Tesla CEO Elon Musk — whose company makes electric cars and has a new solar roof panel division — reminded more than 30 state governors at the National Governors Association meeting this weekend exactly how much real-estate is needed to make sure America can run totally on solar energy.
“If you wanted to power the entire United States with solar panels, it would take a fairly small corner of Nevada or Texas or Utah; you only need about 100 miles by 100 miles of solar panels to power the entire United States,” Musk said during his keynote conversation on Saturday at the event in Rhode Island. “The batteries you need to store the energy, so you have 24/7 power, is 1 mile by 1 mile. One square-mile.”
It’s “a little square on the U.S. map, and then there’s a little pixel inside there, and that’s the size of the battery park that you need to support that. Real tiny.”
Musk laid out his vision for renewable energy that relies on capturing power from the sun via solar panels — Musk […]
Elon makes his points in a very morally just and explicit manner and is always on top of the subjects he discusses with an intelligent way of presenting his views. He should run for “POTUS”.
Petroleum’s versatility and ubiquity have allowed us to create industries, economies, and lifestyles highly dependent on oil as a resource. Perhaps the only thing that GW Bush and I agreed on is that America is addicted to oil. Solar is a wonderfully clean supplier of renewable electricity, but at current conversion efficiency ratios cannot replace our use of petroleum on a 1:1 exchange, nor support our current industries, economies, and lifestyles. Because petroleum is a finite, climate destroying resource the future definitely does lay primarily with electricity generated by solar, wind, and hydro, but these will not be sold to consumers on large networks as we know them now. Instead, individuals or small groups will have their own supplies. Being “off grid” in electricity terms will be the new norm. Localized energy will force people to evaluate and budget their energy use, much as we all should be doing today. The transition between our current lifestyles and our more energy efficient ones ahead will be a very interesting and occasionally tumultuous period in our country.