3D map shines light on New York solar potential

[telemann.livejournal.com]

One of the most daunting aspects for a business or building and or home owner, is how to figure out if moving to solar would help you lower electrical costs. Many are just not either able to do estimation on their own, or due to time constraints or lack of networking, can't find those with the skills and knowledge to help them. The City University of New York has come up with a software application that helps do all that. From the YouTube description:

The NYC Solar Map is an interactive online tool that allows users to estimate the solar energy potential for every building in New York City’s five boroughs by inputting an address. The map also highlights existing solar installations, displays real-time solar energy production citywide, and allows users to estimate the costs, incentives, and payback period for investing in solar.

Check out the solar map here. There's absolutely no reason why this couldn't be scaled up to include the top 20 largest cities in the United States, and would help some in reducing our dependence on fossil fuels, which helps everyone breath a little easier :-) Mods could we please get a tag created for "Solar power" and "Alternative energy"? Thank you kindly.

Comments

[htpcl.livejournal.com]

Is [energy] OK?

[telemann.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that works, thank you kindly!

[policraticus.livejournal.com]

15,174 trees?

That doesn't seem like a lot of trees to me. That is the whole solar capacity of NYC? How much would that cost compared to just planting, say, 150,000 trees? Just as a comparison, 73,000,000 new Christmas trees are planted every year.

[policraticus.livejournal.com]

Never mind. I was confused by the word "potential" in the title. The map seems to indicate current solar production. Still, that seems like exceedingly small potatoes for the number of projects plotted.

[enders-shadow.livejournal.com]

the journey of a million miles begins with one step

[enders-shadow.livejournal.com]

that's it's solar capacity as of 2010

i'm absolutely positive there is A LOT of un-used space that could be used to increase that number

[the-rukh.livejournal.com]

That's 73 million trees planted per the 307 million people in the US though.

I'm not sure the math I'm looking for here, but that area is only 8 million and nowhere near potential.

By the way, was trees recently mentioned on some right wing source? Someone I know IRL is suddenly spouting off facts about trees and how we could solve all America's energy problems by burning wood.

[policraticus.livejournal.com]

The map mentioned trees. It was touting the energy savings in those terms. That is why I mentioned it. It still seems like an odd metric to me, I guess people don't realize how many trees make up a forest.

I actually looked up a friend's family's building on 10th Ave. That is a nifty application. They could plant 56 trees a year for the next ten years or spend about $121K dollars to install a solar system on their roof. If they were inclined to be green, I think I know which way they'd go.

[telemann.livejournal.com]

But isn't a lot of the timber in the U.S. cheap pine?

[telemann.livejournal.com]

NYC has has a huge tree planting program for a few years now. (http://www.milliontreesnyc.org/html/home/home.shtml)

[policraticus.livejournal.com]

That really wasn't the point, but it does further illustrate how little benefit the solar program adds, at least in terms of "trees." All the solar panels illustrated on the map don't amount to the number of trees planted by NYC in just a few months. But good for NYC, planting trees is a good thing.

[telemann.livejournal.com]

Ray Kurzweil said we will be 100 percent solar within 20 years.

Solar power actually is doubling every two years and has been for 20 years. Regardless of all the political debates, the actual output in watts has been doubling every two years. It’s eight doublings away from meeting 100 percent of our energy needs. So when I presented this to the Prime Minister of Israel, he said, “But do we have enough sunlight to do this with?” I said, “Actually, we have 10,000 times more than we need.” After we double eight more times and can meet all of our energy needs with solar, we’ll be using one part in 10,000 of the sunlight that falls on the earth. So, we’re actually awash in resources. If you look at how these exponentially growing technologies are being applied, there’s a lot more resources and opportunity to overcome these problems.

I can't find the reference now, but Kurzweil mentioned in an interview progress has been made on a very flexible solar cell technology that could be lined on the sides of buildings for example. I think I'm recalling this right.

[a-new-machine.livejournal.com]

We need a Moore's Law for clean energy, so that the industry actually works towards doubling every 2 years rather than just trusting to advancements to allow it.

[gunslnger.livejournal.com]

Actually, using solar in multiple ways works well too, you don't need the leap in efficiency for just direct-to-electricity conversion.

[a-new-machine.livejournal.com]

People forget that every other form of power generation essentially comes down to something doing stuff to turn a turbine for a reason. If we had the transmission, we could do it with solar, too...

[badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com]

One of the most daunting aspects for a business or building and or home owner, is how to figure out if moving to solar would help you lower electrical costs

No.

That was pretty easy.

[telemann.livejournal.com]

...

[badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com]

Was it meant to be a serious position? Solar's main problem is cost - an average home devours about 12k kWh per year per capita (http://www.ehow.com/about_5166858_much-electricity-average-home-use.html), which means 42 square meters of solar panels for each household (http://www.salon.com/life/feature/2008/04/07/ask_pablo_solar).

Now, given that even this weak sauce (http://www.amazon.com/Sunforce-39191-123-Watt-High-Efficiency-Polycrystalline/dp/B001NFTPYI/ref=pd_sbs_auto_3) costs nearly $7000 and is meant for an RV? Total cost per year for a residence for electricity is less than $1200/year (http://www.motherearthnews.com/Energy-Matters/Average-Electric-Bills.aspx), so you're not going to break even on solar panels for the home for well over a decade, and that assumes a) no installation costs, b) no battery cost, and c) no replacement costs.

And that's a residence. A business, with more lighting, more computers, more outlets, etc? Forget it. Solar's a money pit.

Solar's DOA as a future primary energy source. At best, it's good for those who can afford to waste money as a supplement.

[badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com]

Mods could we please get a tag created for "Solar power" and "Alternative energy"?

Done and done, although I had to resist creating a "boondoggles" tag, too. d:-)

[policraticus.livejournal.com]

There should be a "boondoggles" tag on general principles.

[kylinrouge.livejournal.com]

Stupid. Just build more nuclear plants and this isn't even an issue. I don't disagree with solar on principle, but for all the effort spent on alternative energy we could've phased out fossil fuels, coal, gas, etc with more nuclear plants.

[weswilson]

except that there's not enough fissionable material for that... the only power source we could power the world with is fossil fuels. We will likely always need a mix of power sources.

[dreadfulpenny81.livejournal.com]

There was a program recently in one of the local counties to set up homes with full solar power supplies so they're self-sufficient. This came from government grants. THAT is the kind of government funding I support, funding that advances our society rather than hindering or diminishing it (like abortion funding).

[telemann.livejournal.com]

The world must be going crazy: a liberal whined about how stupid this is, and a conservative is for this. I need a drink :-)