Friday, April 06, 2007

Smoke Sculptures

Solar Land Area

Image:Solar land area.png

Solar power systems installed in the areas defined by the dark disks could provide a little more than the world's current total primary energy demand (assuming a conversion efficiency of 8%). That is, all energy currently consumed, including heat, electricity, fossil fuels, etc., would be produced in the form of electricity by solar cells. The colors in the map show the local solar irradiance averaged over three years from 1991 to 1993 (24 hours a day) taking into account the cloud coverage available from weather satellites.

You can find a more detailed description and sources at http://www.ez2c.de/ml/solar_land_area/