'We Mapped Every Large Solar Plant on Earth Using Satellites and Machine Learning' (theconversation.com) 82
A team of researchers built a machine learning system to scan satellite images for solar energy-generating facilities greater than 10 kilowatts and then deployed the system on over 550 terabytes of imagery "using several human lifetimes of computing."
Team-member Lucas Kruitwagen, a climate change/AI researcher at Oxford, reveals what they learned. "We searched almost half of Earth's land surface area, filtering out remote areas far from human populations." In total we detected 68,661 solar facilities. Using the area of these facilities, and controlling for the uncertainty in our machine learning system, we obtain a global estimate of 423 gigawatts of installed generating capacity at the end of 2018. This is very close to the International Renewable Energy Agency's (IRENA) estimate of 420 GW for the same period. Our study shows solar PV generating capacity grew by a remarkable 81% between 2016 and 2018, the period for which we had timestamped imagery. Growth was led particularly by increases in India (184%), Turkey (143%), China (120%) and Japan (119%). Facilities ranged in size from sprawling gigawatt-scale desert installations in Chile, South Africa, India and north-west China, through to commercial and industrial rooftop installations in California and Germany, rural patchwork installations in North Carolina and England, and urban patchwork installations in South Korea and Japan...
Using the back catalogue of satellite imagery, we were able to estimate installation dates for 30% of the facilities. Data like this allows us to study the precise conditions which are leading to the diffusion of solar energy, and will help governments better design subsidies to encourage faster growth. Knowing where a facility is also allows us to study the unintended consequences of the growth of solar energy generation. In our study, we found that solar power plants are most often in agricultural areas, followed by grasslands and deserts.
This highlights the need to carefully consider the impact that a ten-fold expansion of solar PV generating capacity will have in the coming decades on food systems, biodiversity, and lands used by vulnerable populations. Policymakers can provide incentives to instead install solar generation on rooftops which cause less land-use competition, or other renewable energy options.
A note at the end of the article adds that the researchers' code and data repositories have been made available online "to facilitate more research of this type and to kickstart the creation of a complete, open, and current dataset of the planet's solar energy facilities."
Team-member Lucas Kruitwagen, a climate change/AI researcher at Oxford, reveals what they learned. "We searched almost half of Earth's land surface area, filtering out remote areas far from human populations." In total we detected 68,661 solar facilities. Using the area of these facilities, and controlling for the uncertainty in our machine learning system, we obtain a global estimate of 423 gigawatts of installed generating capacity at the end of 2018. This is very close to the International Renewable Energy Agency's (IRENA) estimate of 420 GW for the same period. Our study shows solar PV generating capacity grew by a remarkable 81% between 2016 and 2018, the period for which we had timestamped imagery. Growth was led particularly by increases in India (184%), Turkey (143%), China (120%) and Japan (119%). Facilities ranged in size from sprawling gigawatt-scale desert installations in Chile, South Africa, India and north-west China, through to commercial and industrial rooftop installations in California and Germany, rural patchwork installations in North Carolina and England, and urban patchwork installations in South Korea and Japan...
Using the back catalogue of satellite imagery, we were able to estimate installation dates for 30% of the facilities. Data like this allows us to study the precise conditions which are leading to the diffusion of solar energy, and will help governments better design subsidies to encourage faster growth. Knowing where a facility is also allows us to study the unintended consequences of the growth of solar energy generation. In our study, we found that solar power plants are most often in agricultural areas, followed by grasslands and deserts.
This highlights the need to carefully consider the impact that a ten-fold expansion of solar PV generating capacity will have in the coming decades on food systems, biodiversity, and lands used by vulnerable populations. Policymakers can provide incentives to instead install solar generation on rooftops which cause less land-use competition, or other renewable energy options.
A note at the end of the article adds that the researchers' code and data repositories have been made available online "to facilitate more research of this type and to kickstart the creation of a complete, open, and current dataset of the planet's solar energy facilities."
Impact of solar? (Score:5, Insightful)
"consider the impact that a ten-fold expansion of solar PV generating capacity will have in the coming decades on food systems, biodiversity, and lands used by vulnerable populations"
I'll go out on a limb here and say that it'll be considerably less than continuing to burn fossil fuels instead.
