|
yes, as you approach kardashev type 1 you will definitely want to start harvesting sunlight from von neumann probes on solar orbit including transportation, natural gas, etc., but not including foods like corn and canola, the usa uses 100 quads per year, or 3.3 terawatts in si units. its average utility-scale solar power capacity factor is 21%, so you'd need 15.7 terawatts peak of solar farms to supply that, before scaling up by 2× or 10× or 100×. 15.7 terawatts of 24% efficient solar panels would require 65 terawatts of sunlight, which is to say, 65 billion square meters or 65536 square kilometers (to pick a round number). this is of course 256², so, like the entire spectrum of mainstream political opinion in the usa, it would all fit between houston and austin. you could drive around it in a day well, not quite; that's 29° latitude, so you need to space your panels apart by a factor of 1/cos 29°, about 14%, so they don't shade each other. also in texas, unlike any other phenomenon known to humanity, it would be a bit smaller, because texas has a 25% capacity factor; the reason the usa has an overall lower solar capacity factor of 21% is that some solar farms are in suboptimal places like maine (10%) so the power doesn't require long-distance transmission so right now it's really tough for nuclear to compete with solar on earth |