I honestly don’t see why more theme parks do that idea.They do it over in Legoland. The whole parking lot isn’t solar panels but there is ALOT of coverage. We loved being able to park under the solar panels. Our car was nice and cool and not surface of the sun hot after being parked all day in the Florida sun!
I agree, the only two issues I see is maybe light bouncing off the solar panels would mess with the monorail driver/guests view of the park. If that is the case then put them in Animal Kingdom. The second issue is maybe solar canopy parking can't stand up to hurricanes all that well.
That as great, Rob. I'm glad you mentioned Ellen's Energy Adventure, as this along with Listen to the Land, was all about new and upcomign technologies - that are now here!
A quibble: When you mention the capacities of solar plants, the units you should be using are megawatts (MW), a unit of power, not megawatt-hours (MWh), a unit of energy. Power is the rate of consumption or production of energy. One megawatt of power running for one hour will deliver a megawatt-hour of energy.
I really have nothing to say other than I still continue to find this type of content interesting. You've done a lot of videos in this vein on the statistics of Walt Disney World, and I don't have any constructive commentary to make, but still want to express that I really enjoy your content.
Actually, having solar panels over the parking lot would be a cool idea (literally for the cars below!). Just need to make sure the panels are high enough to handle most vehicles (high enough for a semi should do it). Of course, that would eliminate the ability to see fireworks from the parking lot. {shrug}
Ride systems can put some extreme temporary load on a power grid, for example a LIM launched roller coaster like Rock N Roller Coaster can brownouts when a coaster launches, or if the coaster doesn’t hit proper launch speed the ride safeties kick in and the ride is down. I don’t recall it happening for a Disney Parks ride, but other parks have run into it where they couldn’t run the ride at the full designed capacity of X launches every hour due to electricity requirements. Interesting engineering problems.
How often do solar panels need to be replaced, once they get worn out and ineffective? What about all of the raw materials needed to manufacture solar panels? Those have to be mined, right?
I really love that Disney strives to operate more and more on renewable energy. Wish that places outside of the parks would start adopting initiatives like these as well. Great video, Rob!
Rob, you're incredible; when Disney Parks posted about solar generation on Earth day I had so many questions about what was behind the sound bites and their roadmap to more renewable energy. You've answered all those questions and then some - and the shocking thing is that I didn't see that coming. Your content is scholarly, yet fun and delivered with such enthusiasm - thank you. One question - you've quoted the output of the solar farms in MWh, should that be MW? I think its usual for power plants to quote output in MW (based on peak output), whilst consumption and storage is measured in MWh. The calculation you do at around 2:28 makes sense in MWh because you're discussing energy consumed over the March to September period; the MWh capacities you quote for the farms at 0:50, 1:24 and 4:53 on the other hand don't have a time-frame attached, so I'm thinking those should be in MW?
This reminds me of a tom Scott video from years ago where he explains that disney technically has permission from Florida and the RCID to build a nuclear power station if it wanted
As I recall, one big limiting factor is that Disney does not have permission from the US federal government for such a power plant. They only have permission from the state of Florida.
The federal government is the biggest red tape in stopping new nuclear plants from being constructed. although in the past 10 years, it's reversed somewhat, we're still at the point where we just arent building enough new ones to replace the old ones that will be decommissioning soon. We've been stuck at 20% for decades. People love to rant and rave about green energy but will stop at nothing to prevent nuclear plants from being built that literally could solve the battery problem overnight. Bulk of energy during the day could be solar, wind, thermal but at night nuclear and maybe natural gas until we train enough of a work force to go fully nuclear which would take at least 2-3 generations but it'll never happen unless we start now.
Solar, among renewable sources, has the advantage for WDW of producing the most energy when it is needed the most air conditioning. That being said, MK and Epcot produce chilled water for a/c at central energy plants that run on jet turbine engines powered by fossil fuels. So those plants will need some modification if they also want to take advantage of the solar electric power.
Not just the parking lots: put some solar panels over sections of the walkways and benches to create shaded areas. Obviously don't roof everything because then you couldn't get those iconic weenie pics (golf ball for the win), but there are several areas where people already sit to rest.