Re:Impact of solar? (Score:5, Interesting)
"consider the impact that a ten-fold expansion of solar PV generating capacity will have in the coming decades on food systems, biodiversity, and lands used by vulnerable populations"
I'll go out on a limb here and say that it'll be considerably less than continuing to burn fossil fuels instead.
Yep. In fact it will be a net benefit because you site them in places with low biodiversity anyway (because of access issues) and some crops or any grazing land can coexist with solar panels, meanwhile the solar replaces or removes the need for forms of power which actually harm food production and/or quality.
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Indeed. I do wonder why some of the north african nations arn't starting to mass install solar power stations. A connector to spain and from there the rest of the EU would be easily doable across the straits of gibralter.
Re:Impact of solar? (Score:5, Informative)
Indeed. I do wonder why some of the north african nations arn't starting to mass install solar power stations. A connector to spain and from there the rest of the EU would be easily doable across the straits of gibralter.
Morocco already has two connections to Spain and another one planned. Plus there's an undersea connection direct to the UK being planned. This has already began.
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Plus there's an undersea connection direct to the UK being planned.
From Morocco to UK? Most certainly not. Unless you want to count Gibraltar as part of the UK.
Re:Impact of solar? (Score:4)
Plus there's an undersea connection direct to the UK being planned.
From Morocco to UK? Most certainly not. Unless you want to count Gibraltar as part of the UK.
No really; I thought it was a bit crazy too. Meant to connect to Wales. Presumably the fact they don't want to go via Spain is somehow related to Brexit?
https://electrek.co/2021/09/27... [electrek.co]
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Interesting link. But makes no sense.
They would be better of to just connect to Spain.
Brexit has no real impact on European power markets. Especially as the UK is already good connected (albeit we wanted to improve that before Brexit to import Scottish wind power to the mainland).
Lets see how that goes. Solar and Wind power in Morocco is most certainly a good thing for the country.
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Brexit has no real impact on European power markets. Especially as the UK is already good connected (albeit we wanted to improve that before Brexit to import Scottish wind power to the mainland).
Lets see how that goes. Solar and Wind power in Morocco is most certainly a good thing for the country.
Think of the fact that the UK is attempting to deny French fishermen their rights in British and Jersey waters and the French are threatening to respond with increases in electricity prices to Jersey. Think also that the other local anti-EU power, Russia, also uses energy as a way to threaten EU and other neighbouring countries. The UK may well see a bypass of the EU ready for when Johnson wants to start an energy war as a useful thing. There's still energy trading, but some of the safety guarantees were
Re:Impact of solar? (Score:4, Informative)
Indeed. I do wonder why some of the north african nations arn't starting to mass install solar power stations. A connector to spain and from there the rest of the EU would be easily doable across the straits of gibralter.
They are: https://www.energy-storage.new... [energy-storage.news]
.50 cals and satchel charges could make short work of a solar plant.
Whether this becomes reality or remains vapourware is another question. Then there is the geo-political dimension of this idea, just look at Libya. If that taught us anything it is that N-African countries can turn into war-zones at the drop of a hat. I'd be quite worried about being that reliant on an external source of energy in a region with such low political stability. That in turn opens up the possibility of being sucked into yet another low intensity conflict. A bunch of rag-tag Islamist driving rusty technicals loaded up with 120mm mortars, Russian
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A bunch of rag-tag Islamist driving rusty technicals loaded up with 120mm mortars, Russian .50 cals and satchel charges could make short work of a solar plant.
You can literally take out a PV solar plant with one rifle, a box or two of ammo, one shooter, and a moderate amount of time. You don't need a .50 at all. A 5.56 or .223 would do the job.
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A bunch of rag-tag Islamist driving rusty technicals loaded up with 120mm mortars, Russian .50 cals and satchel charges could make short work of a solar plant.
You can literally take out a PV solar plant with one rifle, a box or two of ammo, one shooter, and a moderate amount of time. You don't need a .50 at all. A 5.56 or .223 would do the job.
