Re:Fusion Foolery
by PaulDavisThe1st on Thursday August 17, 2023 @02:53PM
(#37166309)
I'm about 50 miles north of ABQ. I have a 6.7kW ground mount array. Using its rated output, and the average of 9.28 hours of sunshine per day, and no adjustment for hourly insolation variation I should get about 1.9MW a month. I actually get about 1MW, with not much variation from month to month.
I am optimistic that Santa Fe will soon see a new utility scale PV generation install that ought to generate power (with storage!) corresponding to roughly 1/3 of the city's residental use. The standard NIMBY-but-I'm-all-for-solar-have-some-myself crowd is out in force, however.
Re:Fusion Foolery
by Turing_Machine on Friday August 18, 2023 @12:13PM
(#37177776)
Some of these, maybe. It rains quite a lot in Miami and Houston -- Texas is big, and Houston is right on the Gulf Coast. It's more like New Orleans than it is Lubbock.
If you can generate solar power 80% of daylight hours, that's a pretty good place to start.
Again, it's not an end-all-be-all solution. But you're talking about some very highly populated areas that could be using solar energy a hell of a lot more than they are now. Phoenix, Tucson, San Antonio, Dallas, LA, San Diego, Houston, Miami, Orlando, Las Vegas....that's a lot of places that could be utilizing solar power in a way that does move the needle. That's some 30-50 million people (if not slightly more) that could reduce their use of the federal grid in a measurable way.