Thread: Solar power does not work in the US...

Lol it aught to be a pretty simple thing to figure out. Surely they have studies out their comparing sunlight between the 2 countries.

Solar doesn't work in the USA because coal is cheap and more efficient. And because the battery tech doesn't exist yet...

Originally Posted by gssixgun

Besides the Stupidity of the Fox news staff,,, does anyone believe that Green Energy ie: Solar and Wind is actually viable or clean ????


I live in an area that many people are what we call "Off the Grid" and have been for quite some time, this is not a new trend up here... What is becoming an issue however is that our Refuse dumps are getting more than double the amount of Lead/Acid batteries then the surrounding areas.. This also must be factored with the information that it costs money to drop a battery at the land fill, which up here means that many of these batteries are more then likely ending up buried in holes on the back sides of people's property.. This will eventually leach lead into the water table

So just how clean is Solar and Wind, I know China and India are already having pollution issues from the increase in "Green" industries, also the renewable aspect is being questioned since the technology relies heavily of Rare Earth Metals (key word Rare)..


Is this just another glass of Koolaid ????

Out of curiosity, are they using lead acid batteries for storage during non-peak or intermittent hours?

Overall though, this kind of hits the nail on the head for what a lot of people miss about green technologies, a great example being hybrid cars. Not just in the disposal of batteries, but also manufacture. I believe that overall going to green technologies is the right path forward, but we have to be very careful in how we report results and technologies to the public to disclose the actual cost, not just monetary. It is still lower as a whole than conventional fuels, all things considered, IMO and based on my own research.

Originally Posted by stdreb27

Lol it aught to be a pretty simple thing to figure out. Surely they have studies out their comparing sunlight between the 2 countries.

Solar doesn't work in the USA because coal is cheap and more efficient. And because the battery tech doesn't exist yet...

There is a nice map, the link is somewhere out there. I think Germany got average sunlight comparable to Alaska.

A lot of battery tech does exist currently for applications in solar, but that isn't a necessity for widespread acceptance of solar power, there are a number of other options for capturing that energy, as well as the idea of simply using solar power as a supplement to the grid. One of the biggest problems is political will.

Originally Posted by ScienceGuy

There is a nice map, the link is somewhere out there. I think Germany got average sunlight comparable to Alaska.

A lot of battery tech does exist currently for applications in solar, but that isn't a necessity for widespread acceptance of solar power, there are a number of other options for capturing that energy, as well as the idea of simply using solar power as a supplement to the grid. One of the biggest problems is political will.

As someone from Texas, I would seriously doubt germany gets more sunlight...

But it's not political will. (I've dealt more with wind than solar on a electric grid scale) There is political will. That's why wind projects are getting almost 50% of their cost subsidized, I don't know what else one would want short of a complete ban, which they're doing more or less (with the unspoken ban on coal plants.) And when they kill endangered birds, no one notices... If the same thresholds were enforced for wind that is enforced for natural gas and oil drilling, there wouldn't be a wind turbine anywhere (slight over exaggeration)... Hell down here they have one of the only almost successful wind turbine fields in the USA, and it's literally 30 miles from the major flight path of whooping cranes. They've basically shut down sandhill crane hunting in the same area just in case some poor sap accidentally shoot a whooping crane instead of a sandhill...

As for solar, I've priced out multiple systems for various projects small and large talking offshore platforms, and well the money just doesn't work out. The maintenance is too high requires too much space. The storage doesn't exist.

I'm all for technological advancements. But lets face it, even with green tech being subsidized to the tune of 50% of install costs, coal is still cheaper. That isn't even discussing CNG tech that's out there. And that is the ultimate driving force... Not government will.

Originally Posted by ScienceGuy

Out of curiosity, are they using lead acid batteries for storage during non-peak or intermittent hours?

Yes most of the Green systems up here rely heavily on the storage systems, North Idaho is not well known for sunshine or wind.. The best system to have up here is Hydro, if you are lucky enough to have a steam flowing across your property... One week of real weather up here can shut down all these systems however..

To date, nuclear is still the cleanest, greenest form of energy.
Sadnly, the 'green' party disagrees because nukular -> bad.

Going green can solve distribution problems, availability problems and resource scarcity.
It cannot, however, beat the economy of scale of a large energy plant in terms of efficiency or being environmentally friendly.
Green is only green if you don't look at the manufacturing process, which is conveniently located in places noone gives a crap about, done by people noone gives a crap about.

they need to invent a technology that will generate power at night and during the day that doesn't need "storage"
wind is too inconsistent and solar goes off when the sun goes to sleep. so is no good to supplement anything during the peak period of the early morning and evening
at least with coal they can feed more or less coal into the fire or switch on more generators blah blah.

guess the only solution to that would be hydro but then when the river dries up what then?

what if they used solar to power a kinetic energy that would drive the generators at night?(winding up a rubber band if you will) rather than a battery storage system

Obviously there is no free lunch, and all of the non-fossil alternatives have their own environmental impacts. Only the most naive greenie believes otherwise, just as only the most rabid oil/gas coal company shills deny the devastating impacts we've gotten from those technologies. It seems we're now shipping much of our coal overseas to developing nations (where we can turn a blind eye to often much-filthier power plants whose emissions don't respect political boundaries), and now natural gas is the big thing. Unfortunately, fracking has its own potentially-horrifying environmental impacts, so there are no easy solutions...

Still, the US must reclaim its leadership in research and development of alternative energy sources. Again, this nation put a man on the moon, cracked the genetic code, invented the silicon chip, the Internet, and the computer revolution, and the list goes on. A lot of our great inventions and advances (space exploration, GPS satellite technology, and the Internet for just a few examples) were mostly government/NASA/DOD projects until markets developed that made them viable commercial enterprises: satellite communications and Google Earth, the WorldWideWeb that our lives now revolve around, etc.

We all know that Solyndra was a debacle, in part because they couldn't compete with cheap Chinese manufacturing (which is a whole 'nother topic I guess). But we've seen (and our lives are made better by) countless examples of inventions and technology that started out as government research, something subsidized, incentivized through the tax structure, parnternships, whatever...Eventually, markets and demand were created where none existed before. And that is what I think America needs to be doing with alternative energies, though it has to be done RIGHT, with eyes wide open to potential impacts (as we learned-and are still learning it seems, about the impacts on the environment and food prices of ethanol additives to gas).

Originally Posted by blackers10

what if they used solar to power a kinetic energy that would drive the generators at night?(winding up a rubber band if you will) rather than a battery storage system

The main problem is that storing those amounts of kinetic energy is very hard.
I know places in Belgium where they store energy as potential energy through hydro.
The surplus is used to pump water in larger quantity to higher areas in an artificial lake.
When it is needed, sluices are opened in the other direction, letting the water stream through hydro power generators.

I know in spain they ha(d/ve) molten salt reservoirs which are very convenient, because salt can store a large amount of energy in molten form. Teh main problems there are performing maintenance on equipment that stays at a several hundred degrees celcius, and also to make sure the temperature never drops below the crystallization temperature. Because once it solidifies, it is a huge bother to get the entire thing going again.