I love the optimism on renewable energy...but now isn’t the right time to go all in on solar. Although there have been major advancements in solar,most panels are still non recyclable. More importantly, most solar panels are made with lead composite cells and the ones that aren’t made with lead are made with rare metals that get strip mined out of the earth. So when these panels hit the end of their life, they’ll end up in a landfill somewhere creating toxic run off. Going big with solar right now only replaces the old problems with new problems for the environment it doesn’t get rid of them. Geothermal and hydroelectric dams are the smarter solutions.
I know a lot of people like to give Disney a hard time because they’re a giant corporation and people seem to think that they want to own everything and only care about money, but whenever people say that, I always counter with things like what you’re talking about in this video. Disney takes their corporate leadership seriously and they really do want to help set new goals and responsibilities for companies.
I always wondered why Disney World didn't put solar panels covering their parking lots, the only reasons why I could see why they didn't was either hurricanes hitting the area or maybe issues with the monorail. I don't know how large each parking lot by the parks are but if they did that it would provide a good amount of power and shade for all the guests cars.
A study by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory conclusively demonstrates that energy payback for solar panel is a little less than 4 years provided they never need serviced and have optimal weather. As a general rule, solar panels last for about 25-30 years. So on average the panels pay (in terms of energy) for themselves in about 4 years and then are a net gain of energy for 21-26 years.
I really hope they get near 100% one day. Given how Walt felt about this stuff all those years ago, it seems highly likely he'd be pushing for this if he were alive today.
I completely agree with that statement good sir. I have an animated world called Ericland, and right now we're investing in renewable energy (I'm that person who loves preserving the environment because it's so beautiful). We've already invested in clean fuels for machines, no cars allowed, bikes and scooters are available, solar panels are being put up everywhere, and we turn off our lights at night when the park is closed so my characters can sleep.
Do they have any battery/energy storage capacity for night or only use the solar during the day? Guess only daytime solar use since there's so much to power they can't spare enough for storage anyway.
By the time they were able to build a farm that large, the efficiency of newer panels should seriously increase the output per panel. Right now we are at about 20-25% efficiency, but I would expect us to be at about 40% in the next decade.
Assuming a 7 year depreciation on the panels, one would expect an 8-10 life span for a utility company’s solar farm before total replacement. Given your projection of efficiency increase, this matches very well with getting better production over the next decade. For non-economic geeks, the company gets to deduct the cost of the panels for the length of the depreciation schedule from their taxes. This is an increase to their profitability each year (other costs factor into the actual total profit). Once the depreciation is zero, the hardware of any kind is either generating profit or must be removed from inventory quickly according to the bean-counters and the preference of the stockholders. Assuming a low maintenance cost (and that is a big if), the panels will stay in operation for 1-3 years after being fully depreciated before the lure of higher efficiency panels (higher profitability from the panels) draws the company to physical replacement (other factors being the purchase and installation costs). If the panels are expensive to maintain (as an example, maybe because they were cheaply manufactured) then replacement could occur earlier because the costs are too high to keep the panels. If the maintenance costs are near zero, the replacement could be delayed until the price for greater efficiency is too low to not buy the newer models. Wow, my engineering background just kicked in on this comment. Haven’t felt that in a long time.
Any estimate for how and when WDW can begin to fully rely only on renewable energy must include the improvements in efficiency of the load. Lighting, motors, drive systems, control systems, and all types of devices will inevitably become more energy efficient. A third factor will be just how much Disney expands their operations. Conserving power or obtaining it from renewables may simply precipitate even more usage. It's good to know about what they've done so far, but it's more of a shot in the dark than most people realize when trying to predict where it's headed.
Interesting video and very informative. I’m all for green initiatives, but what about the costs of tearing down a thousand acres of forests? Fossil fuels are used in chopping it down, displacing wildlife, and depleting oxygen sources
@@izdatsumcp , making use of roof tops and areas alongside roads will minimize the need to clear natural habitat. Of course there isn't just one simple solution.
@@RandallJamesPeterson exactly, as Rob mentioned it, a mix of different enerfy sources are needed. Also, energy needs should reduce too. We also need better ways to store and transform energy and machines or devices more energy efficient.
