Will China'S Largest Desert Be Installed On Solar Panels, Enough For People Around The World To Use Electricity?
The Taklimakan Desert is the largest desert in China and one of the top ten deserts in the world. It is located in the Tarim Basin of Xinjiang, and almost all of the area of 330,000 square kilometers is covered by yellow sand. Since the annual precipitation is less than 100 mm, at least 300 days a year are high in the sun. If you take advantage of the light in the Taklimakan Desert, all of them are used to build solar power stations, enough for people around the world to use electricity?
NASA has done a study on solar energy, and the conclusion is quite amazing: every square meter of desert can receive 2000-3000 kWh of solar energy per year; if you do not calculate the loss, convert all the solar energy into electricity, then you can let 1000 The electrical appliance of the tile is used for 3,000 hours. In other words, every 2 square meters can meet the electricity consumption of a family for one year, and can meet 500,000 household electricity consumption per square kilometer.
If calculated according to the above ideal algorithm, the Taklimakan Desert can meet the electricity needs of 165 million homes. However, the global population is only over 7 billion, so only 10,000 square kilometers is needed to meet the electricity needs of all the families in the world. Therefore, it is sufficient to install only the ideal solar power station in the area of 1/33 of the Taklimakan Desert.
At present, there are two kinds of equipment for converting electric energy into solar energy in the world, one is concentrated solar energy, and the other is conventional photovoltaic solar panel. Concentrating solar energy is to install countless mirrors on the ground, then focus the sunlight on a point, make this point very hot, and then use hot water to drive the steam turbine to generate electricity. However, the mirror on the ground is easily covered by sandstorms. The steam turbine is complicated to operate and requires water. The solar conversion rate may not be 1%.
Photovoltaic solar panels are easy to operate, and the panels directly convert solar energy into electrical energy, and the size is not limited, so it is the most common method of solar power generation. However, there is a drawback in this method, that is, when the temperature of the panel is too high, the power generation efficiency is lowered. Although the Taklimakan Desert is northerly, the summer heat often exceeds 45 °C, and sometimes even directly to 60 °C.
In an optimal environment, solar panels are typically converted to electrical energy efficiency of only 18%. When solar panels are exposed to aging, high temperature environments, dust occlusion, etc., the conversion rate may not even reach 5%. In fact, it is impossible to cover all the ground when the solar panel is installed, and at least half of the space is left for maintenance. In this way, 2% of solar energy is converted into electricity. According to this calculation, it is a coincidence that the Taklimakan Desert is full of solar panels that can only supply power to 3.3 billion households, just enough for the world to use electricity.