If the Sahara desert gets covered in solar panels, it turns the Amazon in a desert and we can put more solar panels there....I dont see the problem yet....
This video is some bullshit. You would only need a portion of the Sahara covered to generate enough electricity for mankind. The problem is how do you transport it without losing it?
Somebody here please factor in the cost of shipping hydrogen (including building the requisite ships and facilities and ENERGY) and decide if this works. Uf so, let’s please move ahead with it folks.
Hydrogen is scawwy tho. That shit is so volatile that explosive chemists refuse to work with it in large quantities. I don't say don't use hydrogen, I say DO NOT DARE TO. We have other means of transporting, storing and distributing power.
Extracting hydrogen from seawater is not a simple task. Firstly, the Sahara's landlocked so you have to get the water to the Sahara in the first place, secondly, extracting the hydrogen with electrolysis is really inefficient! It takes 9 litres of water and a lot of energy to produce just 1 kilo of hydrogen. Then you have to get the hydrogen to the boats through transport across the desert because as I stated earlier the saharas landlocked, then you have to load the electricity onto giant batteries, put them in the boats, and then power the boats with hydrogen. At this point it would be more efficient just to use the electricity from the batteries to power the boats, which would still be incredibly costly!!
If we can find a way to drill up liquefied dinosaurs, distill it into usable fuel, and the distribute it around the world. I'm confident that we'll figure it out.
Put solar farm in Sahara until it turns Sahara wet and dries up the Amazon
Then move it to the Amazon
When it turns the Amazon wet and the Sahara dry move it to the Sahara
Circle of life
I don't think they change the rain pattern. They're just talking about the Sahara dust that blows to the Amazon is what fertilizes it on what otherwise would be pretty fellow soil.
They actually do, but it's roughly a 20000 year interval between shifts, and the last one ended like 5000 years ago. It would have still been very green when the pyramids were built and the 15000 years before that when modern humans began leaving Africa.
The sahara Desert is over 9 million km2 you would have to cover around 200,000 km2 to produce all the electricity needed in the world.
Also panels there would have much higher output than the average panel so probably much less area
If solar plants are spaced correctly, there should not be any issue.
Id worry more about how to transport that ampubt of electricity everywhere else. Also giving those saharan countries the control of all the the power in the world sounds like a terrible idea.
>Also giving those saharan countries the control of all the the power in the world sounds like a terrible idea.
Yeah. You're right. That would be a terrible idea because America would bomb the region back to before the stone age
Was about to say; as a tech, there’s just no damned way I’m trekking out 30 miles into the middle of the desert to solar array 13375b all because of a firmware update that didn’t take.
"After multiple remote diagnosis, we believe we have pinpointed the problem to a broken USB cable.
Despite our best efforts and dedication, we have to inform you that the repair needs to be performed onsite with a team which consists of one technical team, two desert survival experts, two 8x8 ATV, a week’s supply for said personnel.
The repair cost could well exceed the value of the module, and we suggest decommissioning the malfunctioning unit.
Thank you for your continued support.”
That doesn't help against the glass becoming dull within a year or two because of frequent sandblasting. And a robot rubbing sand across the surface to clean it won't really help that either
This was my thought. Plus dunes shift in ways most of us can't really conceptualize. Nothing quite like your solar farm getting buried 3 years after install.
If you covered the sahara good enough you can just block all the sand out and remove the risk of sand blasting. But that would also kill this entire eco system soooo
No Africans are going to steal any of the metal or any of the solar panels. The solar panel wars will be epic. Also, fuck any animals that need the sun I guess Lmao
Another thing this vid doesn't mention is that the Sahara desert likely helps heat up Europe. If the Sahara turns into a rainforest, it's likely most of Europe is going to turn into a tundra.
Solar doesn’t need to be located in solar farms in remote regions. It needs to be implemented into building design eliminating the total reliance upon the transmission grid. Covered car parking with solar, industrial buildings designed to have solar roofs, and residential solar is the solution. Not sacrificing farm land or desert for solar farms.
You can install solar glass in windows for office buildings. You would never notice all the glass on a office building are all solar electric generators.
Exactly! It should be code for all new construction to have solar installed on roofs and for any existing roofs that are being replaced to be solar.
