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Yes, a giant solar panel that could be struck and the entire nations energy grid knocked off in 10 seconds is godamned genius. Fucking hippies.
Oh, and I'm hotter than you.
Yes, a giant solar panel that could be struck and the entire nations energy grid knocked off in 10 seconds is godamned genius. Fucking hippies.
100x100 miles is HUGE.
That's about 122,000 football fields.
I looked into the 20 year guarantees and, like anything else, if the technology fails, the companies will go bankrupt and the consumer will get nothing. To be an actual guarantee, it would need to be backed by someone like Lloyd's of London.
If it is paying for itself in 2 years, you should add more panels to sell electricity to the power company.
Yes, that area is larger than 6 states and just short of covering all of Massachusetts, if going by total area covered by the state, larger than 9 states if going by land area only. That would be a good Onion article - Congress has voted to evict all Massholes and convert Massachusetts to a giant solar panel field.100 miles x 100 miles sounds small, but it's actually not. 10,000 square miles of nothing but solar panels would be a significant engineering endeavour and cost a fortune.
And I realize he's just illustrating a point about what it would take to power the US, and that no one is actually proposing a single massive solar farm, but I'm just pointing out that it's not an insignificant amount of solar panels that are needed.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk — whose company makes electric cars and has a new solar roof panel division — reminded more than 30 state governors at the National Governors Association meeting this weekend exactly how much real-estate is needed to make sure America can run totally on solar energy.
“If you wanted to power the entire United States with solar panels, it would take a fairly small corner of Nevada or Texas or Utah; you only need about 100 miles by 100 miles of solar panels to power the entire United States,” Musk said during his keynote conversation on Saturday at the event in Rhode Island. “The batteries you need to store the energy, so you have 24/7 power, is 1 mile by 1 mile. One square-mile.”
It’s “a little square on the U.S. map, and then there’s a little pixel inside there, and that’s the size of the battery park that you need to support that. Real tiny.”
Currently, about 10 percent of energy in the U.S. is renewable.
1. Combine Rooftop Solar Panels and Utility-Sized Solar Plants
Musk sees the solar future for America as a combination of rooftop solar — the panels on a house in the suburbs — and utility-scale solar that can make up needs in other areas. Recently, Tesla confirmed it would build a massive solar-powered battery to help power-starved South Australia.
To find out the rest of his plan, click here, bunnies
Sounds like a great target for any enemies if they want to disrupt the power grid.
meh he is full of bs
Can't sell back to the power company.
And the reason why they can give the service for 20 years, is because they get paid a lot on subsidies from the government. They get the solar panels for super low prices and on credits provided by the government on super low interest.
They get all of this through some of the international agreements on CO2 reduction, World Bank, etc.
Essentially it's government funded companies. Their contracts even have clauses on other companies of the government taking over in case of bankruptcy.
The power company which is state owned just wants to get consumers off their grid which is already saturated and on fumes.
His number isn't even close. Does he even math?
Here's are facts:
US yearly energy consumption: 97 quadrillion BTUs
Average clear day sun energy per hour per square mile= 8 Billion BTU (286 BTU's per hour per square foot)
Solar Panel Efficency = 25%
Assuming every day is perfectly sunny for 12 hours, that's 96 Billion BTUs per square mile per day, which is 35 trillion BTU per year
97 quadrillion / 35 trillion = 2771 square miles of sun energy needed
But Solar is only 25% efficient, so that balloons to about 12,000 square miles, or an area about 20% bigger than the state of Maryland.
Even if you assume he was just talking about electric power, which is 40% of our power usage, he's still of by 50 times.
Elon is full of shit.
They should honestly just delete the debt and not pay any countries back, then hold this stance for a while until everyone stops being mad:
Yes, that area is larger than 6 states and just short of covering all of Massachusetts. That would be a good Onion article - Congress has voted to evict all Massholes and convert Massachusetts to a giant solar panel field.
I'd like to see the plan on building solar panel fields for the northeast; how much more area is needed compared to the west and south. Maybe they'll focus more on wind power. Given how several midwest states are now getting substantial amount of their total power from wind (South Dakota 30%, North Dakota 21%, Iowa 35%, Kansas 29%, Oklahoma 25%, Minnesota 17%) and the west has the land for solar panel fields (and wind turbines), looks like the northeast is going to be holding the US back.
Add to that the proposed switch to electric vehicles will increase the amount of electricity required to charge them and that demand will be mostly at night.
Sounds like a great target for any enemies if they want to disrupt the power grid.
They should start doing this.I always wondered why we didn't have solar panels on top of every big box store and giant fucking warehouses everywhere.