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xkcd #2812: Solar Panel Placement
(xkcd.com)
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this post was submitted on 08 Aug 2023
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That number didn't really seem enough to me. However, the solar luminosity is about 3.8×10^26 watts and the surface area about 6.1×10^18 m2, ie. 62.3 MW / m2. 8760 hours in a year times 62300 kW equals 545 million kW/h, at twenty percent efficiency times twenty cents each is $21.8 M/a.
The sun might seem to be really, really hot; but in fact, it is just quite hot and really, really big.
Xkcd always does the math.
The corona is around 1 million °C. That's really really hot
The corona is indeed super hot, but also quite tenuous in comparison to the rest of the sun. The photosphere is only about 5500 °C. If our solar panels were made of diamond they would have melted at 3500, but it's not impossible to imagine a solar panel that could be positioned 'quite' close to the sun's surface - would just need to be made from some quite fancy materials.