On Sun, 12 Nov 2006 18:58:14 -0500, "Proctologically Violated©®"
wrote:

Industy can't be run on solar, but houses sure can.
I think it's more like 900 W at the earths surface. At 50% conversion, for
a 30' x 40' house, that's about 250 Amp service!!
Yeah, weather dependent, but dats why God invented batteries and, more
recently, inverters.
Clearly will need backup, but the sun provides incredible juice.
You can do the math and show that a relatively narrow belt of solar cells
around the globe could supply several times the whole world's supply of
juice.
A strip of solar panels 1 meter wide encircling the equator would provide
about 6 million KW. A strip 1 mile wide would yield 10 billion KW. etc.
At any given time.
More or less.


The average available solar energy in continental USA is more like 300
watts/meter. Given conversion efficiencies the amount of electrical
power that can be generated is more like 50watts per square meter at
best.

Using batteries and inverters introduce a whole raft of other
inefficiencies. Not to mention the environmental problems of building
and maintaining banks of batteries. And for those long periods ,in
some places where there is little sunshine, backup base load
generators have to be kept on line.

All the equations for realistic solar power generation, in many parts
of the world just do not work. OTOH in some parts of the world it is a
possibility.