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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Tenchusatsu who wrote (681718)	10/30/2012 4:16:34 PM
From: Alighieri	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1572946

I did some napkin math and determined that we'd have to build 100,000 square miles of solar panels with the current technology we have in order to meet the energy needs of the earth. The problem is not building the panels...the current limitation is transmission from areas of the world ideal for energy capture and areas of demand. It's easy for you to maintain the solar panel that powers your boathouse, but try maintaining something on the order of a square mile. Heck, we can't even maintain the 61,000 square miles of paved roads in this country. I would not need to maintain a square mile...my roof is more than adequate for the 6kW array I would need to power my house. Maintaining a 6kWh system is really trivial...I actually believe that the ideal solar power implementation is distributed deployment. Every rooftop is a potential mini-generating station..the grid to sell excess power back to power companies is already in place. The cost of the system is reaching that of a typical cooling/heating system. We need education... The good news is that we don't have to meet 100% of the world's energy needs with solar. Just getting to 10% will have a significant impact on energy costs, thanks to the way the free market for energy works. There are studies that project growth to 10% of total power by 2025...that includes solar power concentrator systems (non PV types)...by the way, wind is projected to grow quite nicely... Al