Posted on 07/23/2017 6:20:06 AM PDT by rktman
Tesla CEO Elon Musk — whose company makes electric cars and has a new solar roof panel division — reminded more than 30 state governors at the National Governors Association meeting this weekend exactly how much real-estate is needed to make sure America can run totally on solar energy.
“If you wanted to power the entire United States with solar panels, it would take a fairly small corner of Nevada or Texas or Utah; you only need about 100 miles by 100 miles of solar panels to power the entire United States,” Musk said during his keynote conversation on Saturday at the event in Rhode Island. “The batteries you need to store the energy, so you have 24/7 power, is 1 mile by 1 mile. One square-mile.”
It’s “a little square on the U.S. map, and then there’s a little pixel inside there, and that’s the size of the battery park that you need to support that. Real tiny.”
(Excerpt) Read more at inverse.com ...
This guy is on drugs. It would take a grid of solar panels (and batteries) much bigger than that to power the entire US. Do the math. A 1,500 sq ft panel array won’t even power the average 1,500 sq ft home - especially in the summer in the south, or winter in the north.
> Elon Musk’s Plan to Power the U.S. on Solar Energy <
I hope this won’t interfere with my plan to power the U.S. using unicorns and pixie dust.
Think of the wiring needed to convey all that power. Solar is low voltage DC. The inverters would have to be enormous or in the thousands to provide power outside that area.
This whole idea is plan to fleece the U.S. taxpayer.
What a stupid idea.
Where does the power come from at night?????? Batteries the size of Texas?
Yep, he sure has mastered the art of operating on OPM.
This article seems to support the math: http://blogs.ucl.ac.uk/energy/2015/05/21/fact-checking-elon-musks-blue-square-how-much-solar-to-power-the-us/
However, from a tactical view, this would be a very bad idea. A couple of large nukes and you could wipe out all electricity production. Also, grid resistance losses would reduce the effectiveness of this solution. Better to spread it out over many locations.
Cost wise, grid solar has come down to the point where it can compete with coal and hold it’s own against NG that is using carbon sequestration. Does not do well against hydro, geothermal or NG that does not use sequestration.
http://solarcellcentral.com/cost_page.html
Ultimately the problem is going to come down to energy storage. Since solar is only a part time energy producer, there will need to be a means of storing excess capacity until needed. I don’t believe that has been worked out yet.
Even if you have solved all the other technical problems associated with solar energy, some of which I don’t be live are solvable. You still have to move the “energy” from that “little remote corner” to the rest of the country. Ohmic losses per meter are still there. Currently I have seen studies that put ohmic losses compared to electricity generated at 25% to 50%!
Viable solar energy production will remain a “niche” energy solution unless propped up by massive subsidies.
Excellent point!
Perhaps solar won’t require subsidies for much longer.
Not to mention the uncounted square miles of batteries to store the power ...
Either musk’s math is off or their has been a huge increase in solar panel efficiency since I last looked - the average coal fired plant produces 1000-mega watts of power continuously and sits on 125 acres.
“Each run-of-the-mill 1,000-megawatt photovoltaic (solar) plant will require about 60 square miles of panes alone. In other words, the largest industrial structure ever built.” - a text clipping whose origin is now lost. And musky wants to build one nearly 200 times bigger.
Never mind how many solar cells - where is all the rare earths and other materials coming form to build such a structure - which only will account for the country’s CURRENT power needs ...
Probably cheaper and easier to mine H3 on the moon to build fusion plants ...
If the gubmint gave me billions, I could be a great innovator too.
I would venture to guess that with all the solar on peoples homes, government buildings, schools, etc. that we should already be close to the size he says we need. So why isn’t the US powered from it now?
The grid has to be sized for the peak load. That is one thing a lot of people don’t understand.
The batteries are for storing the power for when the solar panels are not generating power. There is no way one square mile of batteries could power the US at night. That is absolute crap.
All green energy needs 100% base load backup. That backup is what the batteries are intended replace.
Here’s the fuel mix on the MISO footprint in real time. It will give you some perspective;
https://www.misoenergy.org/MarketsOperations/RealTimeMarketData/Pages/FuelMix.aspx
Heh! Good point.
Elon Musk is thinking outside the box for sure.
Are they considering ways to maximize their bottom line? Of course! And what's wrong with that?
(Gasp! Another evil corporatist company!) ;-)
One critique though...
Centralizing it all in one spot means one potential source of failure. It'd probably be better to spread out in redundant locations througout the country.
Truth in advertising: I've got no horse in this race - I'm no proponent of Solar Energy, nor a detractor.
Click the link in post 34.
The US has about 40 thousand megawatts of installed solar power right now. That would be 40% of what the MISO footprint uses on a hot summer day.
Musk is a welfare queen.Taxpayers are funding his exploits but not any real progress, none of his solar panel or battery business is efficient without subsidies and rich people buying in but it depends on tax money and coal.
My word, what a bunch of Luddites here on FR.
I have a fantasy about re-writing Silent Spring, except the extinction of the birds is caused by windmills and solar panels.
I will admit I like what Musk does as far as pushing technology, turning his engineers loose (I am an engineer), etc. But I've gotta call BS on this on Elon.
Run the numbers. (Wikipedia) Let's take an example solar plant, the California Valley Solar Ranch. Annual output: 688 GWh. Surface area: 1966 acres. So we have a figure for average annual production per surface area covered. How much power do we need? Annual power production (currently - pun intended) in the US: 4,350,800 GWh. So we would need 6324 copies of CVSR to power the US today.
Well, that 1966 acres is actually a little over 3 square miles, so total we're talking about 19,426 square miles. That's about 140 miles by 140 miles - reasonably close to Musk's 100x100 mile claim, but still off. I'd call that the "self-promoter's factor" Shrinking it to 100x100... Oh, and relative to the size of Utah at 84,899 square miles? Elon, that's nearly a quarter of the entire state! Hardly a "small corner" ...
Does anyone really believe the environmental lobby would ever allow the complete trashing of that much of their precious desert? They fight tooth an nail over every square foot (ask the Bundy's). There's this bird, or that frog, or this plant, or that tortoise... Yeah, let's just go pave over a quarter of Utah with panels and access roads and maintenance, security...
Sorry Elon, not with you on this one. You're exaggerating just a little too much here.
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