Here's a question as you mentioned "Ellen's Energy Adventure/universe of energy" What was the energy output of the array on that building? I'm just curious how it maps to current tech
One other area for Disney to try to tap into (pun intended) is micro dams. The rain falls often enough to cause a lot of water to flow into the storm drain system and further into the streams that flow through the property. If micro DNA’s were installed, they could produce electricity. How much? Probably enough to light a few lightbulbs, but nothing significant. Why not? Not enough “head” to cause a forceful enough spin to generate a lot of electricity because there isn’t enough height change from the park to the streams. Micro dams could give Disney some electricity and some credibility in the green community, but not much in the way of power generation. Still, something is more than nothing.
I'd love to see the day when Walt Disney World is completely powered by renewable energy. It'll take some serious work to get there, but it'll be worth it in the long run.
I was going to comment this but you beat me to it. People think 270 wasted acres for 11% of the needed electricity is great 🙄🙄 solars a joke that only works cause of subsidies.
Agreed the nuclear option is more efficient and reliable. If the desire is to go green without concern about efficiency and with little concern for reliability, then nukes are off the table because of the waste issue. This could be minimized by not building large reactors instead using medium to small reactors in coordination with each other to produce the heat and steam required for the power requirements (say 150% of Disney’s projected 20 year needs). I think the waste products are less, but I am not sure about this. One then has to consider the costs. The direct costs for solar are the land purchase, the permitting costs, the purchasing cost, the installation costs, the maintenance costs and the removal costs. These same areas are true for nuclear plants-lush the cost of operating the plant must also be added (near zero if not zero for solar while a full-time 24x7 staff for nukes) with the proportion of cost being wildly different for both permitting and purchasing costs with solar winning easily in the lowest cost race. The nuke also has a much bigger removal/replacement cost when it comes to spent fuel disposal. Even with the increased efficiency and reliability, the nuke just costs more. To make it worthwhile, the nuke plant would have to be very large. That would be an anathema to Disney as it would be very visible due to the massive cooling tower and the possibility of a meltdown (although very low) causing the loss of all of the WDW complex might cause many to not visit WDW or the greater Orlando area for that matter. Also, I am not sure either the USAF or NASA would like the possibility of fallout from a WDW nuke plant meltdown causing the loss of either Cape Canaveral Air Station or Kennedy Space Center for many’s years or even a few months if just a gas/steam release.
I actually don't think it would be awesome to have Disneylands running on 100% renewable energy ^^ From what I remember, solar panels are still pretty hard to recycle, which means that they produce a high amount of garbage once used Plus, even though Paris is not the rainy city people think it is, I doubt it's as sunny as Florida, so the efficiency would be far less good. And wind turbine are kind of an ecological disaster (the giant model that we can see in fields at least) So yeah, I don't think it would be that cool ^^
What do you think would be cool here? Your phrasing sort of implies you think they should keep some non-renewables. Sure there are some challenges with disposal of solar panels at the end of their life, but there is also a very significant impact to decommissioning non-renewable energy infrastructure. Whilst they both have disposal impacts, its the non-renewables that have a variety of significant impacts day-to-day from burning of fuel, transport of that fuel, extraction of that fuel. Solar doesn't technically have zero ongoing impact (it still has some from maintenance etc) but its negligible compared to non-renewables. I know that wind turbines have some impact on bird species; is that the ecological impact you mean? Its not ideal but the number of birds killed by turbine collisions is small compared to the number killed colliding with other kinds of building. A lot of good work has been done recently on how wind farms can be designed to reduce bird fatalities, so that should go down in the future. Its also not as if fossil fuels don't kill birds too: the best case estimates for the Exxon Valdez disaster alone is 250,000 seabirds killed (plus other wildlife).
