I go on about 4 trips a year that are well outside the range of an EV. It only has to be more than 100 miles to hit that limit.
Why would you want to, especially if you're renting because you need capabilities(range, cargo space, etc...) that your normal vehicle doesn't have?
My normal truck is a $60K Yukon XL Denali, it has air conditioned seats. I think you'll find it hard to find a rental with air conditioned seats.:) You'll also find it hard to rent a truck with more space than mine, short of a U-Haul (and those aren't really very "luxury".
Frankly, this is the problem. I'm the target customer for Tesla, I can afford one. But I'm not interested because it isn't a full size SUV. Even when it comes out, it is likely to be so expensive, I won't care.
I could afford it, but I didn't end up with money by making such foolish financial decisions. It either makes economic sense, or it doesn't. When it does, I'm all over EV, I believe EV cars and trucks are the future, once the cost comes down.
I don't need 250 miles of range in an EV, 75 miles is plenty. The 250 miles doesn't help me because when I need that, I really need 500-1,000 miles of range, refilling my gas tank takes 5 minutes, recharging a 250 mile range SUV takes 5 hours.
Next year we're taking the kids to Disney World, it is a 2 day drive from Texas, if you drive all day. 3 days if you take your time. An EV doesn't work for that, so I either need a gas truck, or a "Volt" technology version, which I would be interested in, if the cost were about $5K more than my current truck. Any more than that and it isn't worth it.
Can we fly to Florida? Yes, but I hate the airlines, airports, and all the crap that goes along with flying these days (and I say that as a pilot!), I would much rather drive. Driving doesn't save any money, the cost to drive my truck to Florida and back is actually about the same as 5 coach round trip tickets. I can charter a plane, but that is 4 times the price, but interestingly enough, about the same cost as 5 first class round trip tickets.
Nuclear could be 75% of our power, that is the base load. Renewables could be the other 25%. (the percentages could vary, it could be 50/50, or 65/35, the principle remains the same)
Within a generation, if we wanted to, we could rid ourselves of fossil fuels completely.
For some reason, we just don't want to. I support it, but I feel like I'm in the minority.
The USA is very different than Denmark, in so many ways.
I would like to see a real study, unbiased done without a goal in mind, to see what would happen if the USA introduced a $2,000/month household basic income. What would happen?
The beauty of the Volt is that it doesn't even have to be batteries. Anything that provides electricity is good enough, including fuel cells, batteries, generators, solar panels on the roof, etc.
The Volt is genius design, but not ready for prime time, it costs to much at the moment.
Joseph Goebbels worked for slime, he might have even been slime himself...
But he was really, really smart and knew what he was doing. Genius comes in all forms.
Shame most people can't get past the "evilz" part to get to the genius part. Even Hitler has his plus points (don't misunderstand me, that does not in any way excuse the evil, just trying to take whatever good from the bad that is possible) when it came to uniting Germany and restarting her economy.
If you can afford an electric car, your budget likely isn't being squeezed by the cost of conventionally fuels. Those who actually would be helped substantially by the savings an electric car provides generally don't have the income and/or credit score to purchase a brand new electric vehicle.
Thank you, glad someone said it...
My "daily driver" is a 2012 GMC Yukon XL Denali, it has a 6.2L V8 that sucks down gas like dead dinos were going out of style (which of course they are). Costs me $100 to fill up and I fill up about 3 times a month.
$300 a month for gas, for 1 out of my 2 trucks you say? That is a lot of people's whole car payment you say?
Yea, but I pay about $1,000 a month for the thing (purchased with nothing down, 0% for 5 years), so while I "care" about the $300 a month in gas, if I "cared that much" I wouldn't be spending $1K a month on a truck payment.
So while an EV appeals to me for many reasons, including reducing my use of dead dinos to power my truck, the cost has to be in line with the gas version. Give me a EV version of my truck for about the same price as the gas version and I'm very interested. Give me a "volt" tech version with a range extender engine and I'll pay $5K more for that feature.
Frankly, I think you're on the outside of "normal" when it comes to range. Study after study shows the average person drives between 15 and 30 miles a day, 100+ miles a day is rare.
