305
'Limitless' energy: how floating solar panels near the equator could power future population hotspots
(theconversation.com)
this post was submitted on 04 Aug 2023
305 points (93.4% liked)
Technology
59314 readers
4719 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Current power demand worldwide could be satisfied with around 115k sq miles of conventional panels. That’s around the size of Arizona or Bulgaria - which is a lot, but also a minuscule amount compared to the earths surface. There’s little need to put panels on the ocean, and it also puts the generation remote from most of the energy usage.
Room temperature superconductor (if it’s real) changes the game. We could pave the southwest in panels and send the power where it needs to go.
It's such a weird nerdy thing. And, yeah, if it's true and manufacturable, the rest of this century is going to be fucking wild.