"John R. Carroll" wrote:

Pete C. wrote:
"John R. Carroll" wrote:

Pete C. wrote:
Wes wrote:

"John R. Carroll" wrote:

I thing they just got the money to build vehicles as
part of the Green Energy nonsense.

John, you give me hope for you. Can I count you in the group of
people that think windmills and solar cells isn't viable
technology?

Wes

They are viable if implemented properly, the problem is I see no
movement in the direction of implementing them properly.

Trader Joe's is doing the PV thing right.
It's actually a third party solution, not theirs directly.
California has had solar plants since the 80's. PG&E and SDGE are
just now finishing up a 2Gw plant out in the dessert.

That's exactly what I mean by not implementing them properly.

Properly:

- No attempts at utility scale solar plants, they have too much
environmental impact and you still have transmission problems.

- Utilities place their utility scale plants on the roofs of existing
large area buildings, i.e. shopping malls, warehouses, etc. through some
combination of leasing the roof area and providing cheap power for the
building below. Keys here are no new environmental impact through the
use of existing roof area as well as improved transmission due to a
large building already having a large capacity feeder and being able to
export power over it sun up and still have adequate capacity to pull
from the grid sun down.

- All residential housing gets roofed with solar panels and linked with
grid-tie inverters. Could be utility provided / managed with cost offset
or government subsidized. Keys here are again utilizing existing surface
area as well as the distributed nature greatly helping grid capacity.

- The same overall structure applies for wind generation in areas where
decent wind resources are available.

Of course underlying all of this should be clean, safe nuke generation
for baseline loads and the elimination of all coal, oil and nat gas
based utility scale generation.