The Daring Dufas wrote:
On 10/23/2010 3:33 AM, harry wrote:
On Oct 23, 6:42 am, The Daring
wrote:
On 10/22/2010 9:16 PM, wrote:





On Fri, 22 Oct 2010 17:36:07 -0400,
wrote:

"My argument is it is impossible to run this [entire]
country/state/city off of sunbeams."

There. You just said it again.

As well he should ... unless it doesn't get dark where you live.

Don't you have batteries where you live?

And why the thick-headed insistence that in order to be useful,
solar power would have to supply all power used, day and night?

Yeah I do, they are very expensive, a toxic waste site when you
need to get rid of them and a way to make a marginal idea like
solar PV ridiculous.
That is why all of the systems the government will help you pay for
are grid tie.

Unfortunately all you can possibly save is the fuel charges since
we still need all of that generating infrastructure at night or
even on a cloudy day. If any significant number of people start
using solar energy, they will still find a way to bill you for that
infrastructure. It is really about half of your electric bill.

I'm thinking a big problem is a "green" storage solution for storing
the solar power. There are solar energy plants that store the power
in a heat bank where the heat is used to vaporize a working fluid to
run turbine generators. I remember reading something about a system
that had combination solar energy collectors that utilized solar
cells and heated oil as a working fluid to store heat energy.
Perhaps solar energy could be used to pump water into a reservoir
where it could be used to run turbines when the sun isn't shining.
The problem is, how do you capture and hold on to a sunbeam for
later consumption? 8-) TDD- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

Solar energy can be used to lop the daytime peaks in electricity
usage. Obviously other sources will be needed for the base usage.

There is an incredible amount of solar energy hitting the planet.

True.

If we can figure out a way to harness and STORE it efficiently,
there would be no need to burn coal and other fossil fuels to
produce electricity to run cities and industry.

True. But that's like saying "If we had eggs, we could have eggs for
breakfast."

In the U.S., the MOST solar energy available is in the New Mexico - Arizona
area and averages about 5kwH/m^2/day
http://rredc.nrel.gov/solar/old_data...tlas/serve.cgi

California used 275,000 GWh of electricity in 1999. That's

275,000,000,000,000 / 5,000 = 55 billion m^2 of solar collectors
(assuming 100% conversion).

That's 13.5 million acres of solar collectors, or a bit over 21,000 square
miles.

About half the size of Ohio.

If we assume 50% conversion losses, we could power California by the simple
expedient of turning Ohio into one, big, honkin' solar collector. We'd also
need wire and stuff.