The Sun’s Jewels of Joules
The sun is the largest, and only, nuclear fusion reactor operating in the solar system.
Every day, without fail or interruption, the sun delivers in 5 minutes the amount of energy the world economy consumes in a month. The Earth receives from the Sun 3.8 billion trillion photons per second per square meter of reception area. This is about 1350 Joules per second per m2 or 1350 watts per m2 of area. This amounts to the staggering sum of 120,000 trillion Watt-years per year. For comparison, world energy consumption is 15 TWy/yr — equal to about an hour of sunlight.
THE SUN’S JEWELS OF JOULES
As Caltech Professor Nathan Lewis has articulated,
“The sun is simply the champion of all energy sources. When talking about solar energy, I like to cite what I call the ‘Willie Sutton principle’ of materials science and energy. Willie Sutton was a bank robber who robbed many banks and managed to elude the law for years before he was finally caught. When asked why he robbed banks, he replied, ‘Because that’s where the money is.’ If Sutton were presented with our energy problem, he would obviously say that we should use the sun because, quite simply, that’s where the energy is. Solar energy is, in fact, the only renewable resource that has enough terrestrial energy potential to satisfy alone, with room to spare, the 10–20 TW carbon-free supply constraint in 2050. No other source comes even close.”
source: Professor Richard Perez, Atmospheric Sciences Research Center, University at Albany, State University of New York,
As a rough approximation, solar photovoltaic (PV) power systems installed on 20% of urban area rooftops and available ground areas could deliver 100% of total utility and mobility services.
Conceivably this could occur before 2050
Conceivably this could occur before 2050, or it may take the rest of this century to achieve. The time it takes turns on annual growth rates. Global Solar PV has been growing at an annual compounded rate of 30% between 2000 and 2011. Installed costs of solar PV systems have steadily fallen (to below $2 per Watt for Germany’s rooftop systems), while the efficiency output of solar cells continues to rise. The wildcard in sustaining high rates of solar PV growth turns on public policies — simply providing the same level of robust support governments have provided this past half century to the fossil and nuclear industries would ensure maintaining high growth rates.
Confronting Humanity Around The Demand Substantiation
As with the bold claims regarding the unprecedented challenges of global and historial magnitude confronting humanity that demand substantiation and compelling evidence, so are the bold claims on efficiency and solar technologies are substantiated in other sections of this web site.