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An airport is a structure that surely does get a fair share of the sun. See, it has got to be far away from any towering buildings or trees so much so that the airplanes would not get caught in any of that. And so it is just right for an airport to get solar power.
Alamogordo City’s airport, the White Sands Regional Airport, is one of those airports which is going to be receiving solar power. So that means, that it will be spending less on electricity and power bills.
The solar project atop the White Sands Regional Airport can convert the sun’s rays into usable power. It can create 8 kW so just imagine how much the airport would be saving. If there is too much power that the airport just does not need, the excess power is sent to the electric system of New Mexico’s Public Service Company.
Source: KDBC 4 News
Image source: FreeDigitalPhotos.net
I’m all for more solar power but 8 kw doesn’t sound like that much – will this really make much of a difference? Think about the following:
1 kwh of electricity means about 2.8 lbs of CO2 emissions if it comes from coal. So assuming they got an average of 6 hours of full sun a day, they’d produce 48 kwh a day which means they’d be saving 134 lbs of CO2.
According to one carbon calculator I checked, 134 lbs of CO2 is roughly what you would contribute to the atmosphere by flying a 480-mile trip round-trip. So the airport has offset one person’s worth of CO2 per day.
This is a great first step but the only way we’ll get a serious grip on the climate crisis is if we cut back on air travel. You’d need to cover the entire land mass around the airport with high-efficiency solar panels to come close to offsetting all the CO2 that flying emits!