Why are less endowed countries like Germany beating the US in solar?

[PaleMelanesian]

I was thinking more along the lines of Oktoberfest girls.

[phoebeisis]

Slight aside here, but isn't "Wind" better than "Solar."

By better I mean cheaper and denser and frequently available at night.

Some Turbines can produce 3 Megawatts.

Why waste time/money on solar when it is better spent on wind?

I know the anti renewable pre fossil fuel folks site "numbers" like"need a wind farm as big as Louisiana" but I calculated we would only need about 40,000 sq miles-a 200 mile square-it could easily fit in a decent sized corner of TX.

Forget large scale solar-max out wind-easier and cheaper(and wind blows at night).
Charlie

Don't most studies proclaim the USA to have the most usable wind reserves?

Anyone have any numbers-cost-wind vs solar?

[Yaris Hilton]

So Americans have more wind than Germans?

[xcel]

Hi Yaris Hilton:

You are on a roll sir

Regarding solar, it is not economically feasible yet. Wind either as you have to back up much of it with gas turbine peakers or another coal plant. With solar, you have to have a backup at night or when its cloudy…

Just go do the cost of an install… Next figure in the amount of maintenance to squeegee the panels off every few weeks. If you have a battery back up to get off the grid, batteries are not maintenance free or inexpensive either.

In the long run, this is our only choice but right now, oil does not produce electricity and until more cars go electric, supply and demand are pretty much in balance with peaks being handled through firing up the NG turbines and curtailing big customer demand while troughs are the epitome of the electric company’s nightmare scenario. The expense of a coal plant (not including environmental which is almost free right now) is maybe one half to one quarter that of a solar plant with similar output due to what is needed at night. You want to pay double or triple your current kWh rate for solar, go ahead. Today it doesn’t make it without subsidies and even than it rarely makes sense or everybody would be on solar.

An aside, Germany is using solar for a number of reasons but in the press, they say it’s to reduce CO2. For the price and limited sun, if they were interested in lowering their CO2 emissions, it would be far more cost effective for them to install Solar panels in the desert SW here in the US and give away the power for free than to play the “we are reducing CO2” dance while in a high latitude and with far less sunlight to begin with. They are really doing this for their own interest including building an infrastructure to supply solar to the rest of the world far into the future.

Good Luck

Wayne

[JusBringIt]

Originally Posted by Yaris Hilton

So Americans have more wind than Germans?

Well, Americans tend to be on the larger side of life, so pardon the flatulence.

[Chuck]

Someone is probably working on a pad in the driver's seat interfacing it with a special kind of turbo.

[Yaris Hilton]

Hey, that's fuel being wasted!

[worthywads]

There's one area my wife wishes I could reduce. Could have more potential than an hho generator for me.