How much land will PV need to supply our electricity? If photovoltaics were a primary energy source, what would the world look like? Would PV collectors cover every square inch of available land? Contrary to popular opinion, a world relying on PV would offer a landscape almost indistinguishable from...
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| Language: | English |
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| Online Access: | http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.367.1285 http://hubbertpeak.com/apollo2/photovoltaics/HowMuchLandNREL.pdf |
| Summary: | How much land will PV need to supply our electricity? If photovoltaics were a primary energy source, what would the world look like? Would PV collectors cover every square inch of available land? Contrary to popular opinion, a world relying on PV would offer a landscape almost indistinguishable from the landscape we know today. The impact of PV on the landscape would be low for three reasons. First, PV systems have siting advantages over other technologies; for example, PV can be put on roofs. Second, even ground-mounted PV collectors are efficient from the perspective of land use. Third, adequate sunlight is ubiquitous and present in predictable amounts almost every w h e re. As we move away from fossil-fuel energy, PV use will be crucial because of its land-use advantages. PV’s Low-Impact Siting for Flat-Plate Systems In the United States, cities and residences cover about 140 million acres of land. We could supply every kilowatt-hour of our nation’s current electricity requirements simply by applying PV to 7 % of this area—on roofs, on parking lots, along highway walls, on the sides of buildings, and in other dual-use scenarios. We wouldn’t have to appropriate a single acre of new land to make PV our primary energy source! PV’s Efficient Ratio of Produced Energy to Land Use Even if it isn’t installed on rooftops, flat-plate PV technology is the most land-efficient means to produce renewable energ y. As the table to the right shows, PV has a competitive convert e r efficiency, a high capacity factor, and can be “packed” densely in a given area. Rooftop PV is practical in urban areas with high land costs. PV graces a rooftop in Brisbane, Australia. One way to understand land-use issues for different energy sources is to realize that the federal government idles 30 million acres of farmland every year—or three times the area needed to generate all our electricity from sunlight. We also set aside 23 million acres of land for the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, which is more than twice the acreage needed to ... |
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