Quote:
Originally Posted by NeilBlanchard
If 1% of Nevada was covered with solar heat systems, that could power HALF the lower 48 states. We can do long distance high voltage DC transmission lines across the country, and only lose about 8%.
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So Right now the USA is using 27,175 TeraWatt hours per year of total primary energy. Your favorite reference (Solution Project) states that if we could electrify everything in the best way possible we would need only half. And you want to supply half of that from Nevada with solar. How much land area to average 7,000 TWh per year. 800 GigaWatts continuous average?
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5,333 of the 500 MW nameplate SolarStar state of the art solar PV farms. Which has crystalline panels on trackers and an automated wash system for a capacity factor of 31% on 5 square miles in a 3,000 foot tropical desert.
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26,666 square miles.
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Nevada = 110,567 square miles. So more like 25% of the land area will need to be covered with panels.
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The current installed price for grid scale pv in the USA is about $3/ Watt.
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$2.4 Trillion. For half of the USA demand if we could spend trillions more to retrofit everything.
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Which makes 3X too much power at noon on a perfect day. And nothing all night every night.