[ExI] Dark Matter

[Kelly Anderson]

On Thu, Nov 14, 2013 at 7:58 AM, spike <spike66 at att.net> wrote:

> *>…* *On Behalf Of *Kelly Anderson
>
> *Subject:* Re: [ExI] Dark Matter
>
>
>
> On Wed, Nov 13, 2013 at 8:43 PM, Adrian Tymes <atymes at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On Wed, Nov 13, 2013 at 3:56 PM, spike <spike66 at att.net> wrote:
>
> Highway 50 had enormous potential as a showcase location for ground based
> solar.  It’s about 600 km of paved two-lane with a good solid base under it
> and very little rain, little cloud cover ever out there in that big old
> desert…
>
>
>
> >…Not a bad idea. As long as you can fund it with kickstarter instead of
> gov dollars... LOL
>
>
>
> This is an idea which scales well.
>

Just like health care...


> >…There is a lot of sun there... that's for sure. Of note is that Nevada
> was the first state to legalize autonomous vehicles. Go figure. -Kelly
>
>
>
>
>
> OK hold on, I think I figured out the problem.  It felt one order of
> magnitude off and it is.  I worked this problem about 20 years ago and was
> getting numbers more like 10 km either side of the road.  This time I
> forgot to account for the fact that those cheapy PVs the Chinese are
> grinding out below cost are only about 10% efficient.  I did the calcs on
> this back when PVs were about an order of magnitude more expensive than
> they are now, and oil was a quarter what it is now.
>
>
>
> So to generate the amount of power we make with natural gas and coal
> combined requires about 10 km either side of the road along a nearly
> abandoned stretch of pavement in Nevada.  Get on Google Maps, go to street
> view, look around.   There is pleeeenty of room for something like that.
> Next step is to price out 16 thousand square kilometers of PV panels, or 16
> billion square meters.  Any gurus among us?
>

The problem with that is you are creating more demand than there is supply.
That will drive the price up (econ 101). And whatever numbers you start
with won't be the ones you end with.

-Kelly
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