of all energy consumed is renewable/nuclear based

at the end of 2024????? 21 to 22 percent??????

one solar panel a time ...

Global annual renewable capacity additions increased by almost 50% to nearly 510 gigawatts (GW) in 2023

 

the equivalent of 510,000 MW 0r 510,000,000 KW or in solar panel equivalents 1.5 Billion panels installed in 2023

will the world install the equivalent of 2 billion panels in 2024???????

this is the level that will cause total fossil fuel consumption to decline....IE peak fossil fuels is occurring right now

 

 

Energy consumption by source - Our World in Data

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