CAS GE 100 Lecture Notes - Lecture 14: Energy Density, Geothermal Power, Watt

• School: Boston University
• Department: Geography & Environment
• Course: CAS GE 100
• Professor: Aaron Garrett

Document Summary

Natural energy such as solar, wind, and npp are more efficient and powerful than fossil fuels could ever be, but the problem is harnessing that energy and making it do work to power our technology. In contrast to quantity, quality of solar is low relative to fossil fuels because of density, spatial variation, and intermittency (incidence relative to load) Energy density is the quantity of energy contained per unit mass of a fuel. Power density is the rate at which energy can be produced from the source and the geographic area covered by the source. Solar availability depends on cloud cover, lat, seasons, time of day, climate, and local air pollution. Pv with generators (sell electricity to other places: hybrid systems, grid connected and net metering systems, and utility scale. Solar energy is used in more remote areas because it cannot compete with modern utilities.