Frankly, I drive even less, just a few miles here and a few miles there. An EV would be perfect for me, if the price were similar to the gas version and if they offered a full-size SUV EV.
I do need one gas car because we do take family road trips, but I'd also consider a "volt" EV type truck with a range extender as the second "gas" car. I'd pay $5K more over the gas only version for that truck.
When that comes out, I'm a customer, I personally think EV is the future, the cost just needs to come down.
We are a 2 truck household, both myself and my wife work.
I'd be very interested in an EV to replace 1 of them, perhaps both if they were "volt" type technology with range extending engines.
But there are no full-size SUV EVs. So we drive gas trucks. The little cars are of no interest to us.
BTW, just to be clear, I'd be a buyer of a full-size SUV EV if the price is about the same as the gas version, or $5K more if it is the "volt" technology. Much more than that and I'm not really interested.
No, long range isn't required, but renting a car several times a year just adds to the total expense, plus the rental is rarely as nice as what you own, plus you're spending more to have an EV in the first place.
It just makes no sense right now, unless it is purchased on principle, to buy EV cars.
the three EVs I looked at were all significantly cheaper than any of the other options over an eight-year time horizon
This is probably what changed your viewpoint to be different to most people.
1/3 of all new cars are leased, and few that are purchased are kept for 8 years.
EVs probably do make more sense when looked at over 8 years, but when looked at over a 3 year lease, the fuel savings in that time frame does not compensate for their higher price point.
Right now, Ford is doing a special on the Fusion, $229 a month, nothing due at signing, total out the door cost every month TT&L included, $229 a month.
That is NOT for the EV version, they could never do an EV for 39 months for that price, but the gas version is nicely equipped for that price.
The gas Escape is going for $239 a month, same deal, nothing due at signing, total monthly cost of $239 a month.
I think you got it backwards... The poster talking about Hertz was saying that you can buy an EV car to drive around town, when you need to drive cross country 1 or 2 times a year, rent a gas car from Hertz.
I'd like to take a moment to introduce you to a fledgling little company known as Hertz.
Funny...:)
Point taken, but the truth is, you end up spending so much on a rental that you might as well have just bought the gas car, renting a nice car 4 times a year wipes out the gas savings very quickly.
Not to mention that you probably can't rent the same thing you drive, it won't be as well equipped as your own car, and so on.
It gets worse when you move up the food chain, it is very hard and very expensive to rent something big. We take a few road trips a year in our Yukon XL, have you ever tried to rent a Yukon XL? A few places rent Suburbans, but they are basic models without all the nice stuff.
The people who can afford to buy EV cars aren't going to rent beaters, and to rent the nice cars costs so much, you might as well buy a nice gas car and be done with it.
It is worse than that... people like myself who are fortunate enough to be able to afford such cars and trucks, still aren't buying them.
My two trucks were purchased new in 2011 and 2012, for about $110K between them. I can afford all these cars and I'm still not buying.
Why?
Because they are all tiny little cars that are of no use to me, I drive full size SUVs, I have a family, I haul stuff, I use every inch of my trucks.
Give me an EV version of a full-size SUV for about the price of the gas version, or a version with the "volt" technology for $5K more, and I'm a customer.
$40K for a Volt is insane, that price buys a very well equipped full size pickup, it buys a mid-level Suburban. $40K for a little 4 seat car? Are you kidding? That's crazy.
You can buy cars just as nice for $25K with a gas engine that get very good gas milage.
First, we are a 2 truck family, so we could easily replace 1 of them with an EV, leaving 1 gas truck for long trips (or a "volt" technology version with plenty of range).
Selection is a problem. All of the current EVs are little cars, which are only useful for people who want little cars. There are no big vehicles in EV trim.
Price is also a problem. The EV version of all the cars is much more expensive than the gas powered version. The price needs to be the same, then you'll find customer interest.
Give me a EV version of my 2012 GMC Yukon XL Denali and sell it to me for about the same price as I paid for this one ($58K) and I'm seriously interested. Even better, put Volt technology into it, give it a small engine for generator duty for long trips, batteries for all the small around town trips, and I'd pay about $5K more for it than I did for the gas only version.
