Are solar power plants really green energy ? Continuation

image copied from https://dziennikzarazy.pl

This text is a continuation of my reflections on the impact of photovoltaic power plants on climate. In the part Are solar power plants really green energy ? I presented some figures which show that the heat generated by the currently working solar power plants (they produce more than 4 times more thermal energy than they produce in the form of electricity) is such a big part of the heat emitted by humans, that after converting this heat into CO2 amounts, it is more than a half of the effect generated in 2020 on the whole Earth!
This amount of heat energy is unlikely to have no effect on global warming.

More concrete signals that the development of a solar power plant infrastructure could lead to climate disruption and rising temperatures.

1. Urban Heat Island effect (UHI)

   The UHI is a real phenomenon.
   The paper "The Effect of Urban Heat Island on Climate Warming in the Yangtze River Delta Urban Agglomeration in China" presents the effect of UHI on climate warming based on an analysis of the effects of urbanization rate, urban population and land use change on the warming rate of mean, minimum (night) and maximum (day) air temperature in the Yangtze River Delta (YRD) using observational data from 41 meteorological stations. In conclusion, the authors found that observations of daily mean, minimum, and maximum air temperature atmeasurement stations in the YRDUA from 1957 to 2010 showed significant long-term warming due to background warming and UHI. The warming rate of 0.108 to 0.483°C/decade for mean air temperature is generally consistent with the warming trend in other urban regions in China and other urban areas in the world.
   Thus, the authors showed that urbanization significantly enhanced local climate warming.
   The solar power plants based on photovoltaic panels are even hotter islands of heat than highly urbanized agglomerations. During the period of most intense sunlight, the temperature near a solar power plant can be up to 3 degrees Celsius higher than the temperature in a similar environment without solar panels and similar solar conditions.
   

   Suggestion:

   The similarity in heat generation between the two cases - densely populated metropolitan areas and solar power plants - suggests the same effect - warming the air over a larger area.
   

2. Correlation between Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect and number of heat waves (HW)

   Due to lack of access to data, I have to rely on visual comparisons (if anyone knows data to analyze or can make it common, please contact me).
   Below I illustrate 2 cases: USA and Europe (Germany in particular).
   

   • USA case

     Let's visually compare the 2 images to each other. The first, showing the density of solar power plants in the USA [https://openinframap.org] - Figure 1:
     

     Figure 1: density of Solar Power plants in USA
     The second image, from the paper [U.S. heat wave frequency and length are increasing] showing the increase in the number of HW in the US - Figure 2:
     

     Figure 2: Changes in the number of heat waves per year (frequency) and the number of days between the first and last heat wave of the year (season length)
     Finally, Figure 3: shows the growth of US electricity generation as a function of years (data from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_in_the_United_States).
     

     Figure 3: Trends in commercial solar electrical power generation in the top five states, 1990–2012 (U.S. EIA data)

     As can be seen from Figure 2 (and Figure 3 and Figure 1), the histogram showing the frequency of HW occurrence, the increase in the number of cases from 2000 to 2010 is greater compared to earlier periods.
     There is even a geographical correlation (Figure 1 and 2) - which, of course, can also be presented as a fact that power plants are built close to large agglomerations.
     In general, the UHI effect should be considered as the sum of the UHI + Solar Heat Island .
     I therefore postulate the following hypothesis:
     - Until 2000, urban heat islands were mainly responsible for heat waves.
     - After 2000, the increase in heat waves can be further attributed to solar power plants.
     

     
     
     

   • Germany case

     How does it look like in Europe ?
     The density of solar power plants in Europe [https://openinframap.org] - Figure 4 (below) shows that the largest solar farm infrastructure is in Germany (Let's forget about the UK for a while).
     

     Figure 4: density of Solar Power plants in Europe
     Now, numbers of Heat Waves (HW) in Germany:
     I was not able to find detailed numbers for heat waves in entire Germany. Instead, from the report Nationaler Klimareport Klima ‒ Gestern, heute und in der Zukunft you can decipher the following number of heat waves counted for 5 major cities in Germany (Hamburg, Dresden, Frankfurt am Main, Mannheim and Muenchen). It shows that (Table 1):
     
     Year period:Nr of Heat weaves:
     1950-19605
     1960-19704
     1970-19805
     1980-19903
     1990-200017
     2000-201015
     2010-201919
     
     It shows a huge increase in Heat Waves since the 1990s. Followed by a small stabilization for the periods 1990-2010 and another increase for the last years after 2010. The amount of electricity generated by photovoltaics has been increasing since 2000. And since 2010, there is almost a jump in the growth of solar electricity in Germany (see Figure 5).
     

     Figure 5: Trends in commercial solar electrical power generation in Germany

     As can be seen from Table 1 and Figures: 4 and 5, the increase in the number of Heat Waves in Germany after 2000 (after 2010 especially), is correlated with the generated Solar Energy.

     
     
     

Conclusions:

Without access to detailed data, it is difficult to conduct a more detailed analysis of the correlation between the number of the HW and the increase in electricity produced by the growing number of solar plants.
However, the suggestion given by the available data presented above is at least worth a closer analysis.

The ideas in the European document "Fit for in the a Solar Future: Commission climate package is landmark achievement but more ambition is possible" could prove devastating .

