Some people portray photovoltaic panels as something lightweight, ethereal, almost built of pranic energy. In reality, it's a solid piece of machinery with considerable amount of steel, copper, concrete and rare earth metals... I'm all for PV but let's not tell fables...
@kravietz People use gobs of energy, and when translated to land, it becomes area, at 1kW/m2^ incident, with a 20% conversion efficiency and 20% capacity factor, or 4W effective delivered continuous energy.
40W, a dim incandescent bulb or idling computer, is 10m2^ of area. 1,000W, a hair dryer, toaster, tea kettle, or microwave, 250m2. A typical household draws at least a few hundred watts continuous. For single-storey construction, roof area largely suffices. For multi-storey, you need to spread out.
David MacKey's Without the Hot Air lays out the energy budget for the UK. With domestic renewables, it's tough.
Precisely, and that's just for operations. Mining, manufacturing, distribution, decommissioning also uses space. This is only accounted in research that looks at total lifecycle surface power density, and if you combine that table with lifecycle CO₂ emissions I think it's quite clear what is better for environment.