@@MrDanJB85 I think a combination of nuclear and renewable energies is the best (even if for obvious reasons, disneyland parks can't have their own nuclear plants). I'm not a fan at all of fuel and coil energies, for the reasons you gave. In Florida, I have no doubt that there are advantages to have solar panels (never been there, but it seems like a very sunny place ^^ ), but in Paris, not that much (I did a study about that in school a few years ago, the efficiency of solar panel at that time was not good enough compared to all the energy it costed to assemble them and then try to recycle them) For the wind turbines, yes, I'm talking about the birds :) I have friends who work in ethology, some job offers are literally 100% made of spending your week removing the birds cadavers from the wind turbine fields I didn't know about the work that has been done to reduce that, I'll look it up :)
I had one a few years back on their energy usage in general, and one on a solar powered car race they hosted for a few years, but this is the first just on solar for them. I figured with the opening of the Origis farm it was worth revisiting and giving its own topic.
@@MidwaytoMainStreet Oh yes! That's what it was! Either way I love listening to/watching your videos! Thank you for making interesting, quality content.
I don’t know it is Florida but do you know what would save land for more theme parks? Nuclear the only true effective green energy besides hydro. There’s no major waterfalls in Florida or heavy tides so nuclear is the way to go!
Very Kool... but is it true that the temperature above these solar fields can be hot enough to cause birds flying near them to burst into flames... And then wouldn't the super heated atmosphere above these solar fields add to the increasing climate change. (Asking for a friend)...
A solar farm probably isn’t that much hotter than a black asphalt parking lot in Florida. And those get pretty toasty in the summer. But you definitely won’t see any toasted seagulls around solar panels or parking lots.
That is actually a really interesting question (serious or not). Its my understanding that one way that land use can affect climate change is by changing the world's albedo: the amount of solar radiation reflected back from the surface. So if we were to construct huge solar farms on an area of the planet with high albedo like the pale sands of the Sahara or the polar ice caps, then that should increase global warming and drive climate change by reducing the amount of solar radiation reflected away by the Earth. Luckily for Disney their parks are all in locations with relatively low albedo so the solar panels aren't going to have a negative affect. There is kind of solar power plant that gets hot enough to burn birds: concentrated solar power plants. Those use parabolic mirrors to concentrate solar energy to generate steam for turbines. Fortunately for Donald and other winged friends that hang out there, the Disney parks use photovoltaic solar farms which don't generate those high temperatures.
This is really loose math since the details can vary, but according to a NY Times report, an acre of mature 50-year old forest can absorb around 30k lbs of CO2 a year. So a 2k acre forest would absorb roughly 60 million lbs a year. However on the flip side of that, if Disney's demands remained mostly fossil-fuel based, they'd be adding CO2 at the same time. According to the EPA the national average rate is 947.2 lbs of CO2 per MWh of energy. With Disney's power demands (1.2m MWh/year), that would translate to around 1.1 billion lbs of CO2. So this would be one of those cases where the CO2 prevented by switching over would more than make up for the CO2 absorption lost by getting rid of those trees.
They should add a solar canopy to EPCOT’s parking lot. It’d be totally in keeping with what EPCOT is all about.
Would also keep cars cooler and dry.
I honestly don’t see why more theme parks do that idea.They do it over in Legoland. The whole parking lot isn’t solar panels but there is ALOT of coverage. We loved being able to park under the solar panels. Our car was nice and cool and not surface of the sun hot after being parked all day in the Florida sun!
I agree, the only two issues I see is maybe light bouncing off the solar panels would mess with the monorail driver/guests view of the park. If that is the case then put them in Animal Kingdom. The second issue is maybe solar canopy parking can't stand up to hurricanes all that well.
They should demolish Epcot and turn it into a solar farm.
@@ryanm9105 it doesn’t really keep them much cooler in Florida. Shade and sun temps aren’t that much different there
"It's not going to happen overnight, though..."
I see what you did, there. :)
Oh yeah! Good point!
Rob you’ve done it again. You’ve made something extremely boring Disney-i-fied and incredibly interesting. Amazing job!
That as great, Rob. I'm glad you mentioned Ellen's Energy Adventure, as this along with Listen to the Land, was all about new and upcomign technologies - that are now here!
A quibble: When you mention the capacities of solar plants, the units you should be using are megawatts (MW), a unit of power, not megawatt-hours (MWh), a unit of energy. Power is the rate of consumption or production of energy. One megawatt of power running for one hour will deliver a megawatt-hour of energy.
Also the h should be corrected in the future because he used it in caps. I was doubting about it but your units confirmed my suspicion.
