The Geopolitics of a Solar Powered World

So, I was watching a clip on CNN about villages in Africa that use small solar panels to power radios and even laptops. It got me thinking about what kind of changes - both major and minor in scope - would occur if the world turned to the Sun to fulfill its energy needs. I realize this is a big If, and while I do not know the specifics, I've been told solar power may never reach this kind of efficiency, but I still think its fun to think about it.

What I mean by geopolitics: if we accept the premise that the major conflicts the West - namely the USA - has been involved in after WWII are related to control of major resources, especially oil, how would the situation change if energy suddenly came from above, and was available nearly everywhere on the planet? Would wars be waged over the materials needed to produce the solar panels? Would water become the new prize in international conflicts?

And finally, how do you think everyday life would change? I've heard people say the world would return to a more local, communitarian form of life. What do you guys think?

Solar power is one of those tricky things. First, let me digress by noting that nearly every single bit of energy we obtain from this planet ultimately comes from the sun: coal and oil are the remains of living things, after all. But you're talking specifically about electricity obtained directly from sunlight, using photovoltaic cells, reflector arrays to heat water, etc.

The problem with solar power is that it requires, well, sunlight. As in, direct exposure, and the power you get is directly proportional to the area you expose. Further, it requires reliable sunlight, meaning that an area that's cloudy 75% of the year won't get nearly as much efficiency out of them as an area that's cloudy 25% of the year.

So right there you have competition: both for exposed surfaces on which to place cells, and just as importantly, areas of reliable sunlight. There's another industry that relies on large areas of reliable sunlight: farming. Whoops!

Energy storage, such as batteries, can store excess power against future needs, but batteries are bulky and expensive in the amounts required. Solar cells are also bulky and expensive, plus they are costly to maintain.

There's also the issue of efficiency: solar cells average 11-15% of the sunlight converted to usable energy. Solar plants utilizing more efficient techniques exist, but those are not the sort of thing that you can put on the roof of your house.

Finally, solar cells (and batteries) require materials to manufacture them, and some of those are are relatively rare.

So, you've replaced competition for coal and petroleum resources with competition for surface area to place solar cells, materials to make the solar cells (and batteries), and of course the financial resources to construct, install, and maintain all those solar cells. There ain't no such thing as a free lunch.

I'm not saying that solar power wouldn't be an improvement over petroleum and coal power in many ways, just that you're unlikely to stop wars with it.

edited 5th Jan '13 7:39:52 PM by Fighteer

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

The Chinese seem to be getting good at making solar pannels.

Which is probably why the E.U and the U.S.A are starting to put higher tariffs on them, to protect their local markets. Nothing wrong with that (except the hypocresy perhaps?).

China is better positioned than anyone else to exploit this new form of energy and they seem to be pushing for it. It shall be an intersting development.

So this is sort of like round 1 of the internation ramifications of this new energy souce.

edited 5th Jan '13 7:46:01 PM by Baff

I will always cherish the chance of a new beggining.

The simple solution would be to build a ton of them in deserts. They get lots of sun due to the lack of trees and moisture to make clouds and we don't usually use them for much because of these things. Unfortunately not every nation has deserts extensive enough to provide for its needs.

@OP: To answer your first question I think wars would be waged over the materials to build them and the empty desert space that we'd need to set them up in. Coincidentally the middle east would probably be the perfect spot to have large farms of them so that area would probably still be turbulent.

Water might not be as important as oil was but I have a feeling people would devote more time to acquiring it than before.

I don't think we'd go back to farm life but, at least in the US, power companies would lose a lot of business in the south and west. Places in the Northeast would still rely on them extensively but the amount of customers would drop. If they were sensible they'd get into the business of making solar panels but many probably won't before it's too late. I have a feeling the average standard of living would rise a little since people don't spend as much money on energy as they used to.

This might be the first time I've heard deserts described as a scarce resource.

I remember doubting solar before because I read that no matter how good technology got, there was only a finite amount of sunlight in a given area. Anyone know the approximate limit on energy per square meter?

You guys mentionned that deserts would be the best spot for solar panels, but what about mountains? Don't quote me, but I think that we have a fair amount of mountains in North America (more than deserts anyway), and assuming those are high enough to be above most of the clouds, couldn't we build farms out of those?

I even go as far as suggesting floating rigs on seas or even large lakes. I mean, yes, it would be a lot more complicated than strapping the suckers on land, and there could be thousands of things that go wrong. But then you think about the oiling rigs that we have across the world, set in water on top of pillars. We could build some of those bad boys too to get more juice out of the sun.

Another thing that we should consider is that if the Sun became our main source of energy, then the advances in technology in that field would be quite bigger. Solar pannels are somewhat overlooked nowadays.

Anyway, that's my 2 cents.

Yeah. Funny how things like that could work.

This has a lot of info. It starts talking a bit more about efficiency half way down.

Possible. I didn't mention them because I assumed it would be harder to get to them if we needed to do maintenance.

There could be other problems though. The mountains where I live are densely forested which means we'd need to do a lot of cutting. The environmentalist in me would like to avoid that since putting them in the desert wouldn't be harming as many animals. Those that aren't densely forested usually aren't because they're so high up that it's too cold and when you get that high up snow forms. The panels would probably get covered by this and as I said getting to the panels to clear them would be a pain. Deserts also lack this problem since they get little in the way of moisture to make snow.

