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Wednesday, February 28, 2007 11:46:26 AM
A lot's been said lately about how much energy is in a cubic mile of oil. This is roughly the amount the world uses in a year. According to IEEE Spectrum, a cubic mile of oil has energy equivalent to:
4 Three Gorges dams, cranking for 50 years.
32850 1.65 megawatt wind turbines, cranking for 50 years (100% capacity factor).
91,250,000 2.1 kW solar PV installations, for 50 years.
104 500 megawatt coal-fired electric plants, for 50 years.
52 1.1 gigawatt nuclear electric plants, for 50 years.
Leaving aside some errors (the coal and nuclear numbers are off by about 10% to each other, and the capacity factor of wind turbines should be closer to 30%) the most essential oversight in that equation is elephantine:
It compares oil's inputs to the other's outputs.
Compared to that, the rest is small potatoes.
4 Three Gorges dams, cranking for 50 years.
32850 1.65 megawatt wind turbines, cranking for 50 years (100% capacity factor).
91,250,000 2.1 kW solar PV installations, for 50 years.
104 500 megawatt coal-fired electric plants, for 50 years.
52 1.1 gigawatt nuclear electric plants, for 50 years.
Leaving aside some errors (the coal and nuclear numbers are off by about 10% to each other, and the capacity factor of wind turbines should be closer to 30%) the most essential oversight in that equation is elephantine:
It compares oil's inputs to the other's outputs.
Compared to that, the rest is small potatoes.
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