Modeled impact of large-scale wind and solar farms in the Sahara
1–10 of 116 posts
Re: Modeled impact of large-scale wind and solar farms in the Sahara
#2[deleted]
Re: Modeled impact of large-scale wind and solar farms in the Sahara
#3> The wind and solar farms simulated in the study would cover more than 9 million square kilometers and generate, on average, about 3 terawatts and 79 terawatts of electrical power, respectively.
This study is looking at a combined farm size that's almost as large as all the land mass in the US.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territ...
Re: Modeled impact of large-scale wind and solar farms in the Sahara
#4> The wind and solar farms simulated in the study would cover more than 9 million square kilometers and generate, on average, about 3 terawatts and 79 terawatts of electrical power, respectively. This study is looking at a combined farm size that's almost as large as all the land mass in the US. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territ...
[deleted]
Re: Modeled impact of large-scale wind and solar farms in the Sahara
#5> The wind and solar farms simulated in the study would cover more than 9 million square kilometers and generate, on average, about 3 terawatts and 79 terawatts of electrical power, respectively. This study is looking at a combined farm size that's almost as large as all the land mass in the US. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territ...
That's a lot of terawatts. In 2013, the world used about 18 TW on average.
Re: Modeled impact of large-scale wind and solar farms in the Sahara
#6> The wind and solar farms simulated in the study would cover more than 9 million square kilometers and generate, on average, about 3 terawatts and 79 terawatts of electrical power, respectively. This study is looking at a combined farm size that's almost as large as all the land mass in the US. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territ...
That seems a bit excessive, considering that the world energy consumption is only about 18 terawatts (and only about 3 terawatts of that are electrical right now).
Re: Modeled impact of large-scale wind and solar farms in the Sahara
#7> The wind and solar farms simulated in the study would cover more than 9 million square kilometers and generate, on average, about 3 terawatts and 79 terawatts of electrical power, respectively. This study is looking at a combined farm size that's almost as large as all the land mass in the US. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territ...
In this case, "large" means almost the entire Sahara, which is 9.2 million square kilometers.
Africa is huge. 79 terawatts of power in the study is not unreasonable, given the population growth.
Re: Modeled impact of large-scale wind and solar farms in the Sahara
#8While interesting, I have my doubts as to the reliability of any prediction model for a case such as this. It would be a case quite a bit outside the historical data which the prediction model is based on, and it's not like weather and ecological systems are nicely linear and well-behaved systems to predict.
Re: Modeled impact of large-scale wind and solar farms in the Sahara
#9> The wind and solar farms simulated in the study would cover more than 9 million square kilometers and generate, on average, about 3 terawatts and 79 terawatts of electrical power, respectively. This study is looking at a combined farm size that's almost as large as all the land mass in the US. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territ...
That seems a bit excessive, considering that the world energy consumption is only about 18 terawatts (and only about 3 terawatts of that are electrical right now).
If countries like China, India, Malaysia, Nigeria etc. start to have per-capita energy use close to that of the United States, global energy consumption could easily double or triple even without any increase in population.
I said "if", but I really should say "when", because this is what's expected to happen as these countries modernize and start getting things like air conditioning on the same scale as US households. 79 TW of capacity will become a necessity sooner than you think.
Re: Modeled impact of large-scale wind and solar farms in the Sahara
#10>"The greater nighttime warming takes place because wind turbines can enhance the vertical mixing and bring down warmer air from above," the authors wrote.
That's actually a very interesting effect. I guess the votices generated by wind farms quite beneficial in a desert region.
It would be interesting to see what effect wind farms have on desertification. Given that two large factors are fertile ground blowing away and desert sand being blown onto fertile land, I imagine wind farms might be beneficial for slowing down desert growth.