I'm not so sure you can knock out a solar plant made up of thousands of panels by smashing a few of them with a .223. As an Islamist insurgent I'd go for switching stations, cables and other such centralised hardware and ambush repair parties rather than try to destroy thousands of solar panels. That having been said, I'd not want to be the Moroccan trooper or British squaddie patrolling millions of square kilometres of Sahara in an armoured car that is slaved to a drone playing whack-a-mole with a bunch of
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I'm not so sure you can knock out a solar plant made up of thousands of panels by smashing a few of them with a .223.
No, you want to smash all of them. And frankly that doesn't take long, and the ammo cost is negligible compared to the replacement cost of the panels. It's asymmetric warfare at its finest. The other equipment is also worth damaging but the panels are easy to target and take a lot of labor to replace, so they're obvious targets.
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A panel consists out of dozens of sub panels.
To destroy a panel you need to hit each sub panel at least once.
And even then: the panel will still be functional, as basically only the bullet hole stops producing energy.
So on a typical German solar roof, perhaps 6 yard vs. 4 yard: you already need 500 bullets to do substantial damage.
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A panel consists out of dozens of sub panels. To destroy a panel you need to hit each sub panel at least once.
And even then: the panel will still be functional, as basically only the bullet hole stops producing energy.
So on a typical German solar roof, perhaps 6 yard vs. 4 yard: you already need 500 bullets to do substantial damage.
That's what I figured. Trying to shoot out solar panels is like trying to kill a tree by shooting off all the leaves one by one. You're better off just cutting it down at ground level, or in the case of a solar plant, hitting critical bottleneck infrastructure.
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Make them from a film [youtu.be] and one can roll out a replacement.
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You can literally take out a PV solar plant with one rifle, a box or two of ammo, one shooter, and a moderate amount of time. You don't need a .50 at all. A 5.56 or .223 would do the job.
I'm old enough that when I first came to NASA as a postdoc, the old guys who did the original testing of first-generation solar panels were still around. Yeah, one of the things they tested was shooting the panels.
They still work.
I think we may still have some of the old panels with bullet holes in them stashed in one of the labs.
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The other issue in Morocco is that the early plants were demonstrators and some issues were found, so there had to be a pivot towards solar PV.
They started using solar concentrators. They had two types, one using C shaped collectors with pipes running through them, and one with large towers that all the mirrors focused on. There were some issues with reliability and cost, and they didn't expect battery storage to get cheap so quickly. The idea with solar thermal is that the thermal mass allows the plant to
Re: Impact of solar? (Score:1)
Or tie a rock to a stick and send children to bash the evil spirit panels.
Re: Impact of solar? (Score:4, Insightful)
A bunch of rag-tag Islamist driving rusty technicals loaded up with 120mm mortars, Russian .50 cals and satchel charges could make short work of a solar plant.
Uhhh.. and what power source is hardened against that kind of assault. What kind of Command and Conquer map do you think the world is dude. No, cancel that, you'd know your power plants were always vulnerable.
Ok, bro, I'm curious, what power plant do you figure is hardened against roving bands of mad max religious fanatics or whatever with mortars and satchel charges, or just trucks with mounted 50 cals even. Even in your fantasy world of nuclear power plants surrounded by concrete walls and mammoth tanks and automated machine gun turrets, you know the power has to go somewhere in the real world right... and like the power plant is where the power distribution thingies would all tend to converge, yah? Concrete walls and Mammoth Tanks all the way down the transmission lines?
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A bunch of rag-tag Islamist driving rusty technicals loaded up with 120mm mortars, Russian .50 cals and satchel charges could make short work of a solar plant.
Uhhh.. and what power source is hardened against that kind of assault. What kind of Command and Conquer map do you think the world is dude. No, cancel that, you'd know your power plants were always vulnerable.
Ok, bro, I'm curious, what power plant do you figure is hardened against roving bands of mad max religious fanatics or whatever with mortars and satchel charges, or just trucks with mounted 50 cals even. Even in your fantasy world of nuclear power plants surrounded by concrete walls and mammoth tanks and automated machine gun turrets, you know the power has to go somewhere in the real world right... and like the power plant is where the power distribution thingies would all tend to converge, yah? Concrete walls and Mammoth Tanks all the way down the transmission lines?
Uhhh.. My whole point was that the British might want to consider building their solar power plants in some more politically stable region. I thought that was kind of obvious but apparently I was wrong, god bless your heart.
