Speakeasy forum: It can/will be done.

just how many acres of land it will require to go solar but can't find anything to do this accurately. About all I can find is that areas that get significant full sun can provide about 6 hours per day of electricity. It will require an area of ground much much larger than ones home to keep it powered. This means turning sunny areas into shady areas. So maybe when you take your umbrella to the beach it will be covered in solar cells and you plug it into a receptacle in the sand that's connected to the power grid?

I need to wonder how much power is required to manufacture a solar cell and how long it will take for that cell to pay for itself and start earning its own money. While I'm not opposed to finding a way to working with solar power as as a supplemental fuel source, I'm not seeing it as much of a solution. Since what we're mining and drilling is essentially millions of years of stored "battery" power, do we think we can produce and use it a real time sense? Something in the fuzzy math doesn't add up.

The best I can find is that it's about 17% efficient but I don't know the measurement criteria. Of course you still only get the energy produced buy the amount of sun collected during limited hours. It does use an interesting "storage battery".

Mirrors... who cleans them? Any hailstorms there?, earthquakes?
Maintenance?
Life expectancy?

I read 18 years before it pays for itself in money but that, IMO, isn't the measurement we need. We need to know how much energy we can expect to net over its lifetime. We won't know that for some time. We may win or lose.

I'm not wanting to be disparaging of the idea as but I'd not get too enthusiastic about it just yet.

the money needed to produce energy sources but the investment of energy itself. We know that fossil fuels generate more than enough energy to make the tools and machinery that are required to mine and drill for them. The same goes for nuclear power. We can't say the same about solar power yet as I would guess that it's energy from fossil fuels that is being used to produce the solar power devices. For solar to even begin to be self sustaining, the solar voltaic cells or other solar power generators would need to produce more energy in their lifetimes than that which was expended in producing and maintaining them. When we consider % efficiency, we need to factor that energy in too and not just what we get when some system is up and running. In other words, a solar cell that can only produce enough energy to manufacture one more cell like it is 0% efficient. If it can produce 2, I'd call it 50% efficient. How much of the potential energy it removes from the sun's rays doesn't matter. Mom nature will put that to good use.

There is one other consideration with solar power or any other alternative source such as wind power but I've not heard much talk about but think there should be. When we take energy from something, we are depriving something else of it. Mom nature wastes nothing so none of the energy we would steal from the sun or wind is doing nothing. Consider also that the sun is also responsible for our wind. It's the heating and cooling cycles that generate it and wind is a very useful resource. When we harness the wind, we're really a stealing from a valuable byproduct of solar energy. To get the most from solar power, we will need to take it from where it's most abundant. How much can we steal before we'll begin to feel it in other ways? Aren't we already speaking of concern for climate change caused by man's energy use? Will we eventually be saying the same about these alternative energies? I think we will if mom nature is merciful enough to allow us to hang around that long.

solar panels is that people keep stealing them.

Diana