I suspect that the true cost would have to be $20K more, which I won't pay, which is why there isn't a "volt" version of the Suburban/Yukon/Escalade line of full size SUVs.
That is nice, where is my EV full-size SUV for a similar price to my gas full-size SUV?
I drive a 2012 GMC Yukon XL Denali - very well equipped, I would be very interested in an electric version for a similar price. But it isn't an option, and the little cars being sold in EV trim are of no use to me.
The idea is simple, but you're right, tracking all the supply chain issues would be complex.
Of course, that doesn't mean it isn't worth doing, and if you put the burden of doing it and proving it on the US companies that import, then they might well decide it is easier and cheaper to just make the stuff here.
You're demanding that solar be fully cost effective *right now,* yet giving nuclear a 20 year deployment time "now" to reach maturity.
No, nuclear is mature and ready now, it doesn't require 20 years.
The single biggest problem with solar now is not panel prices, those are already cheap enough. It is getting them installed for a reasonable price.
From some links and searching provided here, it is now clear to me that the panels are dropping below $1 per watt. This is a good price and cheap enough to make sense. Getting them installed on my roof adds another $3 per watt cost.
Should it cost that much? Maybe, maybe not... but that is what it does cost right now... If that cost can be brought down to $2 per watt installed, I'm there.
But we still need nuclear for base load, solar can't provide 24/7 power, we need something to power the grid 24/7, what solar can do is cover peak demand and reduced the spikes up and down on the power grid.
Solar (and wind) combined with nuclear seems to make the most sense to me.
Panels are cheap, installation is expensive, it is more label than panel cost.
A simple google search for solar panel installation cost will show you that installed, you'll spend between $4 and $5 a watt installed. At $4 a watt, a 8kw system is $32,000.
You misunderstand me... more solar is fine, frankly in the long run I fully expect more than 50% of homes and businesses will have solar panels on them, maybe even more than that.
The price isn't low enough yet, when it gets there, you'll see people put them in quickly. I know that I'll do it the day the payback is less than 10 years.
I'm simply saying that solar is a peak demand power replacement, not a base load power replacement. Solar can replace the natural gas turbines that are run at 2pm in the afternoon to provide enough power to run everyone's AC unit at the same time. Putting solar on roofs makes perfect sense, when it is sunny and hot, we all run our AC units, solar helps absorb the load from that and reduces stress on the power grid.
This is a good thing.
When it becomes cost effective to do it.
Get me an 8,000 watt solar system for $15,000 and I'll put it in tomorrow. The problem? It is over twice that price today.
But that is a completely separate issue to how to replace hundreds of coal fired power plants.
In 20 years, if we wish, we can build 100 new nuclear reactors and retire 200+ coal fired power plants.
These new nuclear reactors will be MUCH safer than the gen 1 and gen 2 designs that are 40 years old. Remove the restrictions on breeder reactors and on reprocessing, you'll also get rid of a lot of the waste in the process.
Concerned about security? Fine, put US Navy officers and a few US Marines at each location, the US Navy has a good safety record running nuclear reactors, listen to them. The Marines can make everyone feel better about civilian reactors that also produce Plutonium (which provides yet more fuel for the reactors).
I personally believe that we need to stop digging coal out of the ground, the only way to do that is to have something to replace it with. Solar might do it in the 50-100 year time frame, but then fusion might as well, if we can get there.
Try that link, it is embedded in the second link I provided above
In short, what it says is this:
A large fixed tilt photovoltaic (PV) plant that generates 1 gigawatt-hour per year requires, on average, 2.8 acres for the solar panels.
That means that to provide 100% of the power the US generates in a year (which was 4,054 billion kilowatthours of electricity in 2012), you'd need about 18,000 square miles of solar panels.
Except, of course, the power would not be produced evenly or when it was needed for demand, so either you figure out how to build some very, very large batteries, or you need another power source to backup the solar.
I am not against solar, but the blind faith that I see from "pro solar" people just amazes me. Give it a critical eye, it isn't bad, but it isn't as good as the proponents would have you believe.