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Uhhh.. My whole point was that the British might want to consider building their solar power plants in some more politically stable region. I thought that was kind of obvious but apparently I was wrong, god bless your heart.
Oh like oil from the Middle East or gas from Russia. That kind of stable.
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Current capacity across the Strait: 2.1 GW (3x 700 MW, the third one might still be under construction). Cost: $150M per cable. Scaling up can be done, but isn't exactly cheap [youtube.com].
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Who would let their electricity supply be dependent on the political stability of North Africa?
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A note of caution here:
Solar doesn't work well with most crops because they're competing for the same source of energy. I cropland wind turbines are generally a better choice. They take up less horizontal space per unit of generated energy, and they aren't competing with the crops for their source of energy. (Naturally this isn't true if you're raising crops that *need* the shade. But that's not true of pastures. You can use a few solar panels as a roof to provide shade for the animals being pastured,
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There are numerous examples of solar farms placed on grazing land, and not materially affecting the amount of grazing done. The animals can appreciate the shade during the midday, when they generally lie around anyway. They are less compatible with other plants, but then, there's plenty of grazing land to target anyway.
Putting panels on top of buildings is what makes solar installation dangerous, and anyway it makes more sense to put them over parking lots where they will provide shade and also provide plac
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Solar doesn't work well with most crops because they're competing for the same source of energy. I cropland wind turbines are generally a better choice.
That is wrong, I suggest to google.
Or go directly to youtube, and search there.
Naturally this isn't true if you're raising crops that *need* the shade. But that's not true of pastures.
That is also true for pastures, especially in places that become hot in summer.
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It turns out, there are many crops which produce better when they are shaded.
https://www.foodsafetynews.com... [foodsafetynews.com]
Agrivoltaics is a new field where they are combining farming with solar panels that are lifted higher than normal. It seems to work quite well with many types of plants, but of course there are some that it doesn't work so well with. The plants also contribute a cooling effect on the panels with humidity levels being slightly higher underneath the panels due to the plants respiring.
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We had a story awhile back about the impact of coffee and someone suggested shade. This would work out for both parties. There's also a type of solar panel that captures on both sides. [forbes.com]
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For some reason, I had this picture in my mind that Coffee came from a tree, so I looked it up, and found out I was wrong. That would work well, it likely was a plant that evolved to grow in the undergrowth, so would likely benefit from the indirect light from a shadowed location.
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That's an impressive idea. Design might be very crop specific, but might be well worth the effort. I was thinking of a large block of solar panels all adjacent to each other, such as are seen on top of buildings, but that's a very different approach.
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Or having more and more kids.
Purpose of this research? (Score:5, Interesting)
Maybe I'm missing something, but...so what?
They come up with an estimate that confirms the IRENA figures. They discover that solar installations grew rapidly between 2016 and 2018, wow, what a surprised. They can provide data on when and where facilities were installed...to the countries that presumably issued the permits.
I'm having trouble figuring out the purpose of this research, unless it is simply the ability to train an AI to recognize solar panels in fuzzy photographs.
Because AI! (Score:2, Insightful)
Machine learning!
Buzzwords!
Resumes!
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CountryX (or whatever other "democracy" where "Chief of ..." means "politically-related to government party"):
"We've built 100 jigawatts of solar plants, which produce 10000000000000 million billion CO2-free energy. Look, the reports from "CountryX Energy Commission", signed by my son-in-law proves that"
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Sure, that's why you would want to do this, to see if they really have installed all of that capacity.
But since apparently that capacity WAS installed, apparently the reports from CountryX Energy Commission were accurate.
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I have noticed that in the research field various people get a start by pointing out obvious and well researched topics. As silly as it sounds, sometimes you need to get your start proving that water is wet to establish that you know what you are talking about before diving into deeper topics.
One popular topic that I have noticed published again and again was that smoking or second hand smoking is harmful. We all know this now, but for some reason or another people cut their teeth on that topic so that th
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They can prove water is wet. Then they get a doctorate in something with results that no one can replicate. Seems to happen a lot.
Re: Purpose of this research? (Score:5, Insightful)
It is always good to get secondary confirmation. Lots of countries/corporations lie for any number of reasons. Permits issued might be greenwashing by some country so they can claim they met their treaty obligations or whatever.
