India predicts it will exceed Paris renewable energy target by half

[Flatlander]

Chuck "It's not what you don't know that will hurt you, it's what you think you know that ain't so." Or there abouts. Mark Twain

[oneoff]

Note had to edit a pretty gross oversight mistaking TeraWattHours for Terawatt data......I've stuck with 10 to 15th power (Peta) to simplify comparisons

Data below from of all places ....BP or British Petroleums. They have a nice interactive chart going back to at least 1986. BP has all data in one place and I'll rely on it until shown to be substantially inaccurate. Please visit. Its got data on every imaginable source.

http://tools.bp.com/energy-charting-tool.aspx#/st/electricity/dt/generation/unit/TWH/region/NOA/SCA/EU/MIE/AFR/AP/view/area

World electrical energy production in 2015 is broken down as follows

Total World electrical generation 25.1 PetawattHours of which North America produced 5.2, South and Central America 1.3; Europe and Eurasia 5.3; Middle East 1.1; Africa 0.7 and Asia Pacific 10.4

In 1986 10.1 PetaWattHours of electrical energy were produced worldwide. Now a lot of electrical generation is done with an efficiency of 30 to 50 percent. You know, making steam through burning fuels to produce steam to turn turbines to the transform and distributes at various voltages over a grid network. You can only fine tune the processes to minimize losses so much. A whole like wind generation and solar panel losses from their own suite of power robbing factors.

I'm going to take a break and see if anyone has comments and corrections that should be made before running the calculations that at first glance are looking like 5 or so PetaWattHours potential output once every acre of world land is covered with solar panels...is going to be about twice current electrical generation output. Downtime and outages would be nil. Efficiencies 100% and so on. Still sounds very scary to me.

[oneoff]

Looks like IEA figures above might also be their estimates for electrical energy. I would have thought they could more clearly say they were reporting electrical power (or electrical generation) so may have been mislead somewhat.

More research needed on Total world energy usage (not just electrical which should be just a fraction of total energy usage for manufacturing, heating, transport etc.etc).

[Daylate]

You don't even have to read between the lines with the retarded post from India. Summed up, he said we have a plan so all wealthy nations give me money. We'll show the world it can be done. Just gimmie gimmie."
Now fast forward to 2027. Oh, looks like our cost structures were off, if we're going to me these targets we need more money from wealthy nations. Or we'll have to abandon the costly programs.

[AlbertaFarmer5]

Oneoff, thanks for your research and time invested in showing exposing the lunacy of some of these claims, I intend to do the math for myself too.

There was a comment on capturing solar power affecting weather. Perhaps we should be considering that as a goal, rather than a side effect? if we were to block enough of the suns energy from hitting the oceans in the right place, could we alter currents enough to change the climate enough to increase the arable acres in the northern latitudes? Make it rain in the Sahara again? Or at least improve winter in Winnipeg?

[westernvicki]

http://www.mnn.com/green-tech/research-innovations/blogs/panel-that-works-in-the-dark-puts-solar-on-fast-track-to-ubiqu

Pretty normal stuff in on most roof tops in China today.

[chuckChuck]

Could Solar Alone Entirely Replace Fossil Fuels?
concentrated solar power
If we were able to capture 100% of the sunlight the earth gets each day, would that be enough solar power to replace the fossil fuels that the world uses in that day?

The answer is yes, according to experts at NREL. That would be far more than enough. As of 2012, the entire world used 17.7 terawatts for the year. About 10,000 times that much sunlight fell on the earth in that year; 170,000 terawatts.

So, yes, it is actually much more than possible, because ten thousand times as much sunlight falls on the earth as we would need to do it.

Put another way, we only need to capture 1 ten-thousandth of the sunlight hitting earth to entirely power the world with solar power.

Many studies have shown that a relatively small patch of the Sahara desert, for example, could power the entire world. Of course, then there would need to be long transmission cables to the rest of the world, and practical considerations.

So in practice large solar plants are simply being built closer to cities around the world, or lots of small solar arrays right on each rooftop.
But, how can solar provide power at night?
Energy storage.

At the individual rooftop level, batteries make it possible to store the solar energy from PV, for use after dark.

Solar PV, the panels you put on a roof, absorbs only the light frequencies, and can turn this part of the spectrum into electricity instantly and directly to supply daytime solar needs.

A different kind of solar power absorbs solar energy just from the heat spectrum in that same sunlight falling on earth.

Solar thermal electric (STE) power plants boil a liquid using that heat, to run a steam turbine to generate electricity. This liquid, usually molten salt, can be stored in gigantic tanks for up to two months without losing heat. This cheap thermal energy storage can then be sent back and run through the power block to make electricity whenever called upon.

Co-located solar plants of these two types can absorb different parts of the spectrum of sunlight, and use part of the sunlight for electricity in the day, and a different part of the spectrum; heat, for power after dark.

Combining these two forms of solar energy capture, one taking the light and the other taking the heat, both days and nights can be supplied with solar energy, because with very cheap thermal energy storage, solar power becomes completely dispatchable, that is, it can be sent to the grid on demand.

Some solar plants are already being built that combine these two kinds of solar, both PV, and CSP – or concentrated solar power, as this is sometimes called. In Chile, where fossil fuels are more expensive than solar, a combined PV/CSP plant is being built that will run 24 hours a day. A small battery remains solar-PV charged also, because the solar steam-powered turbines take about half an hour to get to full power.
Driving on sunshine?
Yes, that’s next:

Once solar supplies all the global electricity needs, then switching from driving a heavy combustion engine to driving a simple electric motor completes the transition for both individual vehicles but also buses and high-speed trains, all run on solar electricity.

So, yes, solar alone could replace fossil fuels. In practice, wind makes more economic sense than solar in some cloudy, windy regions, so the world is rapidly growing both renewables.