Power the U.S. With Solar Panels!

[excalibur]

... how do we power the US when there is no sun available?

Unicorn farts.

 

[excalibur]

The annual output of Tesla’s Gigafactory, the world’s largest battery factory, could store three minutes’ worth of annual U.S. electricity demand. It would require 1,000 years of production to make enough batteries for two days’ worth of U.S. electricity demand. Meanwhile, 50–100 pounds of materials are mined, moved, and processed for every pound of battery produced.​

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The "New Energy Economy": An Exercise in Magical Thinking

A movement has been growing for decades to replace hydrocarbons, which collectively supply 84% of the world’s energy. Energy expert, Mark Mills, explains why replacing hydrocarbons will not meet America's energy demands.

www.manhattan-institute.org

 

[Old Rocks]

Apparently at current technology, I will show you a picture of how many solar panels it would take to power the U.S. That is both day and night. (With the stored energy for nighttime) The square in yellow shows the total amount of area in solar panels it would take to do it. Argue with that you naysayers.

View attachment 538042

That square is way too large. A 100 by 100 mile square would do. However, no one is going to do that, what will happen is that we will convert a lot of land to agrivoltaics, giving the farmer a second income, and conserving water in the process, as well as increasing his yield. And there will be in increasing adaptation of VPP's incorporating people roofs, mercantile and industrial parking lots, and mall and industrial roofs. The following article does not include the reduction of that area by the VPP's or agrivoltaics.

Is that the final number for miles of solar?​

There are a couple of things that reduce these numbers a bit. For one thing, the NREL report on land usage is conservative in that solar panel efficiency has improved since the report was published.

Those numbers were based on 13 to 14 percent efficiency for solar modules. Now, in 2019, just six years later, solar panels on average have efficiency numbers between 15 to 18 percent. In fact, many solar panels are now available at 20 percent efficiency for commercial or utility solar sites.

This alone will reduce the number of solar panels needed and the required land mass to host those solar panels.

Secondly, the entire power load won’t depend entirely on big solar farms. Homeowners installing their own solar panels on rooftops could make up to about 34 percent of this electricity need.

With these things in mind, we can adjust our estimate from 22,000 square miles to just about 10,000 square miles. This is the number Elon Musk talked about at the National Governors Association meeting, referring to the space needed as taking up “a fairly small corner of Nevada or Texas or Utah.”

How Many Solar Panels Would be Needed to Power the USA

Will every home need solar panels on their roof to generate enough power for the nation? Will we need massive solar farms stretching across large chunks of land? Click here to read more on our blog.

www.vivintsolar.com

 

[Old Rocks]

How do you store the power that people need when the sun isn't available?

Batteries? That's a LOT of batteries, particularly when you consider we may soon be at war with the country that has most of the materials required to make them.

Additionally, our entire power grid works on AC. Batteries only store DC. You lose considerable power when you convert from one to the other, and then back again because most of our devices ultimately work on DC.

Man, are you ever going to get beyond the 1950's? Ever hear of pumped hydro? A half dozen designs to use gravity. And many others are using existing technology.

 

[Old Rocks]

AC IS very efficient, for power transmission. Which is why our power grid generates AC, not DC

Much less so for running anything digital (which is basically everything we have now from computers to lightbulbs.

Converting from DC power generation to an AC grid is about 80% efficient. But, then you have to convert your AC from the wall to DC for your appliances, another 80% efficiency.

As for battery farms, the largest battery farm on the planet, built by Tesla Inc, in Hornsdale, Australia, has only enough capacity for 70 MW running for 10 minutes and 30 MW with a 3-hour capacity.

30 MW is only enough to power 3,000 homes or considerably fewer industrial sites.

The cost of converting our entire grid to a solar / windand building enough battery capacity to store that power (assuming there is enough Lithium on the planet to do so) would destroy our economy.

Damn fellow, can't you get anything right? The Hornsdale plant has a lot more storage than 70 MW/hrs.

