On one hand Musk is quite an innovator. On the other hand he is largely dependent on government subsidies.
But imagine all the fried birds.
The view is not a big thing I guess but 100 x 100 is 10,000 share miles. Think about how many solar cells it would take to fill that.
Elon is a danger to societhy. The grid is the achilles heel of such a scheme. As wel as te physical resources.
Right. One location to shut down an entire nation’s electric power.
It’ll take another thousand square miles for the back-up generators and diesel fuel storage. Brilliant!
You do a good job of preaching to the choir of Musk-haters, but that’s it.
Not really such an environment friendly solution as it is touted to be, and the more we turn to it the worse it will become. On top of that it provides no beneficial side effects, such as minor warming making more of the planet habitable, as the burning of fossil fuels does.
100 x 100 miles. Small corner? That’s twice the area of the state of Connecticut.
That is absolute crap. The US uses over 3 terra watts of power. No way that could come from one square mile of batteries.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orders_of_magnitude_(power)
The other half of this theory... Elon always fails to share how much pollution is created in the making of Solar Cells and Batteries. And batteries are perishable and will need to be replaced now and then. In the end what we have is actually better for the environment. This hypocrisy is all about the money not the environment.
you only need about 100 miles by 100 miles of solar panels to power the entire United States,
++++
And some way to store a good share of the power that is generated during the daylight hours and is used to light up New York City and perform other similar trivial tasks during the night.
I’m curious about that. Maybe it’s easier than I think.
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.
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.
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 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.