The Solar Wind Energy Flux Budget at 1 AU: Kinetic Dominance and the Total Power of the Wind

What the solar wind carries away from the Sun, channel by channel, is computed here at 1 AU for representative conditions of 6.0 particles per cubic centimetre, 400 kilometres per second, proton temperature 1.2e5 kelvin, electron temperature 1.4e5 kelvin and a 5 nanotesla field. The total energy flux is 3.465e-04 watts per square metre, of which the bulk kinetic channel contributes 3.211e-04, or 92.7 percent; enthalpy contributes 2.154e-05, the gravitational potential cost 3.561e-06, and the wave channel 2.793e-07. Spread over the full sphere the wind's total power is 9.75e+19 watts, a fraction 2.55e-07 of the solar luminosity. The wind is thus an energetically negligible loss for the Sun that nonetheless carries essentially all of its power as ordered kinetic energy, leaving thermal and wave channels as percent-level corrections. The study is simulated and computed, not measured.