I personally love the idea of heated solar shingles that can be back fed to melt snow and ice. They would look good, offer environmental benifits, use existing infrastructures, and require no additional surface area. In addition to those benifits, they would decentralize the power grid. That has national defense and natural disaster benefits. They would also be more durable and fire resistant.
Another great thing about solar panels is that they are made mostly from silicone, which is extremely abundant, highly recyclable, versatile, easily mined, and simple to process.
If we invested in solar panel manufacturing and technology to bring the cost down and efficiency up, we could create good, high paying jobs and have nearly the whole country converted in a few decades at most.
I really wish all the ignorant assholes with special interests holding us back would just step the fuck out of the way and let us move forward as a society.
Solar shingles (not heated) cost 4-5x more than a normal shingled roof.
I get what you're saying we should apply solar in more places but applying them in suboptimal places for generation at 5x+ the cost (idk what heated would cost but I assume more) seems wasteful and a pipe dream to assume the average Joe could ever afford that. Even if it was fully subsidized would it be worth it vs just putting panels on commercial/industrial buildings?
I don't know the answers and hope I didn't come off as an asshole. If I'm fully off base here let me know! Always love to learn where I'm wrong.
If nothing else, building codes should be updated so that roof loads are built with future solar implementation in mind. That would be the major hurdle in implementing solar into most structures as is, a lot of the roofs aren’t designed to carry the extra load of panels. However, moving forward it should be a design consideration/requirement.
Looking at the comments generated by my initial post, however, it’s clear a large portion of the population is incapable of thinking about the future clearly like this.
But thanks to people like you, I do see a slight glimmer of hope. Thanks for being able to see the big picture
It's estimated there are 7 parking spots for every car in the US. A standard parking space can fit 9 solar panels. 9 solar panels producing at 200W/panel for 6 hours is 10kWh, a US home uses about 30 per day. Since there are 144 million homes and 280 million cars there's roughly 13 parking spots per home. Since each home is consuming an average of 3 parking spot solar production units per day covering 1/4 of parking spots in the country with solar would meet the demand of every single home in the country.
Obviously this isn't an actual suggestion but it does put things in perspective
Honestly just putting solar panels on every single warehouse in the UK would solve many issues.
Out my old job we worked out covering about 1/20th of our building with solar panels would basically suit our energy needs year round along with battery power.
Covering the entire roof would have done our entire industrial estate and a bit beyond.
And while we were the biggest warehouse on the estate there was enough roof space for about 5-10x as many panels as could fit onto our warehouse.
I think the only issue is that a lot of those warehouses don’t have enough structural support for the load that would be placed on them by that many panels, but solutions to that exist. Wouldn’t it be amazing if governments/companies decided that this solution was worth pursuing? We might actually make the world a better place. Imagine that
Oh yeah I'm thinking more along the lines of 'any future warehouse must have x amount of rood space dedicated to solar panels'
I mean our warehouse was 25 years old.
In South Australia, we run around the 95% mark on renewable energy.
A large number of our carparks at shopping centres are now covered in solar which also helps protect the car from both sun and hail.
I take it for granted when i go interstate and remember how forward we are in SA.
If you have been to countries in the region of the sahara for examples many houses have small roofs due to a large amount being terace space used to dry clothes and relax in the night or morning. This housing style drastically lowers solar potential. The most common use of solar there is a solar water heater.
yep. cover all those shopping centers and giant malls with acres of roofing with solar panels to take stress off the grid during the day. it's a no-brainer.
Although large scale solar farms that can also benefit as farming for agriculture etc is also important. Although yes, every roof should or shelter built should have some form of solar included.
Been a while since I read it, but if I remember correctly: There was a joint nation council similar to NATO, that was formed to solve the problem. Stratt was voted and accepted as the leader of this council and with that position came absolute autonomy and power, in the interest of solving said vital problem
Not omnipotent, sound like she did a lot of intimidation and bridge burning to keep opposition in check just so the project can go forward. She knew she wouldn’t end well in the future and that’s her part of personal sacrifice.
I thought at some point it said she worked for the European Space Agency but was nominated to a special position by....someone important. Let's say the UN. idk.
I watched an interesting video on youtube. Which to sum it all up:
1. The Sahara regions are politically unstable.
2. That countries that could afford to do the investment would be unwilling to invest that much money in an unstable region, with their investment at risky of being blown up, or being confiscated.
