Elon Musk revives his plan to power the United States entirely on solar: “All you need is a 100 by 100 mile patch in a deserted corner of Arizona, Texas or Utah (or anywhere) to more than power the entire USA.”

submitted by Orangutan from inverse.com

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[–][deleted] 6 insightful - 1 fun6 insightful - 0 fun7 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

The problem with Solar (and Wind) energy is that is creates a giant energy storage problem the grid is not equipped or designed to solve.

Problem: Energy usage spikes at 11PM. Standard power plant solution - increase production near 11PM. Renewable solution - store a shitload of energy at X loss rate so that you have enough to handle 11PM.

Trying to set up an offgrid solution even for your own home quickly makes it apparent that the most costly and difficult to maintain and continually replace parts are the immense battery arrays - and you can still expect to need a consumable powered generator for when the elements don't agree with you. I'm assuming in renewable world this would be coal plants since they are the easiest to "spin up" and "wind down"?

As a result of these infrastructure and logistical challenges thorium based nuclear has always looked like the most feasible and clean solution to me; but any solution is "cleaner" than ordering a gazillion rare earth batteries every year from China - which is what nationwide solar would look like unless we have some sort of clean energy storage breakthrough.

[–][deleted] 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Well, Musk could put a huge parabolic mirror in orbit and always have the sun shining, 24/7, on the panels. It isn't entirely impossible at this point. It would also burn through any cloud cover. The only thing that would prevent this from working would be dust clouds, such as from volcano eruptions, or nuclear ashes.

Then you wouldn't need backups!

But then again, if your array is 100mi x 100mi, the mirror would have to be what, 400mi x 400mi? Even multiple ones would have to be incredibly huge.

[–]JasonCarswell 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Indeed.

For my /s/BittersweetSeeds project (barely started but will is my New Years resolution, and I rarely bother with resolutions) I was trying to conceptualize the industrialization of space and power. I had soooo many ideas, including giant mirrors, conversions, Microwave transmissions, etc etc etc. As I researched I realized many things were scientifically impossible, some pure fantasy, and many things were incredibly impractical at any scale. My process was to come up with ideas and determine how they wouldn't work, then build work arounds. And repeat. If I couldn't build a work around, then it would not be valid. The same is true for the related political and economic stuff.

Further, there are countless problems with the current efforts with space, including the re-usability, space debris, etc.

None of this is really touched on much until Act 3.