You're going to have to explain that. If you are referring only to the electrical grid, then my response would be that infrastructure changes will have to be made, money will have to be spent. Here's important info: http://www.ez2c.de/ml/solar_land_area/ I'll point out that the article assumes an 8% efficiency. With recent discoveries that efficiency can be much higher. There's a lot of people on this forum, maybe someone knows enough to critique the articles conclusions. Sources: References [1] J. K. B. Bishop and W. B. Rossow. Spatial and temporal variability of global surface solar irradiance. J. Geophys. Res. 96, 16839-16858 (1991). [2] International Satellite Cloud Climatology Project (ISCCP). http://isccp.giss.nasa.gov/ [3] National Geophysical Data Center (NGDC), NOAA Satellite and Information Service, Coastline Extractor. http://rimmer.ngdc.noaa.gov/mgg/coast/ [4] International Energy Agency (IEA), Key World Energy Statistics 2005. http://www.iea.org/ [5] Map of World Deserts. http://www.mapsofworld.com/world-desert-map.htm
As in the shorting subprime Paulson? Damn. He got himself an easy 10-bagger. damn damn damn. This guy is good.
Ok, once again, the concept of a 2 mile by 2 mile solar farm to power the whole country is for illustrative purposes. Generation & distribution do not work that easily, and if they did, it would have long been done. You can just use common sense and ask yourself how you would keep your ACs running at night if the whole grid is powered by solar.
Excess power stored in photovoltaic batteries from the extra panels a responsible person has put on their own house???
Solar Energy, from our Sun, can be captured in many ways. Photo-voltaic works only with the sun shines...but, what about using the sun to super heat water, which is heated to steam, which turns a turbine that generates electricity. So, instead of nuclear fuel heating water into steam, its Solar Energy to heat water int0 steam. Ahh, but that night time issue....well, turns out that this super heated water can be kept super-hot underground in a brine solution, and recovered during the evening hours when the sun don't shine. Yes, a 24*7*365 Solar power generation facility is feasible. Feasible.
That's your explanation? Generation doesn't work that easily? how so? The generation works quite easily. Distribution? how so? 'it would have long been done' is not a good argument. Your 2nd point is not common sense. It is an assumption. It sounds like you have not done much homework in this area. Certainly energy will need to be stored. A likely scenario: large plants will be located adjacent to the solar fields for which to convert the electricity. This can be anything from the manufacture of gas, ethanol, fuel cell solid rods, hydrogen or hydrogen analogsetc. From there the trains will be running 24/7 to distribute fuel throughout the continent. (As opposed to the oil tankers running around the globe). Second, ultracapacitors the size of office buildings will be used as short term stores for municipal electrical needs. Third, storage of energy via hydro reservoirs. This one is inefficient, but at least we can capture energy that is not being captured right now. The cost? Worth it.
Yep, that's another good one. I don't know enough to compare the different storages, but definitely efficiency will be a main criteria. You can also add a whole bunch of multi-ton fly wheels as a candidate. The capex for all this will be killer though.
most of our electrical needs are daytime - that is when people have lights on, and are up at work/school/home/retail... We don't need to worry about the storage. We should aim for the amount of solar that totally replaces our total daytime power. Instead of spending money on storage, all that money should be spent on wind/wave/tidal power. They are independent of sun, so it would be more cost effective to drop the storage in favor of other alternatives, which work during the night. The balance among these can be worked out. But spending money on storage is a colossal waste of time & money.
This is now being done. Concentrated solar power I believe they call it. They use mirrors to super heat water. There are about half a dozen companies building sites now. Also, IBM just announced that they can design mirrors, controlled with their chips of course, to create 10 times the heat possible now. This means a smaller footprint. This is estimated to be competitive with traditional electric production in only 2 years. FSLR also says their solar farms will be equal to fossil fuels in price by then. This is just starting as the industry is growing by 40% per year, and sucking in the big semi conductor firms big time. National Semi for example can now make panels for a fraction of the cost as Sunpower, which they bought. They automated the process, which was actually done by hand before. Went from a few hundred systems per quarter to 300,000!
I strongly disagree with you. we need energy, period. Storage is not a colossal waist of money. It is not obvious that money should be spent on wind/wave/tidal. There seems to be this bias to think in terms of electrical usage only. Energy is fungible, at a cost based on transformation efficiency. - Some of that energy needs to go to transportation vehicles - Energy will be needed 24/7, in different time zones, in different locations, with varying volume - We need that energy to replace the use of oil, gas, coal, nuclear. - As an essential infrastructure, there needs to be systems put into place to deal with various system failures. This is especially so for critical needs. - we have been tapping into large scale energy storage via oil & coal. We need to provide that now for ourselves. - the sun is hitting the earth ALL the time. Trade is also possible. The above suggests that storage will be necessary. Wind is not independent of solar, it is caused by it. The only sources of energy not directly or indirectly coming from solar is nuclear & tidal. Wind, wave, tidal provide far less energy and AFAIK are no cheaper to develop. here's wikipedia material. As usual, if you've got primary material to refute it, please mention it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_resources_and_consumption#Wave_and_tidal_power http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_development