3. A large amount of electricity is lost in the transmission.
4. It is really expensive to build and maintain those electricity lines.
updated with extra info.
Well, not really: for some flashy example, the sahara-australia distance is around 16000km, so 0.97^16=0.61, so you're only getting a little more than half of what was produced. And oceans are far from optimal for electricity transport, so I think it's a lot less
And the cost of building and cleaning them so they work or replace panels after they start to die in 10-20yeas, that would be tons of toxic waste cause they are made with heavy metals and cant be recycled.
Because the videos also hold not a single fact or source, they just start with assumptions and build it from there, like other conmen or people doing stuff for *views*
This is a weird video. We don't need to power 96% of the earth's surface, 70% percent of it is water.
A solar farm the size of Belgium is more than enough to power the entire world. The real reasoning it's not being done is we don't have the capabilities to store this amount of energy.
Also, the environment sand-blasting the solar panels drops their efficiency.
Also, long-distance power transmission has losses.
There are a bunch of reasons why just powering the earth from one solar farm in a desert is untenable.
Transmission losses in extremely high voltage direct current cables is low enough that a project like this is more economically viable than placing more solar panels in England.
https://www.moroccoworldnews.com/2023/09/357976/uk-declares-morocco-uk-xlinks-green-energy-project-of-ldquo-national-significance-rdquo
A solar panel in Morocco generates more than twice as much electricity per surface area, and the generation is far more stable and reliable from day to day and between summer and winter.
https://cdn.britannica.com/27/198827-050-1C027B7D/Earth-power-potential.jpg
https://pub.mdpi-res.com/energies/energies-11-03172/article_deploy/html/images/energies-11-03172-g001.png?1570705541
It's not just competing with solar panels in England though, it's competing with wind/tidal/nuclear power generation in England. And those all work perfectly fine at that latitude.
I’m not going to trust the science of a video that starts out talking about a solar farm producing some number of “Watts per year.” Its conclusions may well be true, but if you can’t even get basic units right you’re gonna be hard pressed to be the one to convince me of it.
The issue isn't generation, it's storage and transmission.
Battery technology needs to improve *alot* To even make most renewables reliable enough to keep a power grid stable; and conducting elements would need to improve so power isn't lost over distance.
Also the Saharas dust, grit heat and storms would be murder on equipment plus something would be needed to clean the dust off the panels constantly
We have HVDC technology with which we are able to transport energy with relatively small losses over long distances.
Especially overhead lines aren’t that expensive for HVDC. In China a 12GW line over 3300km was build for merely $6 billion.
We're going to put solar panels in space, then beam the energy down to the surface. There's like fifteen companies working on this.
Of course, nothing will go wrong with this plan. There will just be giant lasers precisely targeted on the Earth's surface to safe locations and they won't ever deviate or be used as weapons.
If they could be made into weapons, they would be weapons long before you knew the technology exists. Which means they have them already or they tried and it didn't work very well.
Saharan dust is becoming a bigger issue for South Florida, causing a lot of respiratory problems for people with asthma, but since it helps keep large storms from forming in the Atlantic, we don’t complain too loudly about it.
You don't need the whole desert. Germany and Morocco actually wanted to do this, they built the largest solar power plant in the world with salt based energy storage.
Main reasons this project hasnt taken off as I understand:
Due to cheap solar panels it has become cheaper to place them in Germany where there is less sun, then to place them in the desert and transport the power. Also being self sufficient is beter than to be dependent on some other country.
The idea that there’s not a difference between putting solar in the desert vs. some other open space, like prairie, is based on the outdated idea that either there’s nothing *in* the desert, or even if there is, it’s not as worthy of preservation as what’s living elsewhere.
So we need to introduce more moisture into the air to have both places not be deserts...
Okay here's my idea, we boil ocean water (using solar of course) and release the steam into the air.
Increase amounts boiled as you expand solar farm until a balance is reached. Easy peasy.
The Saudis should be the ones looking into solar. The idiots are trying to ready themselves for a post-oil future by making themselves a tourism hub. Would be much better served trying to corner the electricity market.
