Noggin01 t1_ixv5zda wrote
Reply to comment by [deleted] in Europe wants to harness the power of the sun... from space/The ESA wants to collect solar energy from the cosmos to help the continent meet climate targets by Sorin61
Each satellite would generate about 2 GigaWatts of power. I didn't see in the article where it stated how many satellites would be built and launched. Let's assume 1,000, which I think is a pretty large number for what is being planned. No sources for that, I'm just guessing. I could be off by a lot. Those 1,000 satellites would generate 2 terawatts of power. If we assume that these satellites generate power all day long, that comes out to 2 TW * 365 * 24 hours = 17,520 TWh
According to this page, the total amount of sunlight power hitting earth at any given time is 173,000 terawatts.
I used to think similarly about nuclear power since it is converting mass to energy. Let's look at that too.
This page indicates 885 million terawatt hours of power reaches Earth from the sun.
This page indicates that in 2021, all nuclear energy produced added up to about 2653 terawatt hours.
Energy from the sun: 885,000,000 terawatt hours
Nuclear energy: 2,653 terawatt hours
1,000 solar satellites: 17,520 terawatt hours
Even at that absurd number of satellites, we're still only generating (capturing and transmitting) less that 0.002% of the sunlight that is already hitting the Earth.
Greenhouse gasses are estimated to capture/hold 5-6% of the sunlight energy that reaches Earth. That works out to 44,250,000 terawatthours of captured energy.
If my numbers are off, please correct them. But the amount of energy that humans can generate or capture is a pittance compared to what is captured by greenhouse gas emissions.
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