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Scientific American's Solar Grand Plan
Maria Energia writes "Scientific American Magazine proposes a huge, far-reaching plan to get solar energy powering 69% of America's electricity needs by 2050. The costs and technology are ready, they say, but huge changes to our transmission system will be needed."
Instead of a blog post about the article, you can also read the article.
/. article is a blog post about the article, but it doesn't need to be a blog post about a blog post about an article...
Of course this
Developers: We can use your help.
Of course, while the Green factions that are all about energy will be all for this - they'll be fighting the Green factions that are all about saving every tiny scrap of land from human usage.
With the majority of the greenies attention diverted to internecine warfare... the rest of us can get on with building nuclear power plants.
You'd be surprised how old the turbines are at your local power plant. It's the boiler room that generally seems to require the most upkeep (fire is a harsh mistress). Plus, even if they did require replacement the cost of the plant is a lot less than the cost of the gigantic solar grid.
I read the internet for the articles.
Why should there need to be subsidies for this? Oil is at $100 per barrel. A few years of this expensive oil, plus a couple years of more mass production, and most of this "plan" will happen on it's own.
Solar and wind are much closer to being competitive than even a few years ago. Nuclear power is cool again. And who cares what happens with emissions in the US anyway? The greatest emissions increases are going to be in the world's factory, China.
Find ways to make alternative energy cheaper than fossil fuels and we can forget about this CO2 nonsense and go back to worrying about people starving to death from poverty.
How does spending money on something, make it cost competitive?
That's like saying if I spend $100 on a $110 widget, and then pay another $10 for it, it becomes cost competitive with a different $10 widget.
(I am not ignoring the possible advantages of energy that has lower CO2 emissions. I'm just bitching about Sciam's newspeak. Is deception really necessary?)
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
If I were Saudi and Libya and Algeria and Chad, I'd carpet the whole freaking Sahara and the Rub-al-Qali with solar cells. Those places sure as hell aren't any good for anything else. And as global warming continues to heat up the planet and desertification increases, we just get more useful land for solar cells. Win-win.
I piss off bigots.
The article most certainly hasn't glossed over it. They discuss the cost per kWh for PV cells right near the start (when they're talking about the efficiency). The cost of PV is quite easy to calculate. Divide the cost of a cell by the energy it will produce in it's lifetime, and factor in the ongoing maintenance costs.
For FF, most of the kWh cost is from the fuel - the capital cost can be amortised across a very long time. For PV, it's almost entirely capital, which doesn't amortise as well. After 25 years, you replace the cells, and start the cost cycle again.