I wonder how many homes you could power with 3 square miles of gas or nuclear power plant? I bet a lot more than 70,000.
Three square miles of pristine desert!? What about the Gila Monsters!?
God forbid that a bird should fly close and get ground up by the blades on the windmill....
This is a good idea. However, it should be done by American companies!
Scientific American: A SOLAR GRAND PLAN
* A massive switch from coal, oil, natural gas and nuclear power plants to solar power plants could supply 69 percent of the U.S.’s electricity and 35 percent of its total energy by 2050.
* A vast area of photovoltaic cells would have to be erected in the Southwest. Excess daytime energy would be stored as compressed air in underground caverns to be tapped during nighttime hours.
* Large solar concentrator power plants would be built as well.
* A new direct-current power transmission backbone would deliver solar electricity across the country.
* But $420 billion in subsidies from 2011 to 2050 would be required to fund the infrastructure and make it cost-competitive.
More— http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=a-solar-grand-plan
Solar thermal is one of the few approaches that might actually become economical in the short run.
If we cover 3,000 square miles of Arizona desert, we could produce enough electricity for all the homes in America this way. Of course, we would only get power in the daytime, and the transmission losses from Arizona to New York would be prohibitive.
(and I don't count tax cuts as subsidies btw...they aren't - taxes are penalties on success, and tax cuts are the reduction of these penalties, which I endorse under any and all circumstances. Calls for "equality" are a scam which perpetuates economic interventionism across the board, which then poses as the "natural state")
Except for the “inconvenient fact” that solar energy costs much more to produce than energy from oil, coal or nuclear power (that’s less efficient for you kids in Berkeley). Sure, the “Solar Persian Gulf”. That’s the ticket.