Slashdot Mirror
Here's Elon Musk's Plan To Power the US on Solar Energy (inverse.com)
An anonymous reader shares an excerpt from Musk's keynote speech: 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."
It won't be in the same area. Not once we have our solar-powered, transparent border wall.
Ya, but the Sun is overhead and walls are vertical so we'll have to tip the whole planet to get maximum efficiency. That will be a huge PITA with stuff sliding around, rolling off tables and such.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
"Ya, but the Sun is overhead and walls are vertical so we'll have to tip the whole planet to get maximum efficiency. That will be a huge PITA with stuff sliding around, rolling off tables and such."
Congress will handle that. Just as soon as they fix health care, eliminate all taxation, straighten out the Middle East, and restore American manufacturing to its proper place in the world.
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
> less than ideal service life for the panels
The very first "low cost" solar panels are still in widespread service today.
The very first grid-connected array, from 1982, is still in use today.
Average lifetime, including all of the factors you mention and all others, appears to be somewhere between 45 and 100 years.
But what do you expect? It's a window. It doesn't even open.