The floating rigs are a nice idea but they can't be too far out to sea. To my knowledge the most efficient way of transporting solar energy is through cables. You can't just take a solid or liquid object and move it somewhere on boats. That puts a limit on how far they can be from the coast.

edited 5th Jan '13 8:14:42 PM by Kostya

I think power is something best provided locally, so I don't really see powerplants out in the deserts of New Mexico trying to provide a lot of power to other states. Course I live in the only state that has a powergrid contained entirely within its own borders; Everyone else is incredibly interconnected.

Anyway, I had to work as a sort of usher at a solar power convention once, and one of the things I saw was solar panels that would be put on top of a car port. Something you could use for an apartment complex, for supplemental power needs. Doesn't move the need for other power entirely, but it could serve the purpose of being an emergency generator. (Which would help a lot of people when it's over a hundred degrees and we experience a black out.)

A lot of what the folks there were selling were just supplemental things you could attach to your house. Maybe the government could do something like add these on to government housing to give the industry a kick in cash and usability.

Deserts have a lot of sand and would require a regular crew to go out there and clean the things. I also think you're underestimating the biodiversity of the desert. Lots of animals out there.

edited 5th Jan '13 8:21:22 PM by AceofSpades

True. It would probably still be easier to get to a plant in the desert than one on top of a mountain though. Building them also wouldn't necessitate cutting tons of trees.

Mountains seem more conductive to wind farms than solar ones.

It depends on the mountain I guess. There are some more suitable than others for the purpose. Though the snow thing can be a serious problem, but if we have some technicians living on site to maintain the facilities we could reduce the problemnote

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And the way I see it with the sea rigs, we could do some pipelines for the cable running electricity back to the coast. After all, we already do that with oil, I don't see why not with cable. Otherwise, there's also lakes, those could house one or two pannels, depending on the ones. Additionnaly, here in Quebec we have a handful of hydro-electric dams, we could probably plug some solar pannel on the water reserve they create with the installations.

I imagine the technicians in such a scenario would be switched out every few months. I think oil rigs do that with their workers.

I didn't think about that but I suppose they could be built further out in the ocean.

The most efficient way to gather solar power would be a Dyson Sphere or at least some form of orbital relays. Getting the power to Earth would be a bit tricky; I've heard ideas about giant masers, but pointing a massive death ray at our own planet seems kind of ... well, dumb.

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

Do we even need that much energy? Even if we stopped using non-renewable sources we'd still have nulcear, wind, and tidal power to supplement solar power if it's not enough.

A Dyson sphere would just be overkill.

Unless you're one of those "if it's worth doing, then it's worth overdoing" guy.

I actually read an article about how we could build a Dyson sphere like that by dismantling the entirety of Mercury. Course, this was about providing energy to two planets, because Mars was also involved in this space age scenario. Due a system restore I no longer have the article now, but I think it was on iO9.

Since Solar Panels intercept sunlight, would enough of them have a noticeable effect on climate?

Dont they reflect sun light?

They would probably have a cooling effect. But then, it will never reach the scale to where it could seriously affect the global climate

Unless of course you put them in space at a certain distance in between the sun and the earth.

edited 5th Jan '13 9:22:03 PM by Baff

I will always cherish the chance of a new beggining.

@Kostya: Short of a complete collapse, "MORE POWER" is pretty much the norm for modern society. There may not be need for it now, but ultimately there will be call for it unless where you live goes the way of the Roman Empire (at which point solar power on an industrial scale becomes something of a moot point anyway ).

edited 5th Jan '13 9:23:00 PM by Nohbody

All your safe space are belong to Trump

Wouldn't that go contrary to their purpose, to allow light to bounce off?

Though I'd need to look into solar panels to get a good idea..

nevermind...

edited 5th Jan '13 9:25:36 PM by Baff

I will always cherish the chance of a new beggining.

Did anyone here hear about those solar batteries that are actually capable of storing a charge?

Eating a Vanilluxe will give you frostbite.

Removing the importance of one resource would not remove war over resources.

Solar Power Density since someone asked.

You could always throw a bunch of solar panels with a hydrolizer array out on the ocean and ship the hydrogen back for fuel. That said, the further you have to ship power, the worse off it generally is.

The main reason I've seen a lot of African villages use solar power and meet all of their energy needs is the lack of infrastructure. Solar panels are relatively solid state, combined with the relatively low power requirements of subsistence agriculture, solar and a windmill or two make up a lot of the requirements. You saw the same thing in the old west with windmills working for most situations, but it's hardly a comfortable life style.

Fight smart, not fair.

I see less "cover the deserts" and more "everyone has a ton of that stuff on their roof".

Share it so that people can get into this conversation, 'cause we're not the only ones who think like this.

Well, yeah. It makes much more sense to have the power provider closer to where people are actually living. That's where most panels are being installed NOW, anyway. On the buildings that are going to use them.

But seriously, I don't think we're going to have a war over sunlight. Even with bad weather, sunlight is essentially free. It's more about getting the infrastructure up.

That may end up being to their advantage in the long run. As they increase their wealth (hopefully, because there's many things that can go wrong in Africa) then they can increase their infrastructure, which right now includes the solar panel and windmills. They won't have to spend a whole lot of money in the initial set up replacing things. (Not sure just how much of an advantage this is.)

I imagine that a solar-powered world would see a serious effort by the European Union to convince both North Africa and Europe that their countries are eligible for EU membership after all...

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