Only 100 square miles of solar panels are required to power the entire United States

originally posted by: Flyingclaydisk
Solar doesn't work in the absence of government subsidies.

And societal benefit charges on your utility bill.

a reply to: BoscoMoney

Well, as neutron noted, storing energy is surprisingly difficult, but there are some pretty big batteries out there.

Tesla built one down in Australia which will supply 70mW for 10 minutes (11.7mWh). That's a BIG battery!

a reply to: nOraKat

as others have said , the petrochemical industry wont allow it to happen , that is the first major stumbling block

then second , its not about the production of renewable energy its about the storage and distribution of the energy after production.

for example Scotland is on its way to becoming a world leader in renewable energy production , however currently our grid doesnt have the storage capacity to hold on to all that free energy !
So as a result we have had to build a brand new storage facility , we were also paying our wind farms in excess of 15 million to stop producing extra energy as the grid couldnt handle it !

there are countries that are leading the way , Iceland for example is 100% renewable !

Scotland is getting there and hopes to be 100% renewable by 2020

a reply to: Flyingclaydisk

and the patent is now free!

a reply to: sapien82

Storage is certainly an issue with solar, and wind. You have to use it when it's generated, or store it...or lose it.

The other big issue is distribution. Many of these renewable technologies are great, but most countries don't have the infrastructure in place to distribute the energy to where it's needed (and where it's collected is often a low demand area).

a reply to: Flyingclaydisk

Yeh I remember my thread on Scotland and throwing away 15 million on wind farms , well the energy commissioner sent me a PDF on Scotlands energy plans , and they have built a brand new state of the art battery storage facility to increase the storage capacity of the Scottish national grid , so we can store our energy for longer and sell off excess to other countries .

I still have the PDF if you are interested

originally posted by: sapien82
a reply to: Flyingclaydisk

Yeh I remember my thread on Scotland and throwing away 15 million on wind farms , well the energy commissioner sent me a PDF on Scotlands energy plans , and they have built a brand new state of the art battery storage facility to increase the storage capacity of the Scottish national grid , so we can store our energy for longer and sell off excess to other countries .

I still have the PDF if you are interested

Plans are fine, but the last I read, the wind turbines were still offline, and being subsidised to remain that way.

Do you know what the current status is?

a reply to: Mach2

I have no idea if they are still paying out 15 million !

here is the document that the energy minister sent me but its a browser based so no download

Scotlands Energy and Gas Network vision 2030

originally posted by: TexasTruth
Why Texas? I say right over Manhattan would be ideal, let those hippies enjoy the fallout. And what a way to clump together our energy grid. A water ballon launcher filled with paint balloons could shut down entire states, or a jackass with cleates takes a jog on top.
Why not in LE orbit? Is that space elevator going yet? Let’s start there.

This is why you create "Power Grid Police" and wall off the power station to the general public.
Does the average Joe just walk into nuclear plants and military bases?

Security is a thing.

a reply to: AtomicKangaroo

just like why the friends of the tory party owns the national grid!

a reply to: nOraKat

what do you do at night when there is no power from your 100 sm of solar panels? Just curious, use the moon as a battery perhaps?

a reply to: Flyingclaydisk

upon generation of any green energy system it is either fed into distribution or transmission lines, there is no differentiation in those lines on how that electricity is generated, most believe that they are buying green energy when in reality it is a green energy credit and hardly any if any electricity that they use is green. Only if you have panels atop your house can you be assured that you are using green energy there are not specific green energy only power lines, distribution or transmission.

Only a hundred square miles, lol.

Imagine what 1 square mile of solar panels would be huge.

I wonder what size of solar panel would have a negative effect and draw too much energy from sun if possible.

Imagine liberals forced everyone in the world to go solar only to kill the sun....sounds like something they could do.

Then they could blame global warming

Its do able in 15 years. Quantum computing will surpass anything we can think of. Basically figuring out what a person does in a life time of science in a Milli second

a reply to: cooperton

Also, when was the last time you checked solar prices? They've dropped dramatically in price

Yesterday.

TheRedneck

a reply to: Starcrossd

I don't know for sure but I think one problem with solar that needs worked on is not being able to hold its charge for long transport lines.

You're thinking about voltage versus amperage.

Heat loss due to transmission through a wire is given by P=I^2*R, P being power in watts, I being amperage, and R being resistance. As you can see, the current is the most important thing to consider; double the amperage and you increase the power loss by a factor of 4. Use 10 times the amperage, and you lose 100 times the power. AC transmission uses transformers to step up the voltage (and therefore step down the amperage) to make transmission less costly. Compared to DC-DC converters, transformers are much, much cheaper and more efficient (some transformers can actually reach 99+% efficiency). But transformers do not work with DC power.

Voltage drop through transmission lines is also a factor. The equation for voltage drop is E=I*R. with E being the voltage drop across the transmission lines.

Solar cells produce DC power at very low voltages (a typical solar cell outputs 0.5 volts; panels that produce higher voltages are simply made of multiple cells). This is one of the many problems with centralized solar power generation.

TheRedneck

a reply to: Bloodworth

I wonder what size of solar panel would have a negative effect and draw too much energy from sun if possible.

It isn't. They don't even work that way. It is hard to tell if you are serious or just bad at April fools jokes.

a reply to: nOraKat

Not sure what it takes to convert DC to AC but maybe there is some loss.

Actually, there's quite a bit of loss, especially when dealing with high power. There's also some pretty hefty price tags. A true sine wave inverter (required for effective transformer use) costs upwards of a few hundred bucks for one that can handle a few amps at household voltage levels. As the amount of power involved increases, the price increases exponentially. The components required become much more expensive and consume a lot more power.

Maybe loss of efficiency won’t be such a big deal considering it’s all “free” in a sense to begin with.

But solar isn't really free.

There's the cost of maintenance, on the solar panels themselves (figure a lifetime of 5-10 years), the inverters (figure 5 years lifespan maximum, thanks to the heat they generate), and the batteries (five years max). You have to produce enough power to pay for these repairs within the components' lifetimes.

TheRedneck

a reply to: Starcrossd

Correction; I was wrong.

Transferring power via high voltage DC is more efficient and more cost effective over long distances -

Is there any differences between HVDC and HVAC Transmission

a reply to: sapien82

That sounds great!