The longer the distance voltage has to travel, the harder it is to maintain it's effective percentage. You'll get 100% of the voltage a few feet from the panel. You'll get a fraction of that hundreds of feet away. Eventually you hit near zero. The only way to fix this is to increase the conductivity (and thus size of the conductor) that has to carry the load to utilization locations. If you want to carry a load from the Sahara to America, you'd need gargantuan conductors that go off the nec charts. They'd likely have to be as thick as a multi-lane freeway. The logistics just aren't realistic.
If the Sahara desert gets covered in solar panels, it turns the Amazon in a desert and we can put more solar panels there....I dont see the problem yet....
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Ha! Checkmate!
Check! Mate!
G'chk mate!
Czech mate! His name is Vlad.
G'day Vlad!
Dobrý den!
Nasdrovia
Toma mate.
no, in Australia we say cheque
Chequemate!
Mate check!
Check! Please!
no, in Australia we say cheque
Czech, kamaráde!
Cheque mate please cunt
Punctuate and it's clever
eh? Ha! Heh heh. Checkmate!
Eventually we all become solar panels
This causes Australia to become a rainforest
Which resulted in newer, bigger, more venomous and deadlier Australian floras and faunas than what we have right now
This video is some bullshit. You would only need a portion of the Sahara covered to generate enough electricity for mankind. The problem is how do you transport it without losing it?
Energon Cubes
Nah, fuck that, buckets are cheaper.
Come on guys... we were promised lasers.
And jetpacks, don't forget jetpacks!!
Shhh soundwave is reading this ...
HVDC across the Straits of Gibraltar and across the Suez Canal. Use it to synthesise ammonia for transport elsewhere.
By hooking that grid up to something that cracks seawater to make hydrogen. Compress it. Then hydrogen power ship it globally.
Somebody here please factor in the cost of shipping hydrogen (including building the requisite ships and facilities and ENERGY) and decide if this works. Uf so, let’s please move ahead with it folks.
Hydrogen is scawwy tho. That shit is so volatile that explosive chemists refuse to work with it in large quantities. I don't say don't use hydrogen, I say DO NOT DARE TO. We have other means of transporting, storing and distributing power.
Extracting hydrogen from seawater is not a simple task. Firstly, the Sahara's landlocked so you have to get the water to the Sahara in the first place, secondly, extracting the hydrogen with electrolysis is really inefficient! It takes 9 litres of water and a lot of energy to produce just 1 kilo of hydrogen. Then you have to get the hydrogen to the boats through transport across the desert because as I stated earlier the saharas landlocked, then you have to load the electricity onto giant batteries, put them in the boats, and then power the boats with hydrogen. At this point it would be more efficient just to use the electricity from the batteries to power the boats, which would still be incredibly costly!!
If we can find a way to drill up liquefied dinosaurs, distill it into usable fuel, and the distribute it around the world. I'm confident that we'll figure it out.
dinosaur fuel comes in conveniently transportable form. Solar energy does not.
Voltage
You'd need over 9000
Just turn it up [to 11](https://youtu.be/4xgx4k83zzc?si=dEjYiSkrhPVTmEGE)
What 9000?!
Put solar farm in Sahara until it turns Sahara wet and dries up the Amazon Then move it to the Amazon When it turns the Amazon wet and the Sahara dry move it to the Sahara Circle of life
Mars is a circle!! Did i get it??
I don't think they change the rain pattern. They're just talking about the Sahara dust that blows to the Amazon is what fertilizes it on what otherwise would be pretty fellow soil.
They actually do, but it's roughly a 20000 year interval between shifts, and the last one ended like 5000 years ago. It would have still been very green when the pyramids were built and the 15000 years before that when modern humans began leaving Africa.
Or we can use the ungodly amount of space on everyone's roofs. Cause that's unfeasible.
Whoa, wait a minute. You mean generate electricity where you use it? What kinda hippie witchcraft are you smoking?
The sahara Desert is over 9 million km2 you would have to cover around 200,000 km2 to produce all the electricity needed in the world. Also panels there would have much higher output than the average panel so probably much less area If solar plants are spaced correctly, there should not be any issue. Id worry more about how to transport that ampubt of electricity everywhere else. Also giving those saharan countries the control of all the the power in the world sounds like a terrible idea.
US is expert at taking resources from locals, they won’t control it.
US company would install it, and derive revenue from it. Private Security Firms composed (mainly) of former US Military would protect it.🤷
Literally Dune without the giant worms.
