Global Solar Atlas: summary of solar power potential globally
globalsolaratlas.info11 points by stratts 3 hours ago
11 points by stratts 3 hours ago
Even if a location doesn't show high potential, it shouldn't matter.
Solar panels are dirt cheap, just put up more of them. With plug-in solar, rooftop solar and vertical solar, there can be enough production.
If all buildings in a city start producing, we eliminate a third of the cost of grid. Transmission network is not needed (or doesn't need to grow) we produce energy where we consume, in every city. Transmission networks are costly and time consuming. Vertical solar will get us there. Vertical solar will be the cheapest form of energy, because it can use the structural elements already on a building (no need of , adds ~4 hours of production (same as adding batteries, could be cheaper?). Vertical solar can immediately be deployed as fence, we have some kind of wall/fence between buildings everywhere.
Europe is the only place which shows a little less potential. They can build solar farms in Spain, Turkey, North Africa and add transmission lines.
Europe has very high per capita income and colonial wealth, from Roman Empire, Vikings, Portugese, Spanish Empire, English Empire, Dutch and French colonies. With that level of income and wealth, adding dirt cheap solar panels, a bit more to account for lower production should not be a big deal.
Farmers in Europe should ask for solar subsides: shade for their livestock, grow crops that grow better in shade, grow tropical crops using solar energy in greenhouses, harvest both solar and crops.
Give farmers subsidies to harvest solar instead of [ethanol|biodiesel|biofuels|biomass] (garbage ideas, some posted recently about UK subsidizing biomass, which ships wood from Canada). Millions of acres of land can be used for both solar and livestock or crops. Freeing up the land from bio-nonsense-ideas will lower the cost of food and meat.
Canada also looks okay, the only country that can't go solar is Russia. Low solar potential, but also the Govt may not be too keen on Solar.
In the long run, there will be only two fossil fuel countries: US and Russia. The two great superpowers.
Places with most potential:
Australia (all of it!)
Most of South America: Chile (darkest on the map!), Bolivia, Argentina, Brazil.
Mexico and Cuba (everywhere), all of Central America
Western US
Africa (everywhere) Middle East (everywhere) Mongolia, North and Western China, Tibet
Europe has one of highest wind energy potentials instead. They can harvest wind energy in the winter when they need it most.
I thought this was very interesting - there's the map upfront, but you can also drill into individual countries and regions with some nice tables. Some "obvious" things here, though a few surprises:
* The solar potential of a gloomy, northern locale like the UK is "only" half of somewhere sunny like Australia. Though I can imagine the swings between seasons are greater.
* Northern Canada has a surprising amount of potential, compared to European regions at the same latitude
Canada compared to Mongolia of similar latitude, has lower potential though. Apparently that is because Mongolia is a desert and has no forests, very dry and high in elevation. The cold is no issue. The panels there produce 1.8 times more. The reason that Northern Europe is worse than Canada of the same latitude is apparently because of maritime proximity that increases humidity that diffuses light. Australia doesn't have maritime climate.
Cold actually increases PV output.
I wonder if the map accounts for this,
Without accounting for it, the maps wouldn't look like that. Cold, dry and high altitude increase the performance of solar.
Why did it need to hijack my back button...