Posted on 12/19/2011 6:01:03 PM PST by SmithL
Solar energy is still uneconomic by a wide margin in temperate climates.
Self-certified dementia?!! Who’da thunk!!!!
“...especially his mind”
Jerry’s “mind” is long ago “wasted’....
Isn’t it a tad insensitive for a gentile politician to hijack a Jewish religious festival for political purposes?
until they can put a solar collector, the size of a sunroof, on top of my car, which will power it 95% of the time (battery for the other 5%) don't bother me with nonsense. Domestic drilling for energy would eliminate foreign reliance and just the THREAT to do so would lower oil prices by 60% overnight!!!
Sure, he can be ‘that stupid’-—remember “there is no stautue of limitatiions on stupidity”
Still “Moonbeam” after all these years.
I disagree with Moonbeam as far as policy goes, but I thought the analogy was quite clever. I doubt anyone here would be screaming blasphemy if the opposite foot was shod.
Absolutely untrue
What a moron!
What a moron!
Well, let's say you live in an ideal location in the middle of the desert. We'll make the panel a bit bigger, 1 meter by 1 meter. You will get 7 kWh per day of solar energy. Let's assume there is 25% efficiency (very optimistic considering today's technology and your panel won't be aimed at the sun). Now you have less than 2kWh of energy per day to work with.
Now let's look at gasoline, it contains 33 kWh of raw energy per gallon. The engine is about 20% efficient and 10-15% after adding drive train and other sources of friction. That means 3kWh of energy to move your car forward from each gallon.
So the equivalent energy of 2/3 gallon of gasoline is collected by parking the car in full sun for a day. So figure on a 20 mile round trip per day and that's using lots of ideal assumptions. Oh and your idea of using battery for only 5%, forget about that, it will be more like 95% from battery.
you'll notice that I pooh-poohed the entire notion and said that until and unless they can come up with a miniature collector that will provide this power, I wasn't interested at all. Someday in the distant future, such technology will probably be possible, but for the time being, I want this gov't to get the hell out of the way of people who want to drill for OIL!!
In a nutshell solar can;t do what you want, the sun is too weak. Lots of people look at solar panels on roofs and think that it would be cool to sell power to the power company andor be self sufficient. But it's a lie, solar doesn't produce enough power to run a house, those panels are being subsidiy other rate payers who are buying the solar power for full price during the day when it isn't needed and getting regular price power at night when their panels produce nothing.
While I'm at it, I might as well dump on wind power, it is also too diffuse and unreliable for most uses. An analogy to your solar car would be a wind powered car, ain't gonna happen ever.
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