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 ...
So was Ken Lay
Or LED flashlights.
Can’t batteries be used to meet peak demand? They aren’t just for use at night.
If it saves muvver erf, a few dead tortoises and a few crispy birds is acceptable. To them.
Yes, it must be Blissful to not be burdened with the knowledge of how any of this stuff actually works, folks like Lay & Musk depend on it.
Solar panels that need to be replaced every 10 to 20 years.
And a billion tons of batteries filled with caustic material with a life span of a couple of years.
And see what happens when you try to transmit enough power to run the east coast over wire from a solar array 2,000 miles away.
It’ll take another thousand square miles for the back-up generators and diesel fuel storage. Brilliant!
Get a clue. Engineers do this all the time when thinking about the feasibility of a project.
It was just a calculation of the area required, not a proposal to build it all in one place. IF it is ever built, it would be distributed over a large number of sites. Just the transmission lines from one central location would be huge and impractical.
If the result had been a 1000 mile square we would give it up as completely impractical, but the total area easily fits into the US. Of course it would be distributed, but the relatively small size of the total area is encouraging.
If it is such a great idea Musk should have no problem rounding up private investors to build it and reap the profit.
That’s what inventors and innovators did 100 years ago.
Now they develop schemes to get their hands in taxpayers pockets.
Tesla autos would be in the toilet tomorrow without government subsidies paid for with money extorted from taxpayers.
In this dangerous man’s world, the oligarchs hold the power and we are all on universal income..because his technology will put millions out of work.
God put petroleum in this world for a reason
This musk fellow reminds me of the Burt Lancaster character in Elmer Gantry.
This is exactly what Stanford Ovskinsky said nearly 4 decades ago, that 5% of the state of Arizona could power the entire U.S. It is much less than that now.
Of course.
But the problem is that all suitable sites are a couple thousand miles from the east coast corridor (Virginia to Maine) where the largest percent of power is consumed.
Let’s SWAG a few objective numbers here, hysteria side.
Absolute physical upper limit of solar energy is 1300 watts per square meter.
Very pessimistic efficiency average 24/7/365 is 1%.
Assuming a 3TW need, that’s a pessimistic 300 mile square, including a stationary PV panel and 312 W/hr storage per square meter.
Being a mere SWAG, that’s about on par with Musk’s numbers. Applying real research we can easily meet those numbers.
At off-the-shelf small-volume costs that caps at $1/W, a cheap cost to replace the entire electrical supply. Bonus: it’s highly distributable, located locally at <0.16 acres per person (addressing distribution issues).
Musk jumped on the 0bozo gravy train early on and is making every effort to continue to suck at the Federal Tit. The sooner we dispose of subsidized hucksters, the sooner we can Make America Great Again!
“...it would take a fairly small corner of Nevada...”
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Ah HA!
So THAT’S why they wanted to force the Bundy’s off their land, and the other 49 rancher/farmers who were removed before them.
(Only a partial “sarc”).
Tax Parasite Has Plan to Allow Himself to Eat Up More Taxes.
PS. If you don’t like Elon, then you’re just racist against lying, thieving proglodytes.
Not to mention that I read someplace that to process 1 ton of usable silica creates 9 tons of toxic waste? Yeah, that doesn’t sound like a win to me. If I can recall it I’ll post it.
Right now solar panels are getting cheap enough where I'm thinking about putting some up to reduce my daytime electricity usage. Even without storage, it is at least getting close enough to break even to consider it.
Per DOE, solar power provides ( drum roll) .4% of American energy. Good luck, Elon.
What “blinded pilots”? Musk is talking PV panels, not focused reflectors.
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