It makes little economic sense to build a solar generation plant on the moon, when we can do the same here on Earth. If we assume a power requirement of 2000 watts/person (quoted from the article), it should be possible to meet this requirement with only 630 square feet of PV panels per person (see calculations and references below). This is not an unreasonably large land area when compared with the 2.8 hectares per person required for food production. The real obstacle to widespread PV deployment is not a shortage of land, but the cost of PV equipment (panels and energy storage). Why would we build it on the moon? This would only make it more expensive.
The idea of using microwave satellite relays to distribute the power may have some merit. This would solve the issue of energy storage if we could transmit power to the other side of the world.
Today's commercially available PV panels are about 15% efficient. Their output rating is based on an irradiance of 1000w/m^2. This means one square meter of PV panels has a rated output of about 150 watts. The average insolation in the united states is about 5.5 sun hours. The average daily energy produced by a PV array is the product of it's rated power and the insolation. This means a square meter of PV panels will produce on average 825 watt hours/day (150 * 5.5). Given the value of 2000 watts/person and multiply by the number of hours in a day, you get an energy requirement of 48 kilowatt hours/day (2000*24). Take the this energy requirement and divide by the energy produced by a square meter of PV panels to get the number of square meters required: 48000 / 825 = 58 m^2 or 626 square feet.
Please don't reply with the argument that it takes more energy to produce a solar module than it will produce in its lifetime without reading the this.
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It makes little economic sense to build a solar generation plant on the moon, when we can do the same here on Earth. If we assume a power requirement of 2000 watts/person (quoted from the article), it should be possible to meet this requirement with only 630 square feet of PV panels per person (see calculations and references below). This is not an unreasonably large land area when compared with the 2.8 hectares per person required for food production. The real obstacle to widespread PV deployment is not a shortage of land, but the cost of PV equipment (panels and energy storage). Why would we build it on the moon? This would only make it more expensive.
The idea of using microwave satellite relays to distribute the power may have some merit. This would solve the issue of energy storage if we could transmit power to the other side of the world.
Today's commercially available PV panels are about 15% efficient. Their output rating is based on an irradiance of 1000w/m^2. This means one square meter of PV panels has a rated output of about 150 watts. The average insolation in the united states is about 5.5 sun hours. The average daily energy produced by a PV array is the product of it's rated power and the insolation. This means a square meter of PV panels will produce on average 825 watt hours/day (150 * 5.5). Given the value of 2000 watts/person and multiply by the number of hours in a day, you get an energy requirement of 48 kilowatt hours/day (2000*24). Take the this energy requirement and divide by the energy produced by a square meter of PV panels to get the number of square meters required: 48000 / 825 = 58 m^2 or 626 square feet.
Please don't reply with the argument that it takes more energy to produce a solar module than it will produce in its lifetime without reading the this.