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How Much Land To Power Entire USofA on Solar?

Dragonfly said:


Crazy if this is true. :shock:
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Yep, ignore storage and ditsribution (those pesky details) and the plan makes perfect sense. Quick - send me cash and we can do this. ;)
 
Dragonfly said:


Crazy if this is true. :shock:
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From the experience in Germany, the problem with alternative energy doesn't seem to be so much one of the space one needs. It is more that the sources aren't constant or produced, where the power is required. This means large amounts of backup plants that are unused most of the time and power storage that is wasteful, expensive and in some cases very raw material intensive and polluting. The other thing is the transport of power, whuch is also expensive and underlies 'Not in my Backyard' friction and litigation.

But in principal it will be fine in a few years and will work okay. We only have to solve a few wrinkles.
 
Dragonfly said:
see post #3
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But that's the point. The issue of feeding the entire country from those three seemingly small (actually quite large IRL) areas, would be an insurmountable problem.

That video is waaaaaay over simplistic BTW.
 
joG said:
The other thing is the transport of power, whuch is also expensive and underlies 'Not in my Backyard' friction and litigation.

We only have to solve a few wrinkles.
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The transport of power is not an issue. The USofA has and uses power lines for electricity. The infrastructure is already there.

As for the "wrinkles" - yes, there is still quite a few of those.
 
countryboy said:
But that's the point. The issue of feeding the entire country from those three seemingly small (actually quite large IRL) areas, would be an insurmountable problem.

That video is waaaaaay over simplistic BTW.
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I don't think the idea is for using ONLY three "small" areas.
You're missing the point.

Of course it's over simplified. There's a purpose to doing that.
 
Dragonfly said:
The transport of power is not an issue. The USofA has and uses power lines for electricity. The infrastructure is already there.

As for the "wrinkles" - yes, there is still quite a few of those.
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Actually, in case you haven't heard, our electrical power grid is not in very good shape at all.
 
Dragonfly said:
I don't think the idea is for using ONLY three "small" areas.
You're missing the point.

Of course it's over simplified. There's a purpose to doing that.
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Sorry, but I think you're missing the point. The areas shown on the map are the only places with enough sun to make the concept feasible. If it were just about area, there would be one graphic representing the land mass required to power the country. The simplistic graphic is misleading (purposefully, IMO). 11,200,000 acres is a huge amount of land.
 
Dragonfly said:
Oh, I'm not suggesting there isn't huge issues with solar still.

Just dumb-founded at how little space relative to the entire country we'd need.
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Right until you realize the environmentalists will
Come out of the woodwork to oppose any site you select just like opposition to a solar project in eastern CA years ago.
 
WCH said:
Here's the Big Problem With Tesla's New Solar Roof | The Fiscal Times
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The good news for Tesla is that, by all accounts, battery prices are dropping fast. In 10 years we should be at or near $150 per kWh, at which point a 30 kWh or even 60 kWh plus Tesla's solar tiles should be a competitive purchase for any home, in need of a new roof or not. In fact, Tesla thinks it can get to that target even faster, once their "gigafactory" is up and running and producing batteries at mass scale.

Not too expensive for luxury homes, and apparently the article feels that in 10 years it would be competitive. Seems like it's right around the corner. I mean, we're just talking price drop, not any innovation.
 
Dragonfly said:
The transport of power is not an issue. The USofA has and uses power lines for electricity. The infrastructure is already there.

As for the "wrinkles" - yes, there is still quite a few of those.
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Nope, electical power transmission over vast distances is a big issue. There are no super-duper transmission lines from the US southwest to the US northeast for very good reasons.

Lost In Transmission: How Much Electricity Disappears Between A Power Plant And Your Plug? | Inside Energy
 
Dragonfly said:
The transport of power is not an issue. The USofA has and uses power lines for electricity. The infrastructure is already there.

As for the "wrinkles" - yes, there is still quite a few of those.
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That is, what German Greens and others argued as well. The country is covered in power infrastructure. The difficulty turns up, when alternative power sources (in Germany it is mostly wind) are not, where the traditional large plants are nor, where the power is required. In the US the Not in my Backyard problem would be smaller in the less densely populated areas, but we also see how large the delays and expenses can be in the German experiment. The project has fallen far behind schedule, where the power cables have been permitted and the costs have been going up.
 
ttwtt78640 said:
Nope, electical power transmission over vast distances is a big issue. There are no super-duper transmission lines from the US southwest to the US northeast for very good reasons.