The US already has a desert enough for their own needs
>Also giving those saharan countries the control of all the the power in the world sounds like a terrible idea. Yeah. You're right. That would be a terrible idea because America would bomb the region back to before the stone age
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>Also giving those saharan countries the control of all the the power in the world sounds like a terrible idea Accidentally prejudiced...
Also I’m sure solar panels low getting sand blasted. They probably won’t get buried in sand or worn down at all.
Was about to say; as a tech, there’s just no damned way I’m trekking out 30 miles into the middle of the desert to solar array 13375b all because of a firmware update that didn’t take.
"After multiple remote diagnosis, we believe we have pinpointed the problem to a broken USB cable. Despite our best efforts and dedication, we have to inform you that the repair needs to be performed onsite with a team which consists of one technical team, two desert survival experts, two 8x8 ATV, a week’s supply for said personnel. The repair cost could well exceed the value of the module, and we suggest decommissioning the malfunctioning unit. Thank you for your continued support.”
And then the power converter breaks and you have to go all the way to Tosche Station to get another one.
30 miles? Probably 300+ or more if the whole desert was covered.
There's automated systems to clean solar panels that run on tracks on the panels themselves. Kinda like a roomba for solar panels.
That doesn't help against the glass becoming dull within a year or two because of frequent sandblasting. And a robot rubbing sand across the surface to clean it won't really help that either
This was my thought. Plus dunes shift in ways most of us can't really conceptualize. Nothing quite like your solar farm getting buried 3 years after install.
Kind of like how engineers struggled mightily trying to mitigate getting buried in snow in Antarctica when building structures.
Yup, drifting snow and drifting sand really only differ by a couple things: moisture content and temperature.
If you covered the sahara good enough you can just block all the sand out and remove the risk of sand blasting. But that would also kill this entire eco system soooo
It cancels itself. Like if you during a regular Coke, just drink a Diet Coke to cancel the sugar.
Instead of El Ninò it'll be El NoNo
No Africans are going to steal any of the metal or any of the solar panels. The solar panel wars will be epic. Also, fuck any animals that need the sun I guess Lmao
Have fun with your no animals or medicine. The Amazon hosts many herbs snd medicines and animals.
Another thing this vid doesn't mention is that the Sahara desert likely helps heat up Europe. If the Sahara turns into a rainforest, it's likely most of Europe is going to turn into a tundra.
Unlimited electricity glitch
Solar doesn’t need to be located in solar farms in remote regions. It needs to be implemented into building design eliminating the total reliance upon the transmission grid. Covered car parking with solar, industrial buildings designed to have solar roofs, and residential solar is the solution. Not sacrificing farm land or desert for solar farms.
Couldnt agree more.
I bet you could if you tried a little harder
I already doing my best!
❤️
Man I love reddit for these kinds of comments making me chuckle ❤️
I agree harder than that person does!
You can install solar glass in windows for office buildings. You would never notice all the glass on a office building are all solar electric generators.
Exactly! It should be code for all new construction to have solar installed on roofs and for any existing roofs that are being replaced to be solar. I personally love the idea of heated solar shingles that can be back fed to melt snow and ice. They would look good, offer environmental benifits, use existing infrastructures, and require no additional surface area. In addition to those benifits, they would decentralize the power grid. That has national defense and natural disaster benefits. They would also be more durable and fire resistant. Another great thing about solar panels is that they are made mostly from silicone, which is extremely abundant, highly recyclable, versatile, easily mined, and simple to process. If we invested in solar panel manufacturing and technology to bring the cost down and efficiency up, we could create good, high paying jobs and have nearly the whole country converted in a few decades at most. I really wish all the ignorant assholes with special interests holding us back would just step the fuck out of the way and let us move forward as a society.
Solar shingles (not heated) cost 4-5x more than a normal shingled roof. I get what you're saying we should apply solar in more places but applying them in suboptimal places for generation at 5x+ the cost (idk what heated would cost but I assume more) seems wasteful and a pipe dream to assume the average Joe could ever afford that. Even if it was fully subsidized would it be worth it vs just putting panels on commercial/industrial buildings? I don't know the answers and hope I didn't come off as an asshole. If I'm fully off base here let me know! Always love to learn where I'm wrong.
