Environ. Res. Lett. 13 (2018) 104008 https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/aae102 LETTER Observation-based solar and wind power capacity factors and power OPEN ACCESS densities RECEIVED 22 June 2018 Lee M Miller1,3 and David W Keith1,2 REVISED 1 School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02139, United States of America 7 September 2018 2 Harvard Kennedy School, Cambridge, MA 02138, United States of America ACCEPTED FOR PUBLICATION 3 Author to whom any correspondence should be addressed. 13 September 2018 _ PUBLISHED E-mail:
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[email protected] 4 October 2018 Keywords: power density, capacity factor, renewable energy, land use, photovoltaics, solar power, wind power Supplementary material for this article is available online Original content from this work may be used under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 licence. Abstract Any further distribution of Power density is the rate of energy generation per unit of land surface area occupied by an energy this work must maintain attribution to the system. The power density of low-carbon energy sources will play an important role in mediating the author(s) and the title of the work, journal citation environmental consequences of energy system decarbonization as the world transitions away from and DOI. high power-density fossil fuels. All else equal, lower power densities mean larger land and environmental footprints. The power density of solar and wind power remain surprisingly uncertain: −2 estimates of realizable generation rates per unit area for wind and solar power span 0.3–47 We m and −2 10–120 We m respectively.