The Power of.. Solar Power (Infographic)

October 26th, 2011 by Zachary Shahan

A small solar installer in Maryland, solargaines, provided me with this interesting solar power infographic yesterday. Definitely thought is was worth sharing. Of course, this is all about solar power, in general. If you’re actually interested in the cost of solar panels in Maryland, you can check out their site. [No, I’m not getting anything for this,… in case you were wondering.]

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Tags: quickies, solar energy infographic, solar infographic, solar power infographic

About the Author

Zachary Shahan spends most of his time here on CleanTechnica as the director/chief editor. Otherwise, he's probably enthusiastically fulfilling his duties as the director/editor of Solar Love, EV Obsession, Planetsave, or Bikocity. Zach is recognized globally as a solar energy, electric car, and wind energy expert. If you would like him to speak at a related conference or event, connect with him via social media. You can connect with Zach on any popular social networking site you like. Links to all of his main social media profiles are on ZacharyShahan.com.

Richard Coombie

Ok! Ok people, do we go for solar power or not. Just a straight yes or no will do.
Anonymous

I tried to use the “Contact us” on your website, but got

“There has been an error: ERROR: Code injection attempt denied! Please don’t use the following sequences in your message: ‘TO:’, ‘CC:’, ‘CCO:’ or ‘Content-Type’.”

“The sun strikes every square meter of our planet with more than 1,360 watts of power”

The sun strikes the cross-section of the planet with that power. Since the Earth is a sphere, divide by 4. (pi r^2 vs. 4pi r^2)

“terrawatts” should be terawatts.

“17 gigawatts is equivalent to 17 nuclear power plants”

With a capacity factor of 10-30%, 17 GW of solar PV is equivalent to ~4 1-GW nuclear reactors, or ~2 two-reactor nuclear plants.

“Solar panels are made of Silicone which is just melted sand.”

Solar panels are made of silicon; the processing of which is a bit more involved.

“The amount of energy we receive from the sun in one day is:
1.5 x 10 the 22 power Joules
translates to:
4.6 quadrillion kW/h
which looks like this:
4,166,666,667,000,000
(4.16 quadrillion)
At $.015 per kw/H that is worth:
$625,000,000,000,000″

1.5 e22 J = 1.5 e22 J / 3600 s/h = 4.17 e15 kW-h of thermal energy.
If that were electrical energy,
4.17 e15 kW(e)-h * 0.15 $/kW-h = $625 e12.

But 89 PW * 3600 s/h * 24 h = 7.7 e21 J of heat = 2.14 e15 kW(th)-h
~~> 3.2 e14 kW(e)-h at 15% efficiency
~~> $48 e12 at 0.15 $/kW-h
- Jamie Vaughn
  
  I’m glad Bill Woods has such a sharp eye. I had only caught the error: “solar panels are made of Silicon which is just melted sand.”
  
  That’s incorrect, as Bill pointed out. You could say “solar panels are made of silicon which is just chemically reduced sand.”
  
  That is to say that sand is silicon dioxide, while solar panels are (almost) pure silicon. There’s a drastic difference in processing to simply melt sand compared to removing those two oxygen atoms from the silicon in sand.
http://twitter.com/SkellyElectric Skelly Electric, Inc

Great infographic about the power of solar!
California

Pretty graphic, needs a proof-reader. Fake boobs are made of silicone. Solar panels and sand are silicon.
Anonymous

Lot of errors in there. For instance,

“17 gigawatts produces 224,400,000,000 kW/h [224.4 TW-h] of energy …”

17 GW = 17 GW * 8766 h/yr = 149 TW-h per year.
I can’t figure out how they got a bigger number. 224.4 / 17 = 13.2, but what’s that?
For 17 GW of solar, multiply by the capacity factor.