Choice: food or solar fields

[Gee Ray]

With the current government regulations and the resulting fossil fuel shortages that are sure to come we as a nation will not need to worry about the energy will come from. There will be fewer and fewer people able to afford to buy the electricity so the demand will drop.

Problem solved. The rich will be warm in their heated homes in the winter and a/c will become a thing for the elite only.

 

[jyoutz]

Seems like instead of big solar fields all those panels should just be placed on roofs of existing homes/structures.

There’s a lot of that happening. At our local airport, all of the parking space roofs are covered in panels, and I actually know of a Walmart that has covered parking for their entire parking lot. All covered in panels.

 

[Skagit]

Solar actually does work on cloudy days, it’s just not as efficient. Gas will be an important part of the energy picture for awhile.

As someone who lives off grid, yes solar does work when it's cloudy (at like 10% output). However, if the goal is for everyone to heat their homes with electricity and drive electric cars then solar is not viable, like, at all... As a supplemental source and for off grid applications it's awesome. For a main grid power source though?

We don't have viable large scale energy storage and won't anytime soon.

The environmental impact of mining and the disposal of solar components is far worse for the environment than other forms of energy.

I live off grid, I love solar energy, I work for a company that sells Victron equipment which is big in the solar energy market. It's just not capable of doing what people think it can and it's definitely not replacing fossil fuels.

 

[jyoutz]

With the current government regulations and the resulting fossil fuel shortages that are sure to come we as a nation will not need to worry about the energy will come from. There will be fewer and fewer people able to afford to buy the electricity so the demand will drop.

Problem solved. The rich will be warm in their heated homes in the winter and a/c will become a thing for the elite only.

Coal is near dead, but more and more gas supplies are coming online annually.

 

[Grumpycat]

Those lands had to be classified as marginally productive land and the program is still operating. Nobody put class 1 farmland in the CRP program.

No good Capitalist would decline a higher paying return on investment.

If "class 1 farmland" is producing buckets of revenue then no bureaucrat is needed to tell one not to build a PV farm out of it.

 

[WM75Guy]

Nuclear works very well and I’m sure that the micro units sized for a community will become popular in the future instead of the large scale plants we know today. But still every state fights being the site of a waste disposal facility. Did the Yucca Mountain site ever get constructed in Nevada?

No. Just the two entrances and the tunnel between them.

Eureka County, Nevada -- Yucca Mountain.org

This website contains the latest news, press coverage, documents, and special reports about the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository in Nevada

www.yuccamountain.org

 

[jyoutz]

As someone who lives off grid, yes solar does work when it's cloudy (at like 10% output). However, if the goal is for everyone to heat their homes with electricity and drive electric cars then solar is not viable, like, at all... As a supplemental source and for off grid applications it's awesome. For a main grid power source though?

We don't have viable large scale energy storage and won't anytime soon.

The environmental impact of mining and the disposal of solar components is far worse for the environment than other forms of energy.

I live off grid, I love solar energy, I work for a company that sells Victron equipment which is big in the solar energy market. It's just not capable of doing what people think it can and it's definitely not replacing fossil fuels.

Absolutely solar at this time will not replace other fuel sources, but it’s a nice supplement. Most people in my area don’t do the battery storage thing. Their home panels directly feed the grid, and the bill is an accounting thing. They get credit for energy generated, and pay for energy that comes from the grid. (Net metering).

 

[jyoutz]

No good Capitalist would decline a higher paying return on investment.

If "class 1 farmland" is producing buckets of revenue then no bureaucrat is needed to tell one not to build a PV farm out of it.

I was only referring to the requirements of the CRP program. If you get paid by the government for set aside lands, you have to retire marginal farmland to grass or trees.

 

[Hay Dude]

It is amazing how a lot of people promote the use of nuclear power and fail to look at the true cost of it. The mining for ore, the refining of the ore, the dangers of transportation of the ore to power plant are all important problems. Then when you decommission a nuclear power plant what do you do with it for the next several thousands of years as the area "cools" down? Now then there is the problem of the waste. With a half life of over 100,000 years where do we hide it?

But it is all good. There is not any of the evil fossil fuels used.

Sounds like Lithium or Cobalt mining

 

[Hay Dude]

Solar info shows PA is a lot less than other areas as well, however, I have no idea what the scale refers to, so just because it's lower than, say, the SW U.S., I don't know how much lower.

Where solar is found - U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA)

An introduction to solar energy resources with maps showing U.S. solar radiation resources, global solar radiation resource, and solar electricity generation from utility-scale solar and small-scale photovoltaic systems by state for the United States in most recent year annual data are available.

www.eia.gov

Its a territorial thing for sure. For example, The Southwest is less populated, has many more days of sun and probably more wind. Put the wind & solar farms there, where they work.
In the Northeast, where it’s densely populated, more cloudy and the winds are lower, build gas & nuke plants. We have abundant Marcellas gas and already have lots of nuke plants ready for retooling.