(The SI unit of energy is the joule, which is a watt-second. So a megawatt-hour is exactly 3.6 billion joules.)
I really have nothing to say other than I still continue to find this type of content interesting. You've done a lot of videos in this vein on the statistics of Walt Disney World, and I don't have any constructive commentary to make, but still want to express that I really enjoy your content.
The solar panels over the Disneyland Paris parking lot are actually being installed at this moment.
Actually, having solar panels over the parking lot would be a cool idea (literally for the cars below!). Just need to make sure the panels are high enough to handle most vehicles (high enough for a semi should do it). Of course, that would eliminate the ability to see fireworks from the parking lot. {shrug}
Ride systems can put some extreme temporary load on a power grid, for example a LIM launched roller coaster like Rock N Roller Coaster can brownouts when a coaster launches, or if the coaster doesn’t hit proper launch speed the ride safeties kick in and the ride is down. I don’t recall it happening for a Disney Parks ride, but other parks have run into it where they couldn’t run the ride at the full designed capacity of X launches every hour due to electricity requirements. Interesting engineering problems.
Excellent opportunity for the combo of roof top solar and battery storage. It would definitely flatten the power demand curve.
How often do solar panels need to be replaced, once they get worn out and ineffective? What about all of the raw materials needed to manufacture solar panels? Those have to be mined, right?
Buddy, you're making my Ecology class 100% more interesting.
I really love that Disney strives to operate more and more on renewable energy. Wish that places outside of the parks would start adopting initiatives like these as well. Great video, Rob!
Most other places outside the parks are operating on tiny budgets and tinier profits.
Rob, you're incredible; when Disney Parks posted about solar generation on Earth day I had so many questions about what was behind the sound bites and their roadmap to more renewable energy. You've answered all those questions and then some - and the shocking thing is that I didn't see that coming. Your content is scholarly, yet fun and delivered with such enthusiasm - thank you.
One question - you've quoted the output of the solar farms in MWh, should that be MW? I think its usual for power plants to quote output in MW (based on peak output), whilst consumption and storage is measured in MWh. The calculation you do at around 2:28 makes sense in MWh because you're discussing energy consumed over the March to September period; the MWh capacities you quote for the farms at 0:50, 1:24 and 4:53 on the other hand don't have a time-frame attached, so I'm thinking those should be in MW?
This reminds me of a tom Scott video from years ago where he explains that disney technically has permission from Florida and the RCID to build a nuclear power station if it wanted
Rob has one about that too
They really should do that instead of wasting huge amounts of land for solar.
As I recall, one big limiting factor is that Disney does not have permission from the US federal government for such a power plant. They only have permission from the state of Florida.
The federal government is the biggest red tape in stopping new nuclear plants from being constructed. although in the past 10 years, it's reversed somewhat, we're still at the point where we just arent building enough new ones to replace the old ones that will be decommissioning soon. We've been stuck at 20% for decades. People love to rant and rave about green energy but will stop at nothing to prevent nuclear plants from being built that literally could solve the battery problem overnight. Bulk of energy during the day could be solar, wind, thermal but at night nuclear and maybe natural gas until we train enough of a work force to go fully nuclear which would take at least 2-3 generations but it'll never happen unless we start now.
I was just having a conversation with my friends about renewable energy and was touting how much solar Disney has, then you uploaded this.
Another great video, Rob! Well done!
I really love 💕 this channel, it's just so damn interesting! Keep up the good work Rob!!
Solar, among renewable sources, has the advantage for WDW of producing the most energy when it is needed the most air conditioning. That being said, MK and Epcot produce chilled water for a/c at central energy plants that run on jet turbine engines powered by fossil fuels. So those plants will need some modification if they also want to take advantage of the solar electric power.
This motivated me to invest in solar energy.
They’re also moving to a lot of LED lighting, reducing load.
Not just the parking lots: put some solar panels over sections of the walkways and benches to create shaded areas. Obviously don't roof everything because then you couldn't get those iconic weenie pics (golf ball for the win), but there are several areas where people already sit to rest.