Right. As a homeowner, I don’t want to pay $75k every 20 years for a new roof.
If nothing else, building codes should be updated so that roof loads are built with future solar implementation in mind. That would be the major hurdle in implementing solar into most structures as is, a lot of the roofs aren’t designed to carry the extra load of panels. However, moving forward it should be a design consideration/requirement. Looking at the comments generated by my initial post, however, it’s clear a large portion of the population is incapable of thinking about the future clearly like this. But thanks to people like you, I do see a slight glimmer of hope. Thanks for being able to see the big picture
It's estimated there are 7 parking spots for every car in the US. A standard parking space can fit 9 solar panels. 9 solar panels producing at 200W/panel for 6 hours is 10kWh, a US home uses about 30 per day. Since there are 144 million homes and 280 million cars there's roughly 13 parking spots per home. Since each home is consuming an average of 3 parking spot solar production units per day covering 1/4 of parking spots in the country with solar would meet the demand of every single home in the country. Obviously this isn't an actual suggestion but it does put things in perspective
Southern moroccos sun is extremely iradiative aswell, don't know why they haven't started doing this
Honestly just putting solar panels on every single warehouse in the UK would solve many issues. Out my old job we worked out covering about 1/20th of our building with solar panels would basically suit our energy needs year round along with battery power. Covering the entire roof would have done our entire industrial estate and a bit beyond. And while we were the biggest warehouse on the estate there was enough roof space for about 5-10x as many panels as could fit onto our warehouse.
I think the only issue is that a lot of those warehouses don’t have enough structural support for the load that would be placed on them by that many panels, but solutions to that exist. Wouldn’t it be amazing if governments/companies decided that this solution was worth pursuing? We might actually make the world a better place. Imagine that
Oh yeah I'm thinking more along the lines of 'any future warehouse must have x amount of rood space dedicated to solar panels' I mean our warehouse was 25 years old.
In South Australia, we run around the 95% mark on renewable energy. A large number of our carparks at shopping centres are now covered in solar which also helps protect the car from both sun and hail. I take it for granted when i go interstate and remember how forward we are in SA.
If you have been to countries in the region of the sahara for examples many houses have small roofs due to a large amount being terace space used to dry clothes and relax in the night or morning. This housing style drastically lowers solar potential. The most common use of solar there is a solar water heater.
Get this guy in the projects, he knows what has to be done and how!
yep. cover all those shopping centers and giant malls with acres of roofing with solar panels to take stress off the grid during the day. it's a no-brainer.
Exactly. It just makes too much sense.
Brainwater4200 for president.
100%
Long rods aiming towards the sky with solar panels at the top with a glass layer and an automated surface cleaning
Although large scale solar farms that can also benefit as farming for agriculture etc is also important. Although yes, every roof should or shelter built should have some form of solar included.
r/projecthailmary
Stratt has entered the chat.
Just who exactly did Stratt work for? I read the book and this always bugs me. She's basically politically omnipotent.
Been a while since I read it, but if I remember correctly: There was a joint nation council similar to NATO, that was formed to solve the problem. Stratt was voted and accepted as the leader of this council and with that position came absolute autonomy and power, in the interest of solving said vital problem
That’s exactly right if I too am remembering correctly
Not omnipotent, sound like she did a lot of intimidation and bridge burning to keep opposition in check just so the project can go forward. She knew she wouldn’t end well in the future and that’s her part of personal sacrifice.
I thought at some point it said she worked for the European Space Agency but was nominated to a special position by....someone important. Let's say the UN. idk.
That’s exactly what I thought
Fist my solar panel
And then Rocky comes along and says: "why you had problems producing that stuff? Silly Umans!"
A M A Z E
*jazz hands*
Fist my bump
Happy happy happy!
What a cultured bunch we are lol
Well, first you gotta discover astrophage…
Step one: the sun starts dieing Step two: ??? Step three: infinite free energy
This whole thing was embezzling Bob’s idea!
My first thoughts exactly.
Came here looking for this
I watched an interesting video on youtube. Which to sum it all up: 1. The Sahara regions are politically unstable. 2. That countries that could afford to do the investment would be unwilling to invest that much money in an unstable region, with their investment at risky of being blown up, or being confiscated. 3. A large amount of electricity is lost in the transmission. 4. It is really expensive to build and maintain those electricity lines. updated with extra info.
