[ExI] Small scale solar payback time (was Re: Planetary defense)

[spike]

> On Mon, May 23, 2011 at 8:32 AM, Kelly Anderson  wrote:
...
>> I really truly can't understand why Rush Limbaugh is so negative about
solar...-Kelly



Pardon if I repeat the spirit of an earlier post.  It would be a game
changer in plenty of people's minds if they would get on a plane, fly out
somewhere in the middle of the western desert US, such as Boise Idaho, or
Las Vegas (what happens there stays there but don't do *that*) rent a car,
drive in pretty much any direction there is a road, look around.  What one
will see, regardless of the time of year, is *plenty* of open nearly flat
land, plenty of direct sunlight, and I think investment ops would pencil out
at current ground based fixed installation costs.  I can estimate closely
enough the cable costs, the load leveling by conversion of coal to octane
with external power from massive PV installations and so forth.  But it is
important to go out there in person and get a good feel for how much open
useless land is there.  Failing that, get on Google Maps and look at it.  A
lot of that desert land goes weeks at a time between seeing a single cloud.

The one area where I may be dead wrong and cannot estimate, is the cost of
defeating the environmentalists opposed to massive ground based solar, and
of course the current energy companies which may hire environmentalists to
defeat such a notion.  That could be huge, perhaps a show stopper.

spike