 

[Old Rocks]

AC IS very efficient, for power transmission. Which is why our power grid generates AC, not DC

Much less so for running anything digital (which is basically everything we have now from computers to lightbulbs.

Converting from DC power generation to an AC grid is about 80% efficient. But, then you have to convert your AC from the wall to DC for your appliances, another 80% efficiency.

As for battery farms, the largest battery farm on the planet, built by Tesla Inc, in Hornsdale, Australia, has only enough capacity for 70 MW running for 10 minutes and 30 MW with a 3-hour capacity.

30 MW is only enough to power 3,000 homes or considerably fewer industrial sites.

The cost of converting our entire grid to a solar / windand building enough battery capacity to store that power (assuming there is enough Lithium on the planet to do so) would destroy our economy.

“One big advantage to HVDC is the efficiency of power transmission over long distances,” George Culbertson, vice president of power delivery markets for HDR, told POWER. “If the transmission line route is longer than about 300 miles, DC is a better option because AC lines have more line losses than DC for bulk power transfer.”

Benefits of High-Voltage Direct Current Transmission Systems

High-voltage direct current (HVDC) technology offers more efficient bulk power transfer over long distances compared to alternating current (AC) systems.

www.powermag.com

 

[Old Rocks]

Solar and wind are the least expensive forms of new generation now. They cost less than fossil fuel generation and far, far less than nuclear.

Levelized Cost of Energy+

Levelized Cost of Energy+

www.lazard.com

 

[westwall]

Apparently at current technology, I will show you a picture of how many solar panels it would take to power the U.S. That is both day and night. (With the stored energy for nighttime) The square in yellow shows the total amount of area in solar panels it would take to do it. Argue with that you naysayers.

View attachment 538042

Try again. Good heavens you are ignorant.

 

[Old Rocks]

Try again. Good heavens you are ignorant.

LOL Says one of the most ignorant fellows on this board. Actually, it will take far less than that and, of course, will not be in one place. By the way, you have been predicting a cooling since you have been on this board. So, when is that cooling coming? All we have seen is increasing warming decade by decade. You have been 100% wrong 100% of the time.

 

[fncceo]

Man, are you ever going to get beyond the 1950's? Ever hear of pumped hydro? A half dozen designs to use gravity. And many others are using existing technology.

The largest pumped storage facility in the world is Guangdong (Southern China). With a total capacity of 50 MILLION cubic meters of fresh water (in two vertically staged reservoirs), it has a total generating capacity of 2400 MegaWatts ... enough to power an industrialized city of 2 million people. Roughly 1/2 of a percent of the total US need (today).

To generate all US power of today (forget about the future) needs from pumped storage, would require a not only a fresh water storage 200 times that of the Chinese facility, 400 times more capacity than the environmentally disastrous 3 Gorges Dam (27 million cubic meters).

Where would you put a water catchment of that size, recognizing that there has to be several hundred feet of vertical distance between reservoir and the generating station?

What would be the consequences of a failure of recycling turbines that bring the used hydro from the generating stations back to the reservoir.

What would be the downstream consequences of a dam failure (a damn 400 times larger than any ever built before).

What would be the environmental impact of tying up 10 BILLION cubic meters of fresh water?

 

[Old Rocks]

The largest pumped storage facility in the world is Guangdong (Southern China). With a total capacity of 50 MILLION cubic meters of fresh water (in two vertically staged reservoirs), it has a total generating capacity of 2400 MegaWatts ... enough to power an industrialized city of 2 million people. Roughly 1/2 of a percent of the total US need (today).

To generate all US power of today (forget about the future) needs from pumped storage, would require a not only a fresh water storage 200 times that of the Chinese facility, 400 times more capacity than the environmentally disastrous 3 Gorges Dam (27 million cubic meters).

Where would you put a water catchment of that size, recognizing that there has to be several hundred feet of vertical distance between reservoir and the generating station?

