Speaking crudely of crude oil....according to a recently published book by a retired petroleum engineer who also taught at Princeton for years, we will see world oil production peak somewhere between 2004-2008. (This same model was used in the 1950s to correcly project U.S. production peaking in the early 1970s.) Use your imagination to figure out where the cost of oil is going to go as the developing world (especially India, China, Indonesia, Brazil) growing their economies. Wouldn't it be grand if more policymakers believed that we ought to use to dwindling fossil fuels to develop renewables, use the energy in a barrel of oil to build PV modules.
marco in Hilo where we don't worry about anthrax too much, just dengue fever (stay away from the east end of Maui!)
>Forecasts are that in the year 2000, energy demands will be the
equivalent of
>14 billion barrels of crude oil per year. To meet this requirement, 800
km
>square of solar cells would be needed, assuming a conversion efficiency
of
>10%.
Wow, 800 km square of solar cells! Installing 800 million 100 watt PV
modules (or 80 000 MW of PV) will keep a lot of wrenches busy.
But I had to ask myself, "Is it feasible?"
Well, if we assume the growth in PV manufacturing continues at 30% per
year. It will only take about 17 or 18 years to reach 80 GW of installed
PV. A tad optimistic perhaps?
If we assume only 10% growth, it still takes less than 40 years.
And 5% growth gives us less than 70 years.
And 3% still gives less than 90 years.
I hope my math is correct
Thanks Joel,maybe we can change the world.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Eric Smiley
Project Leader - BCIT Technology Centre
NE25-3700 Willingdon Ave. Burnaby, BC V5G 3H2
ph: (604)432-8657 esmiley@bcit.ca www.tc.bcit.ca
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