Lost In Transmission: How Much Electricity Disappears Between A Power Plant And Your Plug? | Inside Energy
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NOBODY is insisting that the entire USofA be powered only, and solely, from those three places in the southwest. :roll:

Stop being so damned literal about this.

There's no reason small solar fields can't be built all over the damned country.

The point of that graphic was to show that we don't need to blot out the sun from 75% of all living creatures on planet earth just to power New York City.
 
Dragonfly said:
NOBODY is insisting that the entire USofA be powered only, and solely, from those three places in the southwest. :roll:

Stop being so damned literal about this.

There's no reason small solar fields can't be built all over the damned country.

The point of that graphic was to show that we don't need to blot out the sun from 75% of all living creatures on planet earth just to power New York City.
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Actually, there's plenty of reason, not enough sun.
 
Dragonfly said:
NOBODY is insisting that the entire USofA be powered only, and solely, from those three places in the southwest. :roll:

Stop being so damned literal about this.

There's no reason small solar fields can't be built all over the damned country.

The point of that graphic was to show that we don't need to blot out the sun from 75% of all living creatures on planet earth just to power New York City.
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No reason except cost, latitude, local weather, storage and back-up power.
 
ttwtt78640 said:
AFAIK, space was never an issue - we have plenty of desert.
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Ah but that desert is a unique environment that demands protection. If we paved over that much land for WalMarts. people would be screaming at the top of their lungs about the environmental damage. But covering it up with solar panels seems to be an acceptable course of action....
 
The density and availability of solar power limits it's uses unless some method of storing and accumulating,
the energy is used.
I favor hydrocarbon storage,
http://www.audi.com/corporate/en/su...ity/product/synthetic-fuels-Audi-e-fuels.html
as the most practical. It would solve both the long term energy problem, as well as any problems that may exists with CO2.
In addition, the man made fuels would be compatible with existing needs and infrastructure.
 
Quoting some thinker ahead of his time....there is nothing new under the sun.
About 3 decades ago I took an evening college class titled "alternate energy technology". It covered all the sources from bunker oil and high sulphur coal to solar and nuclear. After we studied all of them and compared costs from digging to using of the various sources of energy and made up charts showing the more likely choices to be used to cover our current and future needs based on projected demand. Then the professor added an additional factor not considered up to that point in time. He asked us to consider replacing just a small percent of our incandescent lighting to fluorescent. LED lighting wasn't available yet....
Long story short, instead of having to ADD more power plants, X amount per year, we found that we could SHUT DOWN a large number of our dirtiest coal plants.
We can juggle the numbers however we want, finding ways to use LESS energy must be a major factor from now on, if not THE major factor.
 
UtahBill said:
Quoting some thinker ahead of his time....there is nothing new under the sun.
About 3 decades ago I took an evening college class titled "alternate energy technology". It covered all the sources from bunker oil and high sulphur coal to solar and nuclear. After we studied all of them and compared costs from digging to using of the various sources of energy and made up charts showing the more likely choices to be used to cover our current and future needs based on projected demand. Then the professor added an additional factor not considered up to that point in time. He asked us to consider replacing just a small percent of our incandescent lighting to fluorescent. LED lighting wasn't available yet....
Long story short, instead of having to ADD more power plants, X amount per year, we found that we could SHUT DOWN a large number of our dirtiest coal plants.
We can juggle the numbers however we want, finding ways to use LESS energy must be a major factor from now on, if not THE major factor.
Click to expand...
Correct, the cost benefit ratio favors adding better insulation and windows to a home over adding solar panels, by a long shot.
Changing out all of the light bulbs in a home (now LED) saves in several ways, and is cost effective.
Ideally we can get to a point where most homes are ether energy producers, or at least net zero,
but the quilt work of laws need to be unified, to allow both homeowner and power utility to have some benefit
to the grid attachments. Many of the current laws actually harm the utilities profits, causing push back.
 
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