• Collatz_problem [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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    11 days ago

    You still didn’t take into account day and night, weather and losses due to energy transfer over long distances. And solar cells degrade over time, lowering their efficiency. Calculating only by nominal power is wrong even for coal (capacity factor ~ 60%) and nuclear power (capacity factor ~ 90%), and for solar it varies wildly depending on where it is located. In Arizona deserts it reaches almost 30%, in Bavaria only 12%, and the farther to the North you go, the worse it is.

    • WrongOnTheInternet [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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      11 days ago

      Addressed in the first paragraph - 1 kw is 24 kWh a day. 5 kWh suggests a 20 percent capacity factor. Degradation is minimal (less than a percent a year).

      Why would you be going further north than Bavaria? Bavaria is already very north. 90 percent of the world’s population lives south of Germany, roughly.

      Anyway you’ll see the last 3.3 percent of total land area is what would be required if solar only had a capacity factor of two percent.