NASA’s Roadmap to Solar Power
NASA has just finished mapping the sunniest places on the planet.
This is fantastic for a whole host of reasons: climate change, agriculture, etc. But businesses have already used the information to site solar panel projects in Morocco, now that they know precisely what sort of energy they can expect. In a perfect world, they could also throw down some photovoltaics in an patch of south-east Niger - outside of a patch in the Pacific, the sunniest place on earth - which receives 6.78 kilowatt hours of sunlight per square meter.
It’s worth noticing that the leaders of solar energy right now - Germany and Japan - are hardly blessed. You can barely make out Germany in that sea of high-latitude chill, and Japan might as well be West Virginia. Although it seems that China, Africa, and the Southwest USA could make a killing.
The ultimate winner of this solar lottery, of course, is none other than Australia: land of cane toad purses and Waltzing Matilda. Bill Bryson once called it ‘a sunburned country,’ and scientists seem to agree. Early estimates suggest that one hundred and sixty square kilometers alone - only two and a half times the size of Manhattan - would be enough to power the entire bloody continent.
This information has also been used in Italy - to send text messages to sunbathers.
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