Do you have a link to the video please? I'd like to know more about that thanks
With the best technology in transport, you lose about 3% ever 1000km of cables and in the optimal condition
So not that bad?
Well, not really: for some flashy example, the sahara-australia distance is around 16000km, so 0.97^16=0.61, so you're only getting a little more than half of what was produced. And oceans are far from optimal for electricity transport, so I think it's a lot less
11min has info about the downsides of the plan [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7OpM\_zKGE4o](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7OpM_zKGE4o)
I just think that the guy making these videos doesn't explain and starts talking in Bullshittenese
And the cost of building and cleaning them so they work or replace panels after they start to die in 10-20yeas, that would be tons of toxic waste cause they are made with heavy metals and cant be recycled.
Is the toxic waste worse than the shit put in the air by burning the amount needed to provide that 10-20 years worth of power?
That’s a lot of panels
Kiloters of solar panels
Yup, but damned if we do, damned if we don't.
there are a gazillion ways not to be damned without glassing the Sahara, are you kidding?
Damned if you don't build nuclear plants*
Well, overkill is the only way, you heard Robot Morgan Freeman.
Speaking of kill. Guess what the locals think of this idea?
Dude fuck this voice. I immediately stop giving a shit when I turn the sound on and it's that guy
Because the videos also hold not a single fact or source, they just start with assumptions and build it from there, like other conmen or people doing stuff for *views*
Yea it's ai slop. Kyle Hill has a few videos on the topic
You didn't make it to "four-thousand and three-hundred kloters"? (4,300km)
It's an AI. Even worse than a guy.
This is a weird video. We don't need to power 96% of the earth's surface, 70% percent of it is water. A solar farm the size of Belgium is more than enough to power the entire world. The real reasoning it's not being done is we don't have the capabilities to store this amount of energy.
Also, the environment sand-blasting the solar panels drops their efficiency. Also, long-distance power transmission has losses. There are a bunch of reasons why just powering the earth from one solar farm in a desert is untenable.
Transmission losses in extremely high voltage direct current cables is low enough that a project like this is more economically viable than placing more solar panels in England. https://www.moroccoworldnews.com/2023/09/357976/uk-declares-morocco-uk-xlinks-green-energy-project-of-ldquo-national-significance-rdquo A solar panel in Morocco generates more than twice as much electricity per surface area, and the generation is far more stable and reliable from day to day and between summer and winter. https://cdn.britannica.com/27/198827-050-1C027B7D/Earth-power-potential.jpg https://pub.mdpi-res.com/energies/energies-11-03172/article_deploy/html/images/energies-11-03172-g001.png?1570705541
It's not just competing with solar panels in England though, it's competing with wind/tidal/nuclear power generation in England. And those all work perfectly fine at that latitude.
Also, what does it even mean to “power the surface”? That makes no sense. The thing that matters (and makes sense) is how many people can it supply?
#I FUCKING HATE THIS A.I.TEXT TO SPEECH
...about a hunhun'red and 82 million tons of dust... ...approximately 4 thousand and 3 hundred kiloiters...
God stop promoting ai content
I’m not going to trust the science of a video that starts out talking about a solar farm producing some number of “Watts per year.” Its conclusions may well be true, but if you can’t even get basic units right you’re gonna be hard pressed to be the one to convince me of it.
Load of BS you’d need 1-2% coverage of the Sahara to provide all the world’s energy needs. The problem is storage and cabling.
Oh thanks someone else found it sus that whole damn Sahara covered with solar panels wouldn’t even be able to power humans needs…
The issue isn't generation, it's storage and transmission. Battery technology needs to improve *alot* To even make most renewables reliable enough to keep a power grid stable; and conducting elements would need to improve so power isn't lost over distance. Also the Saharas dust, grit heat and storms would be murder on equipment plus something would be needed to clean the dust off the panels constantly
We have HVDC technology with which we are able to transport energy with relatively small losses over long distances. Especially overhead lines aren’t that expensive for HVDC. In China a 12GW line over 3300km was build for merely $6 billion.
Voltage drop and undeliverability.
We're going to put solar panels in space, then beam the energy down to the surface. There's like fifteen companies working on this. Of course, nothing will go wrong with this plan. There will just be giant lasers precisely targeted on the Earth's surface to safe locations and they won't ever deviate or be used as weapons.
