
Report: America could power itself 100 times over with solar energy - Libertatea
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/11/20/report-america-could-power-itself-100-times-over-with-solar-energy/
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edent
I have solar panels in Southern England[1] - where it rains _all_ the time :-)

My domestic panels __completely __offset my domestic needs. Over the course of
the year, I 'm a net positive contributor to the energy mix of the UK.

But, here's the rub, that's averaged out over the year. Obviously, solar
doesn't work at night time. During fog and cloud cover, the output is fairly
low. There are only so many appliances I can set to turn on at mid-day.

What's now needed is better energy stores. I turn some of my surplus solar
energy into hot water - that saves me burning gas to heat it up. I also try to
charge my laptop and phone during the day - but that's only a tiny fraction.

Tesla reckon they're approaching US$200/kWh on their battery tech[2]. That's
still hideously expensive if you want to save enough energy to power your
house through the lean winter months.

Sure, in the USA you can probably import power from the sunnier areas to the
North - but it's much more efficient if it can be charged and stored locally.

[1] [https://twitter.com/edent_solar](https://twitter.com/edent_solar) &
[https://twitter.com/OxfordSolarLive](https://twitter.com/OxfordSolarLive) [2]
[http://www.greencarreports.com/news/1094442_tesla-battery-
co...](http://www.greencarreports.com/news/1094442_tesla-battery-cost-new-
report-suggests-model-3-to-cost-50k-or-more)

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HeyLaughingBoy
_in the USA you can probably import power from the sunnier areas to the North
- but it 's much more efficient if it can be charged and stored locally._

Interestingly enough, the Upper Midwestern US has very high solar insolation
values
([http://www.solarmn.org/solarinmn.html](http://www.solarmn.org/solarinmn.html))
despite being just below Canada. We have relatively few cloudy days and very
clear skies. My first summer living here after moving from the Northeast I
noticed that the sun seemed "hotter" somehow. My guess is that a fair amount
of sunlight was reflected back by the hazy Northeastern US atmosphere.

I've done some small scale solar experiments: on a clear winter day where the
air temperature was -10F, I was able to get the temperature in a small
insulated box over 100F using an 8.5x11" window pane facing the sun. And that
was with significant air leaks.

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wyldfire
This might sound silly, but I wonder what is the environmental impact of
absorbing this energy with PV instead of having it be absorbed/reflected by
rooftops, grass, etc? Presumably its a net benefit over combustion of fossil
fuels.

If solar power continues its efficiency pace, should we be concerned with its
deployment?

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lawturd
Why not make the Earth a sort of "Dyson Sphere"? No seriously, why not?