We can install a dozen large new solar power plants every year for 10 years, it isn't going to make a dent in the overall power picture.
I understand the goal, but you also have to deal in reality.
Germany now has 1/3 of the world's installed solar power systems, they have done this in a fairly short period of time, but they also have doubled their electric bills to do it and a lot of people there (in the hundreds of thousands) can no longer afford to pay them.
To get to 5% in the US, with our far larger population, our much greater energy use per person, and our much cheaper energy costs, we'd have to spend a crazy amount of money to try.
Solar makes no sense, even wind makes more sense than solar does.
Solar is romanic, it sounds nice, it gives off that warm fuzzy feeling. Don't get me wrong, I get it, I understand it, I want it to be true...
But it isn't, not now anyway and it won't be in the short term.
Which returns us to the question at hand... Do we want to be making 2/3 of our electric power from fossil fuels in 20 years? If so, then we do nothing. If not, then we build more nuclear.
Nuclear has the ability to replace our fossil fuel power plants in a short period of time, solar does not.
Nothing we do with solar is going to move the needle very much in the next 20 years. Maybe in 50 years, but it has to get a whole lot cheaper for that to happen.
From what I've been reading, it is about 35 cents per kilowatt hour, which is triple what everyone else is paying. Your own government estimates that over a trillion Euros will need to be spent in the next 10 years on your present course.
All to get 5% of your power from solar. Except that you are actually producing more greenhouse gas, not less, because you need coal fired power plants to backup the solar power which isn't constant enough to provide a base load.
Your government is adding, what... 7 cents per kilowatt hour to cover solar subsidies? That is close to what I pay for power, outright.
Since you live there, I'd be interested in more details about how the system is actually working today, what do you actually pay in power, how much do you use, how much are taxes, etc.
Germany is going to go bankrupt trying to install solar, and the irony is that they are producing more greenhouse gasses, not fewer, because they need coal plants to backup their solar power.
Their energy dept estimated that they'll spent over a trillion Euros in the next 10 years if they don't change course.
It sounds nice, but it is a disaster, wouldn't want to be them.
BTW, they are also paying about 35 cents per kilowatt hour, vs the wholesale rate of 7 cents per kilowatt hour in the rest of Europe, that isn't sustainable. 300,000 people have had their power turned off this year due to an inability to pay the huge bills this is producing.
Not a model to hold up and say, "hey, how wonderful is this"...
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You go on long trips four times a year?
I go on about 4 trips a year that are well outside the range of an EV. It only has to be more than 100 miles to hit that limit.
Why would you want to, especially if you're renting because you need capabilities(range, cargo space, etc...) that your normal vehicle doesn't have?
My normal truck is a $60K Yukon XL Denali, it has air conditioned seats. I think you'll find it hard to find a rental with air conditioned seats. :) You'll also find it hard to rent a truck with more space than mine, short of a U-Haul (and those aren't really very "luxury".
Frankly, this is the problem. I'm the target customer for Tesla, I can afford one. But I'm not interested because it isn't a full size SUV. Even when it comes out, it is likely to be so expensive, I won't care.
I could afford it, but I didn't end up with money by making such foolish financial decisions. It either makes economic sense, or it doesn't. When it does, I'm all over EV, I believe EV cars and trucks are the future, once the cost comes down.
I don't need 250 miles of range in an EV, 75 miles is plenty. The 250 miles doesn't help me because when I need that, I really need 500-1,000 miles of range, refilling my gas tank takes 5 minutes, recharging a 250 mile range SUV takes 5 hours.
Next year we're taking the kids to Disney World, it is a 2 day drive from Texas, if you drive all day. 3 days if you take your time. An EV doesn't work for that, so I either need a gas truck, or a "Volt" technology version, which I would be interested in, if the cost were about $5K more than my current truck. Any more than that and it isn't worth it.
Can we fly to Florida? Yes, but I hate the airlines, airports, and all the crap that goes along with flying these days (and I say that as a pilot!), I would much rather drive. Driving doesn't save any money, the cost to drive my truck to Florida and back is actually about the same as 5 coach round trip tickets. I can charter a plane, but that is 4 times the price, but interestingly enough, about the same cost as 5 first class round trip tickets.
