BETHEL CITIZEN • June 24, 2021
All renewable energy sources require substantial land area. How much is needed to power the country? That number is very close to 30 trillion kWh per year. On a “per capita” basis it comes out to about 10,000 W per person. Producing that much power from solar alone would require about one tenth of an acre per person or about 150,000 acres in Maine (about 0.7% of the land area of the state). To produce it all from wind would require about 4 times as much area (around 3% of the land area). To produce it from biomass with an intensity of around 0.1 W/m2 would take more area than the entire state! Most of our renewables will come from wind and solar as the intensity of hydro is too low. Large-scale batteries and hydro will serve as storage devices to smooth out the fluctuations in the wind and solar, and a smart grid will help control peak usage. ~ Paul Stancioff, PhD., professor of Physics, UMaine Farmington