# How many watts does the sun have?



## dmastin (Jun 27, 2009)

Getting in my car yesterday (after it was preheated by the Arkansas sun) and I chuckled as I wondered how may watts the sun has and what a shame it cannot be harnessed as an aquarium light. Of course we know sunlight can benefit the indoor aquarium, but that's a different story. I then remembered I'd tossed some Hornwort, Cabomba, and Anacharis is my goldfish containers a while back. I checked them out and the Cabomba and Anacharis were growing like crazy (the strands were so long they broke before I could find both ends). No real surprise, but at least I remember I have a free source of both now! Also it occurred to me I could create a test bed for my other aquatic plants and see if any enjoy growing outdoors! (Note these are isolated containers miles from natural bodies of water.) Oh, a goldfish in one of the containers seemed to say "please, if you're not going to feed us, bugger off". Gosh, it'd be great if the Rotala macrandra prospered.


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## davemonkey (Mar 29, 2008)

Nice pics of your outdor container pond. That's funny you mentioned that about sunlight. I've actually been wondering lately, "How many WPG of whatever type of bulb would you need to match sunlight?"

I'm guessing that anyone with a PAR meter could find out in a matter of minutes how much light is reaching natural ground outdoors at any given hour of the day. 

-Dave


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## Veloth (Jun 25, 2008)

386 million billion billion Watts. Got it from HERE


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## dmastin (Jun 27, 2009)

That's great I love it. I'm some how incensed that mother nature can do a better job than I can. Silly I know. It's hard to believe though that there's enough CO2 in my little container goldfish ponds to allow the plants to utilize that much energy.



Veloth said:


> 386 million billion billion Watts. Got it from HERE


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## SniperLk (May 25, 2008)

Veloth said:


> 386 million billion billion Watts. Got it from HERE


These are the watts emitted by the sun itself, not the watts received on the ground...

Here is what I found :



> # Average over the entire earth = 164 Watts per square meter over a 24 hour day
> 
> # 8 hour summer day, 40 degree latitude 600 Watts per sq. meter


http://www.google.com/webhp#hl=en&q...&aq=f&oq=sun+watts+per+m²&aqi=&fp=kE0CVI1PqvM

Hmm, that's not that big after all..


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