What would be the consequences of a failure of recycling turbines that bring the used hydro from the generating stations back to the reservoir.

What would be the downstream consequences of a dam failure (a damn 400 times larger than any ever built before).

What would be the environmental impact of tying up 10 BILLION cubic meters of fresh water?

You have virtually all of the Columbia basin with vertical elevations of up to 1000 ft. You build a large reservoir on top of the hill, and one at the bottom. You fill the top one once, and then only have to add for evaporation. you could easily put 20 of these on the Columbia in just Washington alone. Then there is the Snake. Hell's Canyon could host many more. There is practically the whole of the Pacific coast.



"When it becomes operational, the Goldendale Energy Storage Project will have the capacity to store the hydro equivalent of 25,506 megawatt hours of electricity, and the ability to generate 1,200 megawatts—enough to power close to a million homes — for 12 to 20 hours."

Colossal energy storage project in Columbia Gorge will be union-built - NW Labor Press

The Goldendale Energy Storage Project would be the area’s biggest project since the Columbia River hydro dams were built.

nwlaborpress.org

 

[fncceo]

Environmentalism has produced more missionaries than any religion that ever came before it.

I'm considering that we deal with missionaries the old-fashioned way ...

 

[Old Rocks]

Environmentalism has produced more missionaries than any religion that ever came before it.

I'm considering that we deal with missionaries the old-fashioned way ...

View attachment 538118

In other words, no real answer to real solutions. Typical of dumb fuck "Conservatives". With our present technology with can easily go completely clean energy in a decade. And create a lot of wealth doing that. But people like you shit your pants over the thought of anything other than what you see right now. Such fearful little fellows.

 

[westwall]

The largest pumped storage facility in the world is Guangdong (Southern China). With a total capacity of 50 MILLION cubic meters of fresh water (in two vertically staged reservoirs), it has a total generating capacity of 2400 MegaWatts ... enough to power an industrialized city of 2 million people. Roughly 1/2 of a percent of the total US need (today).

To generate all US power of today (forget about the future) needs from pumped storage, would require a not only a fresh water storage 200 times that of the Chinese facility, 400 times more capacity than the environmentally disastrous 3 Gorges Dam (27 million cubic meters).

Where would you put a water catchment of that size, recognizing that there has to be several hundred feet of vertical distance between reservoir and the generating station?

What would be the consequences of a failure of recycling turbines that bring the used hydro from the generating stations back to the reservoir.

What would be the downstream consequences of a dam failure (a damn 400 times larger than any ever built before).

What would be the environmental impact of tying up 10 BILLION cubic meters of fresh water?

Oh don't confuse olfraud with facts.

He doesn't do those.

 

[fncceo]

With our present technology with can easily go completely clean energy in a decade.

Gerard K. O'Neill wrote a book in 1977 titled "High Frontier", in it, he described how we could, with existing technology, build orbital cities with populations of tens or hundreds of thousands of persons, living in idyllic, organic, utopian splendor, all within a decade.

O'Neill even said the entire venture could be paid for by creating orbital solar power stations that would beam MegaWatts of free energy to earth in microwave beams.

To the layman (like myself) he made everything sound imminently achievable and I couldn't figure out why, as a nation, we weren't already gearing up to move America's best and brightest (among whom I envisioned myself) into the final frontier where we could all wear color coordinated velour jerseys and bang green alien chicks.

I was obsessed by that book and re-read it so many times that it fell apart. After my freshman year in college, I managed a summer job at JPL in Pasadena, near my campus. Everyone there, experts in the field of space and more obsessed with space than any people on Earth, had read the book and considered it optimistically hilarious.

O'Neill clearly overestimated the ability of rocket technology, and seriously underestimated the dangers the stations inhabitants would face from space-based radiation, not to mention the idea of aiming megawatts of microwave energy beams to the outskirts of major world cities. A global network of death stars.

