/sci/ - Science & Math

>implying you can stop solar

This is for the guy that was asking about solar panel calculation btw. I couldn't find his OP.

yes?

>>5703936
My uni just installed a mid-sized array. Fully insured, and everything. Here are the numbers:

Total Cost: $3 million
Capacity: 1 MW
Area: 2 acres
Electricity cost saved per year: $230,000
Number of hoses it can power: 200 homes
Time that the panels are guaranteed by the installer company: 25 years
Time that the panels will take to pay for themselves: 12 years

It would be nice to have a bank that will finance a loan for the 12 years that it takes to pay itself back plus maybe a year for interest. Everyone could have panels:)

>>5703958
These banks exist. I hear about them on the radio all the time. Maybe because I live in Cali where solar is booming, but it really is starting to become a business model.

You don't need a cool million to power your home. With insurance, lifetime warranties, and government kickbacks, solar is basically a guaranteed investment. There is even a house in my working class neighborhood with solar panels.

>>5703967
That's not the house by the way. My neighborhood doesn't look nearly that nice.

>Large areas of Earth covered in solar panels
>Less solar energy absorbed as heat
>Global snowcover slightly increases
>Less solar energy absorbed as heat
>Global snowcover slightly increases
>Repeat until ice age

>>5703977
How big of an area are you imagining?

>>5703979
Probably much more than on that picture to be honest.

Though I'd like to see the data used to come up with that, it looks like it might be assuming 0 energy loss in transmission.

I'm majoring in oil technology and I hate to break it to you, but solar will never work, ever.

>>5703983
Well yeah, that design there would never work because of all the energy lost though telephone wires and stuff. Just imagine moving them into the cities. The point is, the area needed is not large.

>>5703986
The butthurt is overwhelming.

I hate to break it to you, but oil has hit its peak. Production will hold stead for awhile, then begin dropping as the oldest fields start running dry. Sure, you'll be employed because they'll need guys like you to find ways to dig down into the harder-to-drill pockets of oil, but the fact remains that it is a dying industry.

>>5703986
you fool

I work for Exxon, and I can confirm this anon's statement

>>5704005
Which anons?

>>5703986
In at least 50 years you'll have no money and be living on the street butt naked

>>5703979
Lets just cover the entire Sahara desert with one big solar grid

>>5704058
i agree with this man, lets make use of all this land we have

>>5704071
>land

Why limit ourselves with land?

>>5704109
good point

>>5703977
This makes me think of how plausible a large solar grid over major glaciers and the poles would be. Would help lower albedo and create energy. It would just be crazy hard to implement and keep running. Magic snow deflecting hover panels?

>>5704171
> lowering albedo

For the love of ice ages, why?

Instead, Why not have massive floating solar panels lying in the ocean? An island one percent the size of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch would be more than enough to satisfy the energy needs of the entire world.

>>5704187
To stop the melting of the ice caps and glaciers? You realize that lowering albedo in these places won't magically create an ice age everywhere, right? I'm not talking about enough coverage for expansion, just stabilization.

>>5703986
>solar will never work
>solar panels have nearly doubled in efficiency in the past 10 years
>oil's main use as a fuel source is dropping as more and more alternative energy sources are being utilized
>solar already works perfectly well for power generation in therms of mirrors for boiling water

wut

>>5703977

>Less solar energy absorbed as heat

So that energy that was captured by the solar panel and converted to electric power eventually ends up doing what? Oh that's right it all gets converted into heat.

Never heard of conservation of energy eh?

>>5703977
>Large areas of Earth covered in solar panels
>Less solar energy absorbed as heat
Stopped reading, already see a flaw in your logic.

Solar panels have a fairly low albedo. Most of the light that hits them is absorbed - certainly moreso than most terrestrial surfaces. Ultimately it doesn't matter if it's "absorbed as heat" or as electricity; ultimately ALL the energy will degenerate to heat in the long run (as the electricity is consumed). Thus the total solar absorption and temperature of Earth would likely be INCREASED, not decreased, by the presence of solar panels.