Take care

Are solar power plants really green energy ?

Are solar power plants really a good solution for energy production ?

Everywhere you hear it's a clean way to get energy. So let's see if it really is.

image copied from https://dziennikzarazy.pl

Introduction:

As an introduction, a few words about how the sun heats the earth and how a solar panel works.
The infrared part of the solar spectrum (wavelength > 700 nm, about 50% of the energy) is directly responsible for heating the Earth's surface and air. This kind of solar radiation exposure on the Earth is considered normal.
Photovoltaic (PV) panels operate in the visible part of the solar spectrum: from 350 nm to 750 nm (approximately). It is this part of the solar spectrum that does not normally heat the environment (the part between 700 and 750 nm does). Energy from this range of radiation is partially (14-22%) converted into electrical energy and the rest (78-86%) is converted into thermal energy.
PVs thus act as a converter of the visible part of the sunlight spectrum (not infrared) to heat (infrared). In other words, they increase the amount of heat compared to the transmitted infrared portion of sunlight. To simplify the estimation, let's assume that 16% of the energy consumed by PV is converted into electrical energy. The rest is dissipated in a form of heat. Data about the operational power produced by solar panels are given in units of electric power generated by Photovoltaic (PV) systems. I.e. 84% of the energy dissipated into heat is not included in these values.

Story nr 1 - local:

The first bad effect, fully local one, is a local increase of temperature near solar power plants The Photovoltaic Heat Island Effect: Larger solar power plants increase local temperatures. Another interesting article about a super solar power plant in the Sahara, taking into account the local effects of large heat dissipation around solar panels was written by Jack Marley Solar panels in Sahara could boost renewable energy but damage the global climate – here’s why.

Story nr 2 - global:

Now let's try to look at things globally.
the number of solar panels on earth is growing almost exponentially every year. According to the Renewable Capacity Statistics 2021 website, at 12.2.2021 the world had 714 GW of operational Photovoltaic (PV) systems. Let's try to translate this value into a carbon footprint by treating all operating PV systems as one.
Some assumptions at the beginning:

1. 80% of initial radiation is dissipated by the solar panel into heat.
   
2. 1 kW of Solar Panel System covers an area about 8 m2 .
   
3. Solar irradiance: the averaged over the year and the day, the Earth's atmosphere receives radiation 340 W/m2 from the sun https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_irradiance. The PV systems are distributed across the earth, so I assume that the average solar radiation used in the calculations is: 150 W/m2
   
4. Average equivalent of the carbon footprint of the 1 kWh as 0.5 . Obviously, we have different CO2 emission intensity for different countries per 1 kwh. The value 0.5 corresponds to the average values over sunny countries.
   More detailed data by country and region is available on the website https://www.carbonfootprint.com/.
   
5. Conversion from W to kWh: 1 W == 0.001 kWh
   

The 714 GW of operational PV systems creates a total surface (St) equal to: St = 5712000000000 m2 = 5 712 000 km2 .
It corresponds to the area size between India (3 287 263 km2) and Australia (7 741 220 km2). Going furthermore, considering the surface of the earth, the surface of the solar panels is 1.1% of its surface. Since we are talking about energy produced by the operational PV systems, we can assume that this is 16% of the energy converted into electricity. Therefore, the dissipated energy into the heat energy (Ht) produced at the same time is:

Ht = 714 [GW] (84 [%]/16 [%]) = 3748.5 [GW].
Now let's calculate the carbon footprint of this amount of heat. Using the conversion from W to kWh (1 W == 0.001 kWh), our amount of heat energy (Ht) is equivalent to 3 748 500 000 kWh ~ 3.75 GWh .

This value corresponds to the carbon footprint (assumption that the carbon footprint of the 1 kWh is 0.5):.
1874250000 kg CO2 /hour.
or
16 418 430 000 000 kg CO2 / year ~ 16.4 GT /year.
This is a huge value and corresponds to the 52% (!) of total CO2 emission in 2020 (31.5 GT / year) ! Thus, we have an unexpected situation because it looks like solar panels are far worse at producing energy than fossil fuels. Let's see a comparison of the increase in operational energy of PV systems to the change in global temperature anomaly as a function of years. Temperature data from https://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/global-temperature/.
Please note the different scales of the data presented in the figure. The operational power generated by solar panels is shown in red, the temperature anomalies in blue. Almost perfect correlation !

Summary:

1. Is CO2 really responsible for warming the earth ?
2. The correlation between temperature anomalies and the amount of energy produced by PV systems is surprising to say the least !
3. By building PV systems, we create smaller or larger heat islands around them, disturbing the natural energy balance in such an area. The PV systems produce more than 4 times more thermal energy than they produce in the form of electricity.
4. By producing solar panels we pollute our environment (+ the need to recycle).

The final conclusions rather indicate that solar power plants do more damage than conventional ones.

Now, the natural question is whether we are already seeing a correlation of climate change with the increase in heat islands around solar power plants.

1. Is there a correlation between the heat energy produced by the increasing number of solar plants and the increase in air temperature via the Heat Islands effect ?
2. Is there a correlation between the frequency of Heat Waves and the thermal energy produced by solar power plants ?

About this there is the next text Are solar power plants really green energy ? Continuation

I would be grateful if someone could point out to me the error I am making in the above approximations.

Take care