I love the optimism on renewable energy...but now isn’t the right time to go all in on solar. Although there have been major advancements in solar,most panels are still non recyclable. More importantly, most solar panels are made with lead composite cells and the ones that aren’t made with lead are made with rare metals that get strip mined out of the earth. So when these panels hit the end of their life, they’ll end up in a landfill somewhere creating toxic run off. Going big with solar right now only replaces the old problems with new problems for the environment it doesn’t get rid of them. Geothermal and hydroelectric dams are the smarter solutions.
REALLY interesting these vids pal
I love the amount of info in these videos. Great job dude!
I know a lot of people like to give Disney a hard time because they’re a giant corporation and people seem to think that they want to own everything and only care about money, but whenever people say that, I always counter with things like what you’re talking about in this video. Disney takes their corporate leadership seriously and they really do want to help set new goals and responsibilities for companies.
I always wondered why Disney World didn't put solar panels covering their parking lots, the only reasons why I could see why they didn't was either hurricanes hitting the area or maybe issues with the monorail. I don't know how large each parking lot by the parks are but if they did that it would provide a good amount of power and shade for all the guests cars.
A study by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory conclusively demonstrates that energy payback for solar panel is a little less than 4 years provided they never need serviced and have optimal weather. As a general rule, solar panels last for about 25-30 years. So on average the panels pay (in terms of energy) for themselves in about 4 years and then are a net gain of energy for 21-26 years.
I really hope they get near 100% one day. Given how Walt felt about this stuff all those years ago, it seems highly likely he'd be pushing for this if he were alive today.
I completely agree with that statement good sir. I have an animated world called Ericland, and right now we're investing in renewable energy (I'm that person who loves preserving the environment because it's so beautiful). We've already invested in clean fuels for machines, no cars allowed, bikes and scooters are available, solar panels are being put up everywhere, and we turn off our lights at night when the park is closed so my characters can sleep.
Do they have any battery/energy storage capacity for night or only use the solar during the day?
Guess only daytime solar use since there's so much to power they can't spare enough for storage anyway.
"It might happen but it won't happen over night!" Solar power. Classic!
By the time they were able to build a farm that large, the efficiency of newer panels should seriously increase the output per panel. Right now we are at about 20-25% efficiency, but I would expect us to be at about 40% in the next decade.
Assuming a 7 year depreciation on the panels, one would expect an 8-10 life span for a utility company’s solar farm before total replacement. Given your projection of efficiency increase, this matches very well with getting better production over the next decade.
For non-economic geeks, the company gets to deduct the cost of the panels for the length of the depreciation schedule from their taxes. This is an increase to their profitability each year (other costs factor into the actual total profit). Once the depreciation is zero, the hardware of any kind is either generating profit or must be removed from inventory quickly according to the bean-counters and the preference of the stockholders. Assuming a low maintenance cost (and that is a big if), the panels will stay in operation for 1-3 years after being fully depreciated before the lure of higher efficiency panels (higher profitability from the panels) draws the company to physical replacement (other factors being the purchase and installation costs). If the panels are expensive to maintain (as an example, maybe because they were cheaply manufactured) then replacement could occur earlier because the costs are too high to keep the panels. If the maintenance costs are near zero, the replacement could be delayed until the price for greater efficiency is too low to not buy the newer models.
Wow, my engineering background just kicked in on this comment. Haven’t felt that in a long time.
Looking forward to seeing how successful it is in the future.
Any estimate for how and when WDW can begin to fully rely only on renewable energy must include the improvements in efficiency of the load. Lighting, motors, drive systems, control systems, and all types of devices will inevitably become more energy efficient. A third factor will be just how much Disney expands their operations. Conserving power or obtaining it from renewables may simply precipitate even more usage. It's good to know about what they've done so far, but it's more of a shot in the dark than most people realize when trying to predict where it's headed.
Interesting video and very informative. I’m all for green initiatives, but what about the costs of tearing down a thousand acres of forests?
Fossil fuels are used in chopping it down, displacing wildlife, and depleting oxygen sources
Disney needs to hire you to work at Epcot. You could make great attractions that are informative and fun!
Love this idea! Yay for reusable energy!
Look at how much space would have to be taken up to power Disney World with solar. That can't be good for the environment.
