Solar Power Generator - Supporting Information

Introduction

Solar electricity has not been achieved to date in anything close to its potentially meme-like replicability. The amount of energy coming every day to the earth is thousands of times larger than all energy consumption today - from all sources combined.

Calculations

• 2005 energy usage - 16TW, or 16x10^12 Watts.
• The world also has a renewable usable energy flux that exceeds 120 PW - or 120x10^1512 (8,000 times 2004 total usage)- dwarfing all non-renewable resources] - [1]
  • Is it really 120 PW??? Take 1000W/m^2 of insolation power.
  • Radius of the earth - 6371 km
  • Cross sectional area - pi*radius^squared = 127 million square kilometers, 127 trillion square meters
  • Muliply the above by 1000 W/m^2 and you get 127 quadrillion Watts = 127 Petawatts = 127 PW. Yes, the figure of 120 PW is correct.