Now we have data that you can look over and verify. That takes some of the wind out of the sails of skeptics in western countries that claim that China and India are doing nothing at all.
next AI msg (Score:1)
"Pls send two BTC"
What about baseload power (Score:4)
A 10-fold increase in solar power generation might create issues with power generation when solar is not producing enough (early morning, late evening, night, cloudy, ...). While one can easily do a relatively exact prognosis of the power generated by solar for a couple of days (or more), generating the "missing" power is a different problem. ...) or "load-store" (grid batteries, pumped water storage, ...)
So, go ahead with solar but some kind of energy storage is needed. It could be "usage on request" (hot residential water, steam for industry still using it, charging electric cars,
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Highest consumption during the summers is during the days when the sun is brightest due to air conditioning.
Highest consumption during the winter is during the night used for heat production.
While you have a point, understand that there is a lot of investment going into battery technology, recycling battery technology, and there should also be a solid investment in weatherization of homes and businesses to further cut down the need of power.
If you attack this problem on three fronts, energy production, ener
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Well Virtual Power Plants [youtube.com] and the idea of power-walls and EVs.
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Highest consumption during the summers is during the days when the sun is brightest due to air conditioning.
Not in Europe. Especially Germany. Normal houses do not need AC.
Highest consumption during the winter is during the night used for heat production.
Not in Europe, with exception of France: we heat with nat gas or even oil. Obviously that is about to change as many are switching to heat pumps and/or fuel cells.
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A more efficient compressor [magtor.tech] could still help.
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Interesting concept!
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The intermittency of solar isn't really a problem because it's highly predictable. We have weather satellites constantly gathering the necessary data.
Wind is similar, the conditions are generally predictable days in advance and very accurately over the short term (1 hour).
With wide geographic distribution and excess capacity we can ensure we already have enough power. There will be plenty of excess because new business opportunities will arise to invest in renewable energy in exchange for getting the power
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We have the knowledge, we have the technology.
However,
"The intermittency of solar isn't really a problem because it's highly predictable"
Unless we implement sufficient electricity storage capacity, we'll be in the highly predictable state of:
"we'll have insufficient generation capacity of x MW for y hours, who wants to get disconnected?"
Just as we were - several years ago - in the state of:
"We have too much generation capacity and we can't shut it off - as such, the price paid per MWh is zero":
https://www.c [current-news.co.uk]
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I expect there will be a few standby biomass or gas plants around to cover the one or two days a year when we know there won't be enough capacity. They will of course have carbon capture fitted and sequester what they produce. The gas will probably be some form of biogas rather than extracted gas, which can easily be stored.
You have to remember that there will still be demand for biogas and liquid fuels for applications where batteries can't be used, e.g. large aircraft. We will have to find ways to produce
Not days, try months (Score:1)
I expect there will be a few standby biomass or gas plants around to cover the one or two days a year when we know there won't be enough capacity.
Did you forget that literally half the year is also nighttime, where you have no sun? People also need power (in some cases more power) at night.
And as for wind, it's not like there will be only a handful of days without signifiant wind. Just ask Europe which has had dramatic drop in wind production for a YEAR.
You need enough standby capacity to cover EVERY day,
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You will kill more people than most communist empires if you try.
Ah yes, StupidKendall strikes again with a profoundly
nonsensical statement.
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At least some of the intermittancy problem will be handled by adjusting the load. There's a lot of talk about load shedding, but there are also a fair number of uses that can work intermittently to take advantage of cheap power. Right now, those users have adapted their processes to deal with current power production, e.g. they run in the middle of the night because a lot of power plants need to run at a fairly steady load 24/7, so power is cheapest when other uses are minimal. As the power production pr
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A 10-fold increase in solar power generation might create issues with power generation when solar is not producing enough (early morning, late evening, night, cloudy, ...).
Wrong!
While one can easily do a relatively exact prognosis of the power generated by solar for a couple of days (or more), generating the "missing" power is a different problem.
Wrong!
And why is that obviously wrong? Because the power plants generating that "missing power": already do exist!
Doesn't matter if they exist, can they run? (Score:1)
And why is that obviously wrong? Because the power plants generating that "missing power": already do exist!
Those plants might exist but some of them will not be able to be run.
