I'll try to verify this, as I couldn't find the source. This is the take-home message from the wikipedia article:
You're genius, i guess that has never been tried. Not economically feasible, not even close. You can use batteries for backup, like some do, but on a regular basis it's not practical. Not yet.
I think we should start out with a combo of solar/wind/NG plants. There is plenty of NG and its relatively clean. Then we phase out the NG plants as we can. Add more nuclear as well. Yucca mountain in NV will hold way more fuel than we will ever use. Eventually it would be cool to get everything via solar, wind, geothermal, etc. With enough capacity, we could also make hydrogen from water (just takes electricity to break it up). 100% non polluting fuel for cars that way. Would be able to run desalination plants on a major scale like some Caribbean nations do as well. Would never run out of fresh, pure water that way. Someday all this will happen hopefully, but need to stop growing the human population or it will never happen. What about jets? I think they will always need jet fuel due to the power needs.
What is your point? Show me a technical study that will prove that one sole generation source can power a quarter of USA on a regular basis, let alone the whole nation, then you can argue and show everyone how good you can look up wikipedia entries. If that was ever possible, they would have built several monster nuclear powerplants in nowhere USA, right smack in the middle of the nation 20 years ago. If you honestly believe that a 2x2 square mile solar farm (this is the stat from the HBO documentary) would power the whole nation, you are just very naive. I don't know what is so hard to understand when I say that this stat was given for ILLUSTRATIVE purposes. So you got a little interest and read some articles, wow. Try putting time to work in the industry for chump change just so that you can learn it from the ground level.
It's a matter of being practical, which it still is not as a sole 24/7/365 source. You are talking about Solar Themal, which is actually superior to PV. However, the storage is not efficient. Molten salt storage is proven on small scale. Things change a lot when you try to apply it on a large scale. It's low cost now but what happens when it becomes fully implemented. Let's see how far it goes. You people take a very simplistic & naive view of this. Making an off grid building net zero is very doable, depending on the size. But trying to power up the whole grid or even chunks of it via renewable is not a reality yet. Especially via one source like wind or solar.
I provided a link. Go to it. I also copied the references so that someone with some experience can comment on it. Did you read the link I provided? I don't know why you keep talking about some documentary and something about illustrative purposes. You are assuming other people are just like you. Whatever that documentary was, ignore it. I feel like I am talking to brick wall. I read some material some time ago, and I keep up with some industry feeds/blogs, you are making more assumptions. Do you know anyone who works in the industry? What research have you done? Was your only research that documentary you keep going on about? And if it was on HBO, isn't it just some popular science meant more for entertainment? Is that your serious research?
Quote from vv111y: I strongly disagree with you. we need energy, period. Storage is not a colossal waist of money. I will compare yours (storage) with mine (alternatives) I will assume solar is equal in cost to wind/solar/tidal, even though it is MUCH more expensive currently. COMPANY A HAS $100 MILLION TO SPEND ON ALTERNATIVE ENERGY Your scenario: $80 million spent on Solar $20 million spent on storage, including energy loss, etc. My scenario: $60 million spent on Solar - covers most of daily needs $40 million spent on wind/tidal/wave - covers rest of daily needs and all the night-time needs I get $20 million more power for my money than you do. And frankly, either scenario will still likely have some kind of gas/coal/oil power generation that can fill in the gaps. you can argue, but you are only speculating. Storage of that much power is very expensive and energy is lost in the process.
i think the best solution is to get nuclear breeder reactors online in the US. but no, nuklear is baddd, its gonna get to rouge nations quickly. they produce something like 95% (or something along those lines) less waste. too bad the US wont allow it yet. but boom- there is the baseload. then solar in the form of heating salt solutions for near 24/7 solar energy production. combine with geothermal where feasible. austrillia has a sweet solar tower proposal. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_updraft_tower and once pv becomes more cost effective, put panels on every house. that'll help alleviate the distribution problem. and this is just me but: need energy for AC? move somewhere else. there shouldn't be major cites in the middle of deserts (although that'd be where solar would be best). a golf course, or a well watered lawn in the middle of fucking arizona is a terrible idea.