Part of the trouble is that the people with the ideas don't do numbers. if it is a good idea then we should do it is their mantra. I once calculated how many wind farms you would need to completely power the USA and I arrived at eight times the area of Texas! OK, I may be wrong - it did happen once - but I would like to see their figures.
Same with storage. The idea is we store the electricity in a rechargable battery. Sounds good but when you start to work out how many batteries you need the numbers get huge. In fact, it is better to work out how many Tesla Gigafactories you would need. I got over 4,000! 80 per state, on average. The numbers increase when you build in the assumed lifespan because not only do you need to make them all in the first pace but you need to keep replacing them as they wear out.
Then I moved on to wind turbines. I calculated how many would be required, assumed a 30 year lifespan then calculated how many replacement turbines you would need to replace every day and the answer was just over 150. So, 150 new wind turbines every day - or 3 per state - for ever.
Solar plants do not need as much space as wind turbines but that land is effectively lost because very little will grow in the shade of square miles of mirrors.
Part of the trouble is that the people with the ideas don't do numbers. if it is a good idea then we should do it is their mantra. I once calculated how many wind farms you would need to completely power the USA and I arrived at eight times the area of Texas! OK, I may be wrong - it did happen once - but I would like to see their figures.
Same with storage. The idea is we store the electricity in a rechargable battery. Sounds good but when you start to work out how many batteries you need the numbers get huge. In fact, it is better to work out how many Tesla Gigafactories you would need. I got over 4,000! 80 per state, on average. The numbers increase when you build in the assumed lifespan because not only do you need to make them all in the first pace but you need to keep replacing them as they wear out.
Then I moved on to wind turbines. I calculated how many would be required, assumed a 30 year lifespan then calculated how many replacement turbines you would need to replace every day and the answer was just over 150. So, 150 new wind turbines every day - or 3 per state - for ever.
Solar plants do not need as much space as wind turbines but that land is effectively lost because very little will grow in the shade of square miles of mirrors.