I wonder how much rooftop space in Vienna could be cannibalized for solar panels.
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I think your calculations are off. I think that you're including the number for everything including manufacturing etc.
If you're just powering a home, the average American household averages around 11 megawatt.
Its not super wrong to include external costs as well, but it definitely explains the crazy estimate they got to.
The most misleading part is that this is cherry picking a dense city, and implying all power generation needs to be within city limits. 3 out 11 thermal power stations in Austria are in Vienna, the rest are outside of the main city.
yeah i included manufacturing because i was like "most big factories are in or close to big cities, because that's where the workforce lives, so it makes sense to build factories there. and factories need energy."
ofc small variations in power are a given, because you have things like electricity being more efficient than oil, so you need fewer kWh, and such.
Imagine how far down they would have to drill to find oil in Vienna, though.
Imagine how deep the mine would have to be to find coal under Vienna.
So combine it with other renewable energy, you know, how it's usually done.
Vienna isn't even the worst place for solar power. Consider places like Ireland, Scotland or Sweden for example. No wonder why wind, hydro or even tidal power suddenly begins to make a lot more sense. IMO, solar really begins to make sense in Spain, Italy, Greece and Turkey. Those places actually get some decent sunshine. Using solar power in Austria should be ok, but it's not great by any means.
Nearby mountains probably get in the way of building large solar facilities. Maybe you could combine solar power with farming. The panels can provide some shade to more sensitive plants.
See also: Solar Atlas
Sidenote: Iceland and the northern half of Norway, Sweden and Finland aren't even on the map. I guess Solar Atlas is trying to tell you that you don't need a fancy map to know that building solar in places like that is a waste of money.
It depends on the size and geography of your installation. Everywhere short of the arctic circle, solar is more dependable than wind for a single home size or smaller installation. Wind and tidal power come in when you can throw up a bunch of 300m windmills to power a town. Wind in particular needs a very large area, and multiple disbursed areas are even better.
Does it need to be in the city, though?
Also for reference from Google ai: For global electricity needs: An area of approximately 40,000 to 55,000 square kilometers (about 15,000 to 21,000 square miles) could theoretically generate the world's total electricity consumption. This is less than 1% of the total land area of the United States. For total global energy needs: The estimated area is around 497,000 square kilometers (about 192,000 square miles), roughly the size of Spain. This covers the total projected energy demands, including converting non-electric needs (like transport fuel) to solar-generated power.
The thing is it doesn't need to be produced in the city. Cities are notoriously population dense. If you take into account the energy usage of the surrounding rural areas and the land area that they have, it starts to be a tiny proportion of all of the land area of a country, rather than a city.
yeah it's sth like 1% of humanity's total land area usage (i did that math last week). 97% of humanity's land area usage go to agriculture


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