3 ms·

Or 70% of Nevada. I for one welcome our paving-the-deserts-with-solar-panels robot overlords.

• cfadvan 8y ago
  It doesn’t help to capture all of that energy if we can’t store and transmit it efficiently.
  • neolefty 8y ago
    For sure! And I think that a massive increase of storage will make transmission much easier, by allowing us to time-shift transmission—at the expense of efficiency. 1. generate solar power during the day in Nevada and store it nearby 2. trickle it cross-country at night—when the grid is under-utilized—to distributed storage facilities, where demand will be higher the next day 3. use it the next day, or store and forward again That way, long-distance transmission won't need the same massive upgrades—high-temp superconductors! megatons of copper! 7-figure transformers!—as if we had to use the solar power right away.