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."

Comments

The article

[truthsearch]

Instead of a blog post about the article, you can also read the article.

Of course this /. 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...

War of the Greenies

[DerekLyons]

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.

Re:I read this in the magazine

[jandrese]

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.

"cost competitive"

[Cajun Hell]

This is "cool" and all, but..

420 billion in subsidies from 2011 to 2050 would be required to fund the infrastructure and make it cost-competitive

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?)