Solar Energy Possibility

A commonly talked about renewable energy source is solar energy, or the energy released from the sun. Above Hong Kong, the solar radiation is approximately 200 W/m^2. There are 3 main ways that this energy can be used: direct heating, PV cells, and creating PV cell farms. We will assume each person is allowed 10 square meters for the different approaches.

For thermal heating, we assume that the heaters are 50% efficient at making hot water. So 50%*10 m2*200 W/m2*24/1000 kWh/W yields 24 kWh per day per person for heating.

For electrical power, we will give everybody a 15% efficient PV converter. More expensive ones could get up to 20% efficient, and cheaper ones can be as low as 10%, so we are taking the median of those for mass production. We then get 15%*10 m2*200 W/m2*.024 kWh/W yielding 7.5 kWh per day per person.

The PV cells could theoretically be put into farms as well. If we assume that 10% of the land area (11.04 km2) can be made into a PV farm, then each person would get about 16 m2. We also assume that because these will be mass produced that the cheapest panels will be used which are 10% efficient. So we take 16 m2*10%*200*.024 kWh/W yields about 8 kWh per day per person produced. This is much lower than other countries due to the fact that so much of Hong Kong is city.