So we drive and make an adventure out of it.
If power from the wall is 60 cents a kilowatt hour and oil is $500 a barrel, what has changed?
Nuclear could be 75% of our power, that is the base load. Renewables could be the other 25%. (the percentages could vary, it could be 50/50, or 65/35, the principle remains the same)
Within a generation, if we wanted to, we could rid ourselves of fossil fuels completely.
For some reason, we just don't want to. I support it, but I feel like I'm in the minority.
The USA is very different than Denmark, in so many ways.
I would like to see a real study, unbiased done without a goal in mind, to see what would happen if the USA introduced a $2,000/month household basic income. What would happen?
The Volt is genius design, but not ready for prime time, it costs to much at the moment.
Get the cost down and I'm very interested.
But he was really, really smart and knew what he was doing. Genius comes in all forms.
Shame most people can't get past the "evilz" part to get to the genius part. Even Hitler has his plus points (don't misunderstand me, that does not in any way excuse the evil, just trying to take whatever good from the bad that is possible) when it came to uniting Germany and restarting her economy.
If you can afford an electric car, your budget likely isn't being squeezed by the cost of conventionally fuels. Those who actually would be helped substantially by the savings an electric car provides generally don't have the income and/or credit score to purchase a brand new electric vehicle.
Thank you, glad someone said it...
My "daily driver" is a 2012 GMC Yukon XL Denali, it has a 6.2L V8 that sucks down gas like dead dinos were going out of style (which of course they are). Costs me $100 to fill up and I fill up about 3 times a month.
$300 a month for gas, for 1 out of my 2 trucks you say? That is a lot of people's whole car payment you say?
Yea, but I pay about $1,000 a month for the thing (purchased with nothing down, 0% for 5 years), so while I "care" about the $300 a month in gas, if I "cared that much" I wouldn't be spending $1K a month on a truck payment.
So while an EV appeals to me for many reasons, including reducing my use of dead dinos to power my truck, the cost has to be in line with the gas version. Give me a EV version of my truck for about the same price as the gas version and I'm very interested. Give me a "volt" tech version with a range extender engine and I'll pay $5K more for that feature.
Frankly, I drive even less, just a few miles here and a few miles there. An EV would be perfect for me, if the price were similar to the gas version and if they offered a full-size SUV EV.
I do need one gas car because we do take family road trips, but I'd also consider a "volt" EV type truck with a range extender as the second "gas" car. I'd pay $5K more over the gas only version for that truck.
When that comes out, I'm a customer, I personally think EV is the future, the cost just needs to come down.
I'd be very interested in an EV to replace 1 of them, perhaps both if they were "volt" type technology with range extending engines.
But there are no full-size SUV EVs. So we drive gas trucks. The little cars are of no interest to us.
BTW, just to be clear, I'd be a buyer of a full-size SUV EV if the price is about the same as the gas version, or $5K more if it is the "volt" technology. Much more than that and I'm not really interested.
It just makes no sense right now, unless it is purchased on principle, to buy EV cars.
the three EVs I looked at were all significantly cheaper than any of the other options over an eight-year time horizon
This is probably what changed your viewpoint to be different to most people.
1/3 of all new cars are leased, and few that are purchased are kept for 8 years.
EVs probably do make more sense when looked at over 8 years, but when looked at over a 3 year lease, the fuel savings in that time frame does not compensate for their higher price point.
Right now, Ford is doing a special on the Fusion, $229 a month, nothing due at signing, total out the door cost every month TT&L included, $229 a month.
That is NOT for the EV version, they could never do an EV for 39 months for that price, but the gas version is nicely equipped for that price.
The gas Escape is going for $239 a month, same deal, nothing due at signing, total monthly cost of $239 a month.
I think you got it backwards... The poster talking about Hertz was saying that you can buy an EV car to drive around town, when you need to drive cross country 1 or 2 times a year, rent a gas car from Hertz.
I'd like to take a moment to introduce you to a fledgling little company known as Hertz.