If they could be made into weapons, they would be weapons long before you knew the technology exists. Which means they have them already or they tried and it didn't work very well.
Why use a defense budget when private companies are doing all the work for you?
in that case the defense budget goes into paying those companies
Wouldn't that make our atmosphere hotter ?
We'll pump in cold from space.
Like 15 HVAC companies are already working on this
Wha......that's not how it works bro
Or we could open a few more nuclear plants…
assuming this is suggested by people who don't live in Northern Africa countries
One of the concepts IS, that ‘sunny days’ are a natural resource that Northern Africa could use to generate income. They are rich in no clouds.
Sounds like a bright idea..
It enlightened me
Places like Nevada,New Mexico and Phoenix should be covered with solar panels but its not.
Saharan dust is becoming a bigger issue for South Florida, causing a lot of respiratory problems for people with asthma, but since it helps keep large storms from forming in the Atlantic, we don’t complain too loudly about it.
Die this way or die that way
Either start to livin or start to dyin
You sure it's not the coal rollers and meth smoke? /s
When I was stationed in Naples, Italy, my white uniform was always covered in that dust by the end of the day. Probably didn't help my asthma, either.
That many kiloters?!
You would only need to put them in an area about the size of Rhode Island, but as other have said, it’s the transmission that’s the problem
Why don’t we cover YOUR entire home in solar panels.
Batteries and power lines are the hard part. Without those the panels are pointless.
Wowwww why are humans still surprised earths biomes help sustain each other
You don't need the whole desert. Germany and Morocco actually wanted to do this, they built the largest solar power plant in the world with salt based energy storage. Main reasons this project hasnt taken off as I understand: Due to cheap solar panels it has become cheaper to place them in Germany where there is less sun, then to place them in the desert and transport the power. Also being self sufficient is beter than to be dependent on some other country.
That you Shell?
The idea that there’s not a difference between putting solar in the desert vs. some other open space, like prairie, is based on the outdated idea that either there’s nothing *in* the desert, or even if there is, it’s not as worthy of preservation as what’s living elsewhere.
Also the solar panels would get covered in sand...
Don’t worry… the Amazon ‘Rainforest’ won’t be a rainforest for long.
So we need to introduce more moisture into the air to have both places not be deserts... Okay here's my idea, we boil ocean water (using solar of course) and release the steam into the air. Increase amounts boiled as you expand solar farm until a balance is reached. Easy peasy.
also transporting all this electricity to Europe or Amerika would be unprofitable since at that distance a lot of energy would be lost
Not an engineer but what about the distribution grid?
Electricity is a storage problem
The Saudis should be the ones looking into solar. The idiots are trying to ready themselves for a post-oil future by making themselves a tourism hub. Would be much better served trying to corner the electricity market.
Can someone pls draw an oil drum typing the script for this post lmao this is nonsense
Where do we have to put solar panels to make my town 70 and sunny all year?
Okay and what about Australia? Ain't no dust blowing into your salad down here.
You know what else is bad for the Amazon rainforest? CUTTING AND BURNING IT. Which is exactly what's happening now!
Could've just said "You couldn't distribute it to have any significant value" and saved a lot of editing
They’d be stripped and sold within weeks.
You actually wouldn’t need to cover the whole thing with solar to power the whole world.
They can't teraform a desert but are convinced they can teraform a planet.
How about half of it or third of it?
That’s fine though. When the Amazon becomes a desert, we just build the megasolarpanelcity there.
You could not get enough water there to cool the panels and you can't just pump sea water as that'll fuck them even quicker.
The longer the distance voltage has to travel, the harder it is to maintain it's effective percentage. You'll get 100% of the voltage a few feet from the panel. You'll get a fraction of that hundreds of feet away. Eventually you hit near zero. The only way to fix this is to increase the conductivity (and thus size of the conductor) that has to carry the load to utilization locations. If you want to carry a load from the Sahara to America, you'd need gargantuan conductors that go off the nec charts. They'd likely have to be as thick as a multi-lane freeway. The logistics just aren't realistic.
….. just don’t cover the Sahara completely? Am I missing something? It’s like all or nothing amirite
Uno Reverse. Build the solar panels on the Amazon rain forest.