Surface Area Required To Power The World (revision)
My reworking of the brilliant Land Art Generator images 'Suface Area Required To Power The World' with one alternative energy source added :)
Originals are here:
www.landartgenerator.org/blagi/archives/127
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here's my maths (probably wrong, please correct me if so)
total world energy needs per year:
198,721,800,000,000 kwH
average energy output of a human per hour
0.1 KW per human (100 watts)
365 days at 24 hours a day = 8760 energy hours per year per human
0.1 KW x 8760 hours = 876 KWh energy generated per human per year
world energy needs divided by human supply
198,721,800,000,000 / 876 = 226,851,369,863 humans required
Human body occupies
2m x 1m = 2square metres
assuming machinery and spacing between human batteries
4m x 2m = 8 square metres
requires
1, 814,810,958,904 metres for all human batteries
1.8 trillion square metres
or
18,148,810,958 = 18 billion square kilometres
world land surface area is:
148,940,000 square kilometres (wikipedia)
so would require 221 billion humans to be stacked 121 rows high across the entire land surface of the earth.
very dystopian!
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more inforgraphics at
www.informationisbeautiful.net
Comments and faves
David Siñuela Pastor, Tеоn, Mr. Urda, iaque, and 82 other people added this photo to their favorites.
Alexandre Van de Sande (45 months ago | reply)
The first two graphs might be a little misleading - it doesn't look like a lot, but at a world scale those solar arrays are ocupying whole forests or multiple counties.
As for the last one I know you are making wrong calculations in purpose, to mislead us of the truth that we are in fact living inside the matrix...
Hubajube (45 months ago | reply)
desert
DaJass (45 months ago | reply)
Way interesting. Have to agree to Alexandre but it's still think it's a great picture although I LOVE your conclusion. HILARIOUS!
BlueisCoool (45 months ago | reply)
Porter Yates (45 months ago | reply)
I think the solar graphic is off by a factor of 6. Average usable solar energy is 160 W/m^2 not the assumed 1000 W/m^2.
[http://www.flickr.com/photos/pyates/39019112 63/sizes/o/]
Erik Visser (45 months ago | reply)
Love those graphics. If they are correct to the dot isn't that interesting. Just by looking at it and knowing that all sustainable energy will get much much more efficient over time. It shows it's doable.
Brett_Allen (45 months ago | reply)
So "friken" wrong: Confusing Acres with Square miles is what I'd call "friken" wrong.
1 acre is 4000M2.
1 square mile is 2589988.11M2 That means that you're off by a factor of 647.5.
Take this into account and you have an Area Needed of less than one half of one percent of your land area, which is in line with published estimates.
And BTW! The United States a couple of million acres in area? Do you have no intuitive sense of what these units mean?
In Australia we have Stations (Ranches) bigger than that.
/hilco (44 months ago | reply)
Original thinking AND great visualizing, will check your blog more often too!
François Van Damme (44 months ago | reply)
very nice representation!
Ray Tomes (43 months ago | reply)
It should last a day or two. Humans need food!
josephpc2 (36 months ago | reply)
another alternative from greenlivingideas.com This fall the Liaoning Huishan Cow Farm in northeast China will open the largest manure power project in the world. The poop from 250,000 cows will be processed in four General Electric Co. biogas turbines. The plant will annually supply 38,000 megawatt-hours and is projected to supply 15,000 residents with power. But the process addresses many other environmental issues at the same time- reducing dung piles, creating fertilizer and generating heat.
virus_2049 (36 months ago | reply)
then we can all travel to the beach and look at the wind farms in the distance. fantastic.
Andrey Shipilov (34 months ago | reply)
That's is obviously a lie. A city needs a solar power plant twice as large in area.
pumpeds (32 months ago | reply)
What about other more efficient power sources. I.e. nuclear reactors.
SarcMoer (20 months ago | reply)
For a stable source of energy the highest allowable World power generation provided at one moment is 20 181000000000kWh power (2008), including all forms of energy
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_consumptio n
Earth land size 148,940,000 km2 land
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth
Industrial Solar panels can provide
10 000 000 kWh from 126,000 solar panels using a land space of 364km2 (90 acres)
news.ontario.ca/mei/en/2009/10/canadas-larges t-solar-farm...
put it all together
World power generation provided / Solar farm of (10 million kWh farms @ 364km2) =
20 181000000000kWh / 10 000 000 kWh =
2018100 ( 10 000 000 kWh farms @ 364km2) are needed to supply 20 181000000000kWh
How much land would 2018100 Solar Farm @ 364km2 use =
2018100 x 364km2 =
734,870,934km2 (land needed for solar panels)
What percentage of Earth's land space 148,940,000km2 would be taken up ?
[ 734,870,934km2 (land needed for solar panels) * (100) ]/ 148,940,000km2 (Earth's land space) = 493%
Over 4 Earths completely covered with solar panels are required to support World power generation to 1 Earth
I would like to focus just on electrical energy in the future.
The key difference between my source of data (World power generation) , which is the same as landartgenerator, (opposed to World energy consumed in a year) is that I'm not taking the entire energy consumed in a year and dividing it up, I'm taking the maximum allowable power that can be supplied at once to earth. This is important, as you know the total amount of energy consumed is not the key aspect to a better service but the amount of energy that we can use at once when needed. As this is hypothetical I understand that this is not possible in a practical manner, as to allow 100% use of the maximum allowable power to be used all the hydro plant generators etc. would have to be running all at once on Earth which will never happen.