Funny... :)
Point taken, but the truth is, you end up spending so much on a rental that you might as well have just bought the gas car, renting a nice car 4 times a year wipes out the gas savings very quickly.
Not to mention that you probably can't rent the same thing you drive, it won't be as well equipped as your own car, and so on.
It gets worse when you move up the food chain, it is very hard and very expensive to rent something big. We take a few road trips a year in our Yukon XL, have you ever tried to rent a Yukon XL? A few places rent Suburbans, but they are basic models without all the nice stuff.
The people who can afford to buy EV cars aren't going to rent beaters, and to rent the nice cars costs so much, you might as well buy a nice gas car and be done with it.
My two trucks were purchased new in 2011 and 2012, for about $110K between them. I can afford all these cars and I'm still not buying.
Why?
Because they are all tiny little cars that are of no use to me, I drive full size SUVs, I have a family, I haul stuff, I use every inch of my trucks.
Give me an EV version of a full-size SUV for about the price of the gas version, or a version with the "volt" technology for $5K more, and I'm a customer.
$40K for a Volt is insane, that price buys a very well equipped full size pickup, it buys a mid-level Suburban. $40K for a little 4 seat car? Are you kidding? That's crazy.
You can buy cars just as nice for $25K with a gas engine that get very good gas milage.
First, we are a 2 truck family, so we could easily replace 1 of them with an EV, leaving 1 gas truck for long trips (or a "volt" technology version with plenty of range).
Selection is a problem. All of the current EVs are little cars, which are only useful for people who want little cars. There are no big vehicles in EV trim.
Price is also a problem. The EV version of all the cars is much more expensive than the gas powered version. The price needs to be the same, then you'll find customer interest.
Give me a EV version of my 2012 GMC Yukon XL Denali and sell it to me for about the same price as I paid for this one ($58K) and I'm seriously interested. Even better, put Volt technology into it, give it a small engine for generator duty for long trips, batteries for all the small around town trips, and I'd pay about $5K more for it than I did for the gas only version.
I suspect that the true cost would have to be $20K more, which I won't pay, which is why there isn't a "volt" version of the Suburban/Yukon/Escalade line of full size SUVs.
I drive a 2012 GMC Yukon XL Denali - very well equipped, I would be very interested in an electric version for a similar price. But it isn't an option, and the little cars being sold in EV trim are of no use to me.
Of course, that doesn't mean it isn't worth doing, and if you put the burden of doing it and proving it on the US companies that import, then they might well decide it is easier and cheaper to just make the stuff here.
Which is just fine. :)
You're demanding that solar be fully cost effective *right now,* yet giving nuclear a 20 year deployment time "now" to reach maturity.
No, nuclear is mature and ready now, it doesn't require 20 years.
The single biggest problem with solar now is not panel prices, those are already cheap enough. It is getting them installed for a reasonable price.
From some links and searching provided here, it is now clear to me that the panels are dropping below $1 per watt. This is a good price and cheap enough to make sense. Getting them installed on my roof adds another $3 per watt cost.
Should it cost that much? Maybe, maybe not... but that is what it does cost right now... If that cost can be brought down to $2 per watt installed, I'm there.
But we still need nuclear for base load, solar can't provide 24/7 power, we need something to power the grid 24/7, what solar can do is cover peak demand and reduced the spikes up and down on the power grid.
Solar (and wind) combined with nuclear seems to make the most sense to me.
A simple google search for solar panel installation cost will show you that installed, you'll spend between $4 and $5 a watt installed. At $4 a watt, a 8kw system is $32,000.
If someone wanted to offer me PV panels for no cost, and just sell me the power that comes off of them, fine, sign me up.
But no one is doing that. At least not here, which is why no one here (other than 50 people who are bad at math or don't care) has solar.
If I buy them, I'll lose money, I'll spend more money than installing them is worth, the payback is too long.
The price isn't low enough yet, when it gets there, you'll see people put them in quickly. I know that I'll do it the day the payback is less than 10 years.
I'm simply saying that solar is a peak demand power replacement, not a base load power replacement. Solar can replace the natural gas turbines that are run at 2pm in the afternoon to provide enough power to run everyone's AC unit at the same time. Putting solar on roofs makes perfect sense, when it is sunny and hot, we all run our AC units, solar helps absorb the load from that and reduces stress on the power grid.