The moral of this story is ... as any evangelist will tell you ... the utopian future you crave is right around the corner and there for the taking, just as long as you can convince the rest of those bonehead to send in their dollars.

How about this, Instead of destroying our economy, our environment, and our futures on HUGE, unsustainable mega-projects, hang on for a more viable technical solution like Fusion (fusion power is just 30 years away, and will always be so). Even the littlest of chickens give us a century or two before we are obliterated as a species. Personally, I'm hoping for at least a few decades of Mad Max apocalyptic fun land before we finally go out.

I do however, rest easy in the knowledge if someone ever does try to build one of these huge vanity projects, the environmental impact studies alone will doom it to development hell for decades.

 

[Turtlesoup]

How much what.

 

[excalibur]

Solar and wind are the least expensive forms of new generation now. They cost less than fossil fuel generation and far, far less than nuclear.

View attachment 538115

Levelized Cost of Energy+

Levelized Cost of Energy+

www.lazard.com

 

[excalibur]

Damn fellow, can't you get anything right? The Hornsdale plant has a lot more storage than 70 MW/hrs.

Then, if the share of episodic power becomes significant, the potential rises for complete system blackouts. That has happened twice after the wind died down unexpectedly (with some customers out for days in some areas) in the state of South Australia, which derives over 40% of its electricity from wind.

After a total system outage in South Australia in 2018, Tesla, with much media fanfare, installed the world’s single largest lithium battery “farm” on that grid. For context, to keep South Australia lit for one half-day of no wind would require 80 such “world’s biggest” Tesla battery farms, and that’s on a grid that serves just 2.5 million people.​

The "New Energy Economy": An Exercise in Magical Thinking

A movement has been growing for decades to replace hydrocarbons, which collectively supply 84% of the world’s energy. Energy expert, Mark Mills, explains why replacing hydrocarbons will not meet America's energy demands.

www.manhattan-institute.org

 

[westwall]

Gerard K. O'Neill wrote a book in 1977 titled "High Frontier", in it, he described how we could, with existing technology, build orbital cities with populations of tens or hundreds of thousands of persons, living in idyllic, organic, utopian splendor, all within a decade.

O'Neill even said the entire venture could be paid for by creating orbital solar power stations that would beam MegaWatts of free energy to earth in microwave beams.

To the layman (like myself) he made everything sound imminently achievable and I couldn't figure out why, as a nation, we weren't already gearing up to move America's best and brightest (among whom I envisioned myself) into the final frontier where we could all wear color coordinated velour jerseys and bang green alien chicks.

I was obsessed by that book and re-read it so many times that it fell apart. After my freshman year in college, I managed a summer job at JPL in Pasadena, near my campus. Everyone there, experts in the field of space and more obsessed with space than any people on Earth, had read the book and considered it optimistically hilarious.

O'Neill clearly overestimated the ability of rocket technology, and seriously underestimated the dangers the stations inhabitants would face from space-based radiation, not to mention the idea of aiming megawatts of microwave energy beams to the outskirts of major world cities. A global network of death stars.

The moral of this story is ... as any evangelist will tell you ... the utopian future you crave is right around the corner and there for the taking, just as long as you can convince the rest of those bonehead to send in their dollars.

How about this, Instead of destroying our economy, our environment, and our futures on HUGE, unsustainable mega-projects, hang on for a more viable technical solution like Fusion (fusion power is just 30 years away, and will always be so). Even the littlest of chickens give us a century or two before we are obliterated as a species. Personally, I'm hoping for at least a few decades of Mad Max apocalyptic fun land before we finally go out.

I do however, rest easy in the knowledge if someone ever does try to build one of these huge vanity projects, the environmental impact studies alone will doom it to development hell for decades.

The problem with that intelligent course of action is bad "scientists" can't make mega bucks, and politicians and bureaucrats can't grab more power.

 

[Unkotare]

How much will it cost when we destroy the world with ...

We can't destroy the world.