Quote:
Originally Posted by shootist
Hydro electric is less than 6 percent of electric production in the states where it exists.
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According to the EIA, hydroelectric is about
66% of electric production in Washington state, and
7% nationwide.
In any case, pumped storage effectively transfers electricity produced from other types of generation to hydroelectric plants (with efficiency losses along the way). So unless a hydro plant is running at 100% capacity every day, it can be used for some storage.
However, like I said... it seems likely that we'll just use batteries for most grid storage going forward.
Quote:
Originally Posted by shootist
And a 300 watt solar panel covers 24 square feet and produces about 100 watts per solar hour.
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The exact size of solar panels depends on their efficiency. I Googled '100 watt solar panel' and used the first set of dimensions I found. Thus, your 8 sq ft per 100 watt value is certainly possible, but so are smaller values. Logically, we'd generally use the smaller / more efficient panels for large power plants... as indeed we do currently.
In any case, using your 8 sq ft figure rather than 5.75 wouldn't significantly change the results... 5.75 / 8 = 0.71
144,175 TWh * 0.71 = 102,364 TWh
That's just a little short of global power consumption... with >99% of the Earth's land area still available to make up the remainder. Quibbling over the details isn't going to change the fact that only a tiny portion of the planet need be covered in solar to meet all of our energy needs.
I'm not sure what you mean about a 300 watt panel only producing "100 watts per solar hour". There are 24 solar hours in a day, so... are you suggesting 100 * 24 = 2,400 watt-hours? That would be too high, unless we are talking about somewhere like southern Mexico rather than California.
A 300 watt panel would yield a number of watt-hours worth of electricity equal to 300 times the average 'peak sun hours' for the location. For California that is about 5 (more in southern California and less in northern), so ~1500 watt-hours per day.
Quote:
Originally Posted by shootist
So you are spouting a religion not science.
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I am 'spouting' math... to demonstrate the accuracy of the various sites I linked which stated that only a small land area is needed for solar power to cover our energy needs.
You, and others, have insisted that the opposite is true... while providing no evidence at all.
Have you heard of the psychological concept of projection?