This is a good thing.
When it becomes cost effective to do it.
Get me an 8,000 watt solar system for $15,000 and I'll put it in tomorrow. The problem? It is over twice that price today.
But that is a completely separate issue to how to replace hundreds of coal fired power plants.
In 20 years, if we wish, we can build 100 new nuclear reactors and retire 200+ coal fired power plants.
These new nuclear reactors will be MUCH safer than the gen 1 and gen 2 designs that are 40 years old. Remove the restrictions on breeder reactors and on reprocessing, you'll also get rid of a lot of the waste in the process.
Concerned about security? Fine, put US Navy officers and a few US Marines at each location, the US Navy has a good safety record running nuclear reactors, listen to them. The Marines can make everyone feel better about civilian reactors that also produce Plutonium (which provides yet more fuel for the reactors).
I personally believe that we need to stop digging coal out of the ground, the only way to do that is to have something to replace it with. Solar might do it in the 50-100 year time frame, but then fusion might as well, if we can get there.
Nuclear can do it now.
Try that link, it is embedded in the second link I provided above
In short, what it says is this:
A large fixed tilt photovoltaic (PV) plant that generates 1 gigawatt-hour per year requires, on average, 2.8 acres for the solar panels.
That means that to provide 100% of the power the US generates in a year (which was 4,054 billion kilowatthours of electricity in 2012), you'd need about 18,000 square miles of solar panels.
Except, of course, the power would not be produced evenly or when it was needed for demand, so either you figure out how to build some very, very large batteries, or you need another power source to backup the solar.
I am not against solar, but the blind faith that I see from "pro solar" people just amazes me. Give it a critical eye, it isn't bad, but it isn't as good as the proponents would have you believe.
We can install a dozen large new solar power plants every year for 10 years, it isn't going to make a dent in the overall power picture.
I understand the goal, but you also have to deal in reality.
Germany now has 1/3 of the world's installed solar power systems, they have done this in a fairly short period of time, but they also have doubled their electric bills to do it and a lot of people there (in the hundreds of thousands) can no longer afford to pay them.
To get to 5% in the US, with our far larger population, our much greater energy use per person, and our much cheaper energy costs, we'd have to spend a crazy amount of money to try.
http://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=427&t=3
Solar makes no sense, even wind makes more sense than solar does.
Solar is romanic, it sounds nice, it gives off that warm fuzzy feeling. Don't get me wrong, I get it, I understand it, I want it to be true...
But it isn't, not now anyway and it won't be in the short term.
Which returns us to the question at hand... Do we want to be making 2/3 of our electric power from fossil fuels in 20 years? If so, then we do nothing. If not, then we build more nuclear.
Nuclear has the ability to replace our fossil fuel power plants in a short period of time, solar does not.
Nothing we do with solar is going to move the needle very much in the next 20 years. Maybe in 50 years, but it has to get a whole lot cheaper for that to happen.
From what I've been reading, it is about 35 cents per kilowatt hour, which is triple what everyone else is paying. Your own government estimates that over a trillion Euros will need to be spent in the next 10 years on your present course.
All to get 5% of your power from solar. Except that you are actually producing more greenhouse gas, not less, because you need coal fired power plants to backup the solar power which isn't constant enough to provide a base load.
Your government is adding, what... 7 cents per kilowatt hour to cover solar subsidies? That is close to what I pay for power, outright.
Since you live there, I'd be interested in more details about how the system is actually working today, what do you actually pay in power, how much do you use, how much are taxes, etc.
Their energy dept estimated that they'll spent over a trillion Euros in the next 10 years if they don't change course.
It sounds nice, but it is a disaster, wouldn't want to be them.
BTW, they are also paying about 35 cents per kilowatt hour, vs the wholesale rate of 7 cents per kilowatt hour in the rest of Europe, that isn't sustainable. 300,000 people have had their power turned off this year due to an inability to pay the huge bills this is producing.
Not a model to hold up and say, "hey, how wonderful is this"...