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
This part I like but without any "Grand Plans." When you can go to Home Depot to pick up your solar collector/battery pack power unit to juice some DC devices in your home is when solar will have found its niche. In the short term, that is. Long term is anyone's guess.
If these schemes were inherently less expensive than the existing power system, they would be self funding. As great as solar power is, it has its own dirt, for the dirty secret is how to supply power when the sun doesn’t shine.
The economics of the necessity to supply power every night and on stormy days means that this alternate power source must have the full capacity as the solar panels. So solar power means: we must build and pay for two power sources!
I fully understand that solar power is free, but money to build both it and its necessary backup power supply must be properly and honestly recognized as a continual cost for the simple reason: the meter runs all the time on the money invested.
If the investment was in the form of equity, the meter is running in the form of opportunity costs, or what the money could be earning instead of being sunk into this project. If the investment was in the form of debt instruments, they have recurring interest expenses. If the investment was in the form of tax distortions or “subsidies”, then either the marginal budget deficit was borrowed from China, or it marginally bid up interest rates for all government debt, or it displaced some other “urgent need”.
But, we will never see an economic impact estimate of the $420 billion in subsidies. Too many people just want to believe that money was picked from the Money Tree at no cost to society. This is just denial in a tuxedo, which is still denial.
This article reminds me of why I stopped reading Scientific American many years ago. So many of their articles are more science fiction than science fact. Their articles are infused with PC nonsense. When they cover technology they are really off base. Nobody, anywhere has ever produced any significant amount of electrical power with solar energy. In my opinion nobody ever will. All of these programs are about getting government grants and securing employment. If solar energy were viable then it would not need to be subsidized by government.
Besides what do you do at night? I wonder if any of these people thought about that. Even in Arizona you really only get about 6-7 good hours of sunlight a day. What are you going to do the rest of the time?