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Forget for a moment that I spent most of my career operating and maintaining hydro-electric power stations and their related equipment. Instead, let's look at this another way, without considering that power from a hydro-electric source is the cheapest power per kilowatt-hour on the planet.
Most people today, wherever we are, live in cities, and cities have a high population density. Many of us in cities live in multi-family units, like I'm in.
On this 12-acre site, there are six residential highrises, each with 200 units.
Together, that's 1,200 apartments, each with a parking space in our multi-level
underground garages, beneath the central courtyard and lawns.
There's no room on any of our roofs for enough solar panels and there's no room underground for the batteries that would be required to store the power
or provide for the rectifier equipment required to convert that to useful household current. Now multiply this problem by all the similar sites in all the cities of the globe, and you'll probably come to the realization that there's a very good reason for having large power stations located outside the cities,
distributing their power through a convenient and space-saving network of power distribution circuits, many of which are installed underground.
Solar power is wonderful, because the sun provides us with about 1,000 watts per square meter on a clear sunny day, if we have the space and equipment to capture it. But that space and that equipment are expensive, and many of us do not have what is required for making use of it. So we need power from other sources. Sources that don't rely on sunshine or wind to keep the lights on.
Ray, I'd be real careful making statements like that. Anything is possible.
ReplyDeleteRead this article in the recent issue of Popular Science, titled: Pure Genius: How Dean Kamen's Invention Could Bring Clean Water To Millions
I know you've recently installed solar at your place, and I'm not trying to upset you, Tom.
ReplyDeleteI think you'll admit that both solar and wind power are expensive when compared to whatever we get from the power company, but less so as time goes by. The power companies everywhere lately seem to be increasing prices, even here where the bulk of our generation comes from hydro plants that are the traditionally cheapest source.
A point I perhaps didn't make is that solar only works while the sun shines, and wind power only works while the wind blows, so they both require expensive ways of storing and recovering that power, unless they are used only as supplemental supplies to the main grid, and that still involves special equipment to match one to the other safely.
As Will Rogers once said, "A difference of opinion is what makes horse races and missionaries."