@@izdatsumcp , making use of roof tops and areas alongside roads will minimize the need to clear natural habitat. Of course there isn't just one simple solution.
@@RandallJamesPeterson exactly, as Rob mentioned it, a mix of different enerfy sources are needed. Also, energy needs should reduce too. We also need better ways to store and transform energy and machines or devices more energy efficient.
Here's a question as you mentioned "Ellen's Energy Adventure/universe of energy"
What was the energy output of the array on that building?
I'm just curious how it maps to current tech
How do you create your thumbnails
I wonder if there are any large companies 100% dependent on their own renewable energy.
ie Not buying any from the grid.
Walt Disney would be proud!
They use a lot of natural gas but I wonder how much less land they'd use if they went nuclear.
Funny thing is that I just got an ad for saving money by going solar before starting this video
One other area for Disney to try to tap into (pun intended) is micro dams. The rain falls often enough to cause a lot of water to flow into the storm drain system and further into the streams that flow through the property. If micro DNA’s were installed, they could produce electricity. How much? Probably enough to light a few lightbulbs, but nothing significant. Why not? Not enough “head” to cause a forceful enough spin to generate a lot of electricity because there isn’t enough height change from the park to the streams. Micro dams could give Disney some electricity and some credibility in the green community, but not much in the way of power generation. Still, something is more than nothing.
Mickey Mouse has harnessed the power of the sun! Now to harness the power of the FL rain
That would be so useful!
I'd love to see the day when Walt Disney World is completely powered by renewable energy. It'll take some serious work to get there, but it'll be worth it in the long run.
They could use all that space for new attractions...
A nuclear power station would be many times more efficient and with more reliability.
I was going to comment this but you beat me to it. People think 270 wasted acres for 11% of the needed electricity is great 🙄🙄 solars a joke that only works cause of subsidies.
Agreed the nuclear option is more efficient and reliable. If the desire is to go green without concern about efficiency and with little concern for reliability, then nukes are off the table because of the waste issue. This could be minimized by not building large reactors instead using medium to small reactors in coordination with each other to produce the heat and steam required for the power requirements (say 150% of Disney’s projected 20 year needs). I think the waste products are less, but I am not sure about this. One then has to consider the costs. The direct costs for solar are the land purchase, the permitting costs, the purchasing cost, the installation costs, the maintenance costs and the removal costs. These same areas are true for nuclear plants-lush the cost of operating the plant must also be added (near zero if not zero for solar while a full-time 24x7 staff for nukes) with the proportion of cost being wildly different for both permitting and purchasing costs with solar winning easily in the lowest cost race. The nuke also has a much bigger removal/replacement cost when it comes to spent fuel disposal. Even with the increased efficiency and reliability, the nuke just costs more.
To make it worthwhile, the nuke plant would have to be very large. That would be an anathema to Disney as it would be very visible due to the massive cooling tower and the possibility of a meltdown (although very low) causing the loss of all of the WDW complex might cause many to not visit WDW or the greater Orlando area for that matter. Also, I am not sure either the USAF or NASA would like the possibility of fallout from a WDW nuke plant meltdown causing the loss of either Cape Canaveral Air Station or Kennedy Space Center for many’s years or even a few months if just a gas/steam release.
I actually don't think it would be awesome to have Disneylands running on 100% renewable energy ^^
From what I remember, solar panels are still pretty hard to recycle, which means that they produce a high amount of garbage once used
Plus, even though Paris is not the rainy city people think it is, I doubt it's as sunny as Florida, so the efficiency would be far less good.
And wind turbine are kind of an ecological disaster (the giant model that we can see in fields at least)
So yeah, I don't think it would be that cool ^^
What do you think would be cool here?
Your phrasing sort of implies you think they should keep some non-renewables. Sure there are some challenges with disposal of solar panels at the end of their life, but there is also a very significant impact to decommissioning non-renewable energy infrastructure. Whilst they both have disposal impacts, its the non-renewables that have a variety of significant impacts day-to-day from burning of fuel, transport of that fuel, extraction of that fuel. Solar doesn't technically have zero ongoing impact (it still has some from maintenance etc) but its negligible compared to non-renewables.