Coal plant? Well if you didn't buy enough coal already you might be shut out. [yahoo.com]
Natural gas? Hope you aren't in Europe [euronews.com]! It may simply be too expensive to run the power plant.
I do not think enough Slashdot people comprehend the massive, massive energy crisis before us.
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Natural gas? Hope you aren't in Europe [euronews.com]! It may simply be too expensive to run the power plant.
I have a fixed rated gas price.
Just like any other household consumer.
Fluctuations at the market do not concern us. Oops. So far with the myth that people freeze to death in Europe when it barely is below 10C anyway.
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In other words, demand response [wikipedia.org].
There are solar planets on Earth? (Score:2)
You kids today and your grammar.
Re: There are solar planets on Earth? (Score:5, Funny)
God damn it, it says plant. I wasted perfectly good snark because I haven't had my coffin yet.
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... because I haven't had my coffin yet.
You eat yours? I keep mine in the basement and sleep in it.
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I haven't had my coffin yet either and I'd say that's a good thing.
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I haven't had my coffin yet.
How to tell when someone really needs some coffee -- make a mistake and then make a typo whilst admitting your first mistake.
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Albedo (Score:3)
> This highlights the need to carefully consider the impact that a ten-fold expansion of solar PV generating capacity will have in the coming decades on food systems, biodiversity, and lands used by vulnerable population
Will there be a significant impact to the Earth's albedo, the black solar panels soaking in more of the solar energy than more reflective surfaces such as sand, metal rooftops and grass? Also, do roads, likely some order(s) of magnitude more in coverage already have such an effect?
Re:Albedo (Score:4, Interesting)
The panels use some 5 square meters for 1000W (1kW), so 5,000 square meters for 1MW, 5 millions square meters for 1GW.
Surprisingly, 1 million square meters equal a square kilometer (a 0.62 miles wide square).
420GW of generation capacity will, in this way, cover approximately 2,000 square kilometers.
Now, when the Sun is low on the horizon (let's say 30 degrees for France, Germany in winter, for example) the "ground surface" grows by a factor of 2 (we don't want panels to shadow each other). Lets increase the cover to 4,000 square kilometers.
Now, the Autobahn (highway) network in Germany has about 13,000 kilometers. Measured on Google Maps, a two-lane highway is 27 meters wide. As such, the highways in Germany cover some 350 square kilometers (probably more, as there are three-lane highways, service spaces, parking spaces, extra lanes on climbs and so on and so forth).
I'd say the total surface of solar power plants (the ones counted in this article) is comparable to the surface of highways in Europe.
I have no idea how the surface of the highways compares to the surface of the other roads (outside cities and villages), or to the surface of streets/alleys inside cities/villages/...
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Remote Solar (Score:2)
So they filtered out areas too remote from human populations, but that would be a dataset of interest to some organizations. Remote drug operators powered by a solar array. Although I'd be surprised if governments haven't been doing this for ages.
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It's not just drug dealers. Connecting to the grid is expensive, so it is frequently cheaper to use solar for places that are far from the grid. And "far" is a relative term. ISTR that for a house, it's cheaper to build an off-the-grid solar system if it's more than a mile or two from the nearest connection. Solar is going to be a reasonable option for anywhere remote.
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Solar (and let's not forget small-scale hydro) and Starlink are a match made in heaven.
0.6 PB (Score:1)
...on over 550 terabytes of imagery
In the early 90's I read an article on Exxon's offshore seismic survey data processing. For storage, they used warehouses full of custom tapes with robotic fetching. I remember being amazed by the scale of the operation and it being the first time I ever saw the word petabyte.
It astounds me that even 3 decades later that quantity would still be considered a pretty big chunk of data. I wonder how much longer it will be before articles write 550TB as 0.6PB, with the 50TB difference being considered a
Impact of Solar? (Score:2)
https://www.bbc.com/news/scien... [bbc.com]
"Just one kilogram of SF6 warms the Earth to the same extent as 24 people flying London to New York return.
It also persists in the atmosphere for a long time, warming the Earth for at least 1,000 years."
Just the LEAKS in the EU (only) solar systems in 2017 was the equivalent of - wait for it- 1.3 MILLION cars on the road./
And lets think about what's going to happen with SF6 as a result of this crusade for more solar?
How...ironic.