Solor power can solve so many problem but..?

Question

Solar power can supply most of the power required for all of the United States with tech. growing and pricing becoming more attractive, the reason we do not all have it or better why it is not pushed is.. How would the state and federal make any tax money on something we all own?

If we all used Solar power like Germany is starting to, we would save more power for our own uses and sell it back to the power company, even sell more back them they would need to make, making them unneeded (as they already are)

The only way the United States will switch to Solar power is if the Goverment can tax it like it does the oil, oil tax is the base of the many projects and pays those very high pay check in Washington.

If you agree, what can we do as a nation?

if you do not agree, tell me why.

We have to know how to make power a non-issue, reduce oil need which will lower the price.

The goverment knows this, but we don't we change things?

Answer 1

The ultimate problem with ground based solar (along with wind which is even more of a pipe dream) for baseload power is that it isn't available all the time and would therefore have to be stored for when the sun don't shine (unless you're about to build transmission lines all over the planet which doesn't seem like the best use of money there is) and large scale storage of power is not something we have managed to solve yet.

Solar on a power grid (along with wind) is usually used as a source when it is there with fossil fuels to provide back up power when the renewables aren't working making them almost as bad as the fossil fuels that are needed to back them up (to the point at which solar can basically become 60% as bad as coal and wind 80% as bad).

Reliability is a key requirement for our electricity supply and the politically correct power sources simply can't provide it at present (and we need to solve the global warming problem now, not next century when we've actually got large scale energy storage worked out).

Switching electricity to solar also won't have much of an affect on oil prices because not much oil is actually used for power generation, pretty much all of it is used in cars (and given the limitations of electric cars that is likely to be that way for a while).

Of course if you could put the solar panels in space and then beam the power down you'll find the problems solar has disappear (but then we get to the new problem of there not being the infrastructure needed to actually build solar power plants in space).

One could also try to recreate the sun on Earth which would be a good way to do things aside from the fact that we haven't got it to actually produce more power than we put in (though ITER probably will reach breakeven).

It sure looks like nuclear fission is all there is right now and it isn't actually anywhere near as bad as it is commonly made out to be.

Answer 2

The reason solar doesn't catch on is that it the capital cost is $6/watt installed. So, for an average family home that needs 1kW average, that's a cost of $6,000 just for the PV panels...add on the cost of a grid tie inverter and the price goes up to about $9,000, which is no small investment.

The other big thing to consider is that the availabilty of Silicon or Gallium Arsenide is limited ,and unless we want to pay $5,000 for desktop computers, we probably shouldn't try all jumping into the photovoltaic boat all at once.

That's why I think commerical scale windpower is what we should primarily be investing in for renewable energy. It is very competitive in terms of economics, and there is no availabilty issues WRT the raw materials used in their construction.

Answer 3

i don't think it's the government that taxes oil. i do believe it is the oil companies. also, there are better sources of energy than that. not to mention solar energy can only be harvested for 12-15 hours of the day in most areas. what about the next 12 hours?

Answer 4

the right needs power to boot the two events are in a relentless conflict for power they might desire to be being concerned greater approximately working jointly to unravel americas issues. Republicans are not happy approximately obama and the democrats having power yet liberals have been very unhappy whilst the republicans pushed by using tax cuts with their majority. Bi Partisanship seems to be fading away and its tearing this usa aside republicans are shifting farther to the right and democrats are shifting farther to the left.