I know that wind turbines have some impact on bird species; is that the ecological impact you mean? Its not ideal but the number of birds killed by turbine collisions is small compared to the number killed colliding with other kinds of building. A lot of good work has been done recently on how wind farms can be designed to reduce bird fatalities, so that should go down in the future. Its also not as if fossil fuels don't kill birds too: the best case estimates for the Exxon Valdez disaster alone is 250,000 seabirds killed (plus other wildlife).
@@MrDanJB85 I think a combination of nuclear and renewable energies is the best (even if for obvious reasons, disneyland parks can't have their own nuclear plants).
I'm not a fan at all of fuel and coil energies, for the reasons you gave.
In Florida, I have no doubt that there are advantages to have solar panels (never been there, but it seems like a very sunny place ^^ ), but in Paris, not that much (I did a study about that in school a few years ago, the efficiency of solar panel at that time was not good enough compared to all the energy it costed to assemble them and then try to recycle them)
For the wind turbines, yes, I'm talking about the birds :)
I have friends who work in ethology, some job offers are literally 100% made of spending your week removing the birds cadavers from the wind turbine fields
I didn't know about the work that has been done to reduce that, I'll look it up :)
Wait, am I crazy or didn't you have a video about Disney's solar power? O_o
I had one a few years back on their energy usage in general, and one on a solar powered car race they hosted for a few years, but this is the first just on solar for them. I figured with the opening of the Origis farm it was worth revisiting and giving its own topic.
I had the same feeling. I chalked it up to (as he confirmed) to it being a more general energy focused video.
@@MidwaytoMainStreet Oh yes! That's what it was! Either way I love listening to/watching your videos! Thank you for making interesting, quality content.
I don’t know it is Florida but do you know what would save land for more theme parks? Nuclear the only true effective green energy besides hydro. There’s no major waterfalls in Florida or heavy tides so nuclear is the way to go!
Increase the power supply for half the state of Florida.
Considering how ungreen solar energy is, maybe they should consider building a nuclear reactor instead.
Very Kool... but is it true that the temperature above these solar fields can be hot enough to cause birds flying near them to burst into flames... And then wouldn't the super heated atmosphere above these solar fields add to the increasing climate change.
(Asking for a friend)...
No that is not how any of this works.
A solar farm probably isn’t that much hotter than a black asphalt parking lot in Florida. And those get pretty toasty in the summer. But you definitely won’t see any toasted seagulls around solar panels or parking lots.
That is actually a really interesting question (serious or not).
Its my understanding that one way that land use can affect climate change is by changing the world's albedo: the amount of solar radiation reflected back from the surface. So if we were to construct huge solar farms on an area of the planet with high albedo like the pale sands of the Sahara or the polar ice caps, then that should increase global warming and drive climate change by reducing the amount of solar radiation reflected away by the Earth. Luckily for Disney their parks are all in locations with relatively low albedo so the solar panels aren't going to have a negative affect.
There is kind of solar power plant that gets hot enough to burn birds: concentrated solar power plants. Those use parabolic mirrors to concentrate solar energy to generate steam for turbines. Fortunately for Donald and other winged friends that hang out there, the Disney parks use photovoltaic solar farms which don't generate those high temperatures.
There are groups that are developing farms under solar panels. The panels provide shade that would cause increased water loss.
@@RandallJamesPeterson reduce or increase water loss?
I wonder how much co2 could be taken out of the air by 2,000 acres of trees would take out vs 2,000 solar panels + co2 from producing the panels
This is really loose math since the details can vary, but according to a NY Times report, an acre of mature 50-year old forest can absorb around 30k lbs of CO2 a year. So a 2k acre forest would absorb roughly 60 million lbs a year. However on the flip side of that, if Disney's demands remained mostly fossil-fuel based, they'd be adding CO2 at the same time. According to the EPA the national average rate is 947.2 lbs of CO2 per MWh of energy. With Disney's power demands (1.2m MWh/year), that would translate to around 1.1 billion lbs of CO2. So this would be one of those cases where the CO2 prevented by switching over would more than make up for the CO2 absorption lost by getting rid of those trees.