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It wouldn't make any sense to generate the world's energy centrally and transmit - economically, politically, etc. The Americas could generate 100% of energy n
by onlyrealcuzzo 3y ago
It wouldn't make any sense to generate the world's energy centrally and transmit - economically, politically, etc.
The Americas could generate 100% of energy needed from <0.25% of land in Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, California, Chihuahua, and Atacama.
And even that wouldn't make sense - because there's so many other places to generate solar, transmission is expensive, and you want your generation decentralized due to weather and many other reasons.
Why would China buy solar from Sahara when they have the solar radiation to get it domestically from Southwest Tibet?
- Loughla 3y agoThis is the part of the argument that gets ignored when people talk about all the sunny deserts that are available. Why would you want a majority of your power generation in one easy to attack location?
- nico_h 3y agoThere are numerous points of failure in any grid. the big power generators and transformers are hard to hide targets. A big surface area of solar panel is much less dense in terms of power generation per square feet. So you would need a lot of ordinance to meaningfully decrease its output (except at transformer points, but that’s like in any grid).
- AniseAbyss 3y agoThat already happened. Wiki the OPEC crisis of the 1970s or more recently Russia's invasion of Ukraine.