4 ms·
All of the above, because it works at residential and commercial scale at the load with no line losses, and at utility scale utilizing the existing spoke and wh
by ldbooth 6y ago
All of the above, because it works at residential and commercial scale at the load with no line losses, and at utility scale utilizing the existing spoke and wheel grid model, and for cities we'll use the community solar model already popular today. Welcome to the present!
- titzer 6y agoLike I said before, I think local solar is great. But utility scale solar is an environmental nightmare. Look at Ivanpah. Do you want the deserts covered in that?
- ldbooth 6y agoIvanpah is concentrating solar with heliostats, right? Not flat plate photovoltaic cells which is 99.9% of solar electric energy.
- titzer 6y agoDoesn't matter. Mirrors or photovoltaics. They both produce similar amounts of power per area over the whole facility, and nowhere near what a nuclear plant outputs. The power density is literally 8x higher for nuclear versus photovoltaics, according to this [1] (sorry for stupid paywall). When you scale that up, you need insane amount of land that is literally nothing but solar panels. Where are we going to put all that new tech? [1] https://www.forbes.com/2010/05/11/renewables-energy-oil-economy-opinions-contributors-robert-bryce.html?sh=3d09abb11403 https://www.forbes.com/2010/05/11/renewables-energy-oil-econ...
- ldbooth 6y ago11 year old link, pre-utility scale pv. Nice, That's not true when you add in the exclusion zone for nuclear. land use is different for "solar thermal" (Ivanpah) and solar PV, as is the technology, the water use, the environmental concerns, and timing of the useful energy, the lifecycle, the time to build, the cost. But sure apples taste like oranges. Nuclear is great for baseload - but the cons outweigh the pros because they have to be on water. We gotta move forward.
- titzer 6y agoYeah, well read this study from 4 years ago: https://www.strata.org/pdf/2017/footprints-full.pdf https://www.strata.org/pdf/2017/footprints-full.pdf Upshot there: all factors considered, including not only the area of the actual power generation facility, but also storage, transmission, mining...everything. Nuclear is nearly 4x better in terms of power per acre. I don't know what "exclusion zone" you are referring to. If you are assuming that every single nuclear plant is going to melt down Chernobyl style, this isn't a serious conversation, really. And I'd like to point out that access to water (for cooling nuclear plants) is easier to come by than access to sun.
- ldbooth 6y agoThe access to water is the bug, not a feature since seismic events allow radioactive materials into water, like learned at fukashima. Access to sunlight is more prevalent than to non seismicly active areas. Here is the only nuke in construction in the US, and it's long been a debacle. https://www.bizjournals.com/jacksonville/news/2019/03/22/plant-vogtle-bad-bets-red-flags-missed-and.html https://www.bizjournals.com/jacksonville/news/2019/03/22/pla...
- titzer 6y agoNeither the seismic event nor the megatsunami caused a release of radioactive material into waters at Fukushima. The failing of cooling because backup generators were flooded in the basement, leading to an explosion did. After that, they've released contaminated water into the ocean that can no longer be stored on site. Mistakes were made at Fukushima, but what radioactive waste release from seismic events is not what happened, and has never happened.
- ldbooth 6y agoIvanpah and concentrating solar power is not cost effective. CSP is dead. There are true environmental concerns but solar is the least worst option.