Reply #32: It's not that simple, sadly [View All]

[Dead_Parrot]

When ever you put electricity down a wire, you get less out than you put in: some comes out as an electrical field around the wire. Even with the US's current distributed generation, something like 40% is lost in transmition from the powerplant to the end users. The idea that electricity can be made in, say, Colorado and piped off to New York sadly has little mileage in reality. If only it did, but short of a grid made of high-temperature superconductors you need to make do with what you've got.

Putting PV on every roof (ignoring the cost, for the moment) has a certain attraction since more electricity is used during the day: Theorectically, you could strip nearly all of the peak load off this way (0-300Gw), and leave the base load (something like 300GW) to be generated by other means. In practice, it's a little more tricky because you need to allow for cloudy days, but you're in the right ball park here. A nuclear/solar combo has a lot to say for it, pollution and dependance wise: the high cost of PV make it a bit of a non starter, but there are other solar techs that would offset this.

Incidentally, I'd dissagree about reducing dependance as being the key concern. The CO2 is (IMHO) the overriding problem at the moment: getting off fossil fuel ASAP is the only way to limit the damage that's already occuring.

Edit: This is, BTW, why I don'y jump with joy at the current offering from wind and solar. They're nice, and they help, but they can only help so much. At the moment, the US is well short of the ~15% wall, so it's not an issue - but when it is, it's a biggie. :(