| the-pi-guy said: In particular, there are a significant number of existing dams at rivers across the U.S. where hydroelectric power is not being used. The U.S. Department of Energy did a study suggesting that up to 12 gigawatts of additional power could be generated simply by taking advantage of these existing plants. |
12GW ? You're fighting peanuts man ...
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the-pi-guy said:
Solar is developing on a lot of fronts. http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/green-tech/a24357/solar-power-cheapest-energy/ Over the past six years, the cost of solar energy has dropped dramatically, to the point where it is now even cheaper than wind power in emerging markets like China and India. This may be largely due to rising investments in solar over the last few years. Now, there is electricity being produced in Chile for $29.10 per megawatt hour–half the price of power produced by coal.
And Tesla is pushing Solar Roof.
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Solar would be great ... (if it didn't have high startup costs)
I'm not into the idea of paying tens of thousands of dollars that will only get a ROI after 3 decades and the batteries are expensive as hell but I bet others are not alone in thinking this ...
The Powerwall 2 is over $5000 and that's not what you really want since it only stores enough energy for maybe 1 day ? What you'd want is the Powerpack 2 which stores enough energy capacity for about 5 day to a week for a house in case of a streak of cloudy days or winter and that thing is probably unbelivably expensive ...
Hawaii and the sun belt region are probably the only good enough places to really start investing in solar energy which is pretty ironic considering republicans control the majority of that territory but I guess they'll soon realize that it's a good idea to play into the environmentalists ego since it benefits their geopolitical cause of making their enemies like Saudi Arabia poor just like how we used shale to give OPEC hell and we get some more energy independence in the end ...
The sooner we don't have to buy Saudi Arabia's oil the better but I'm not sure if we want to make Bolivia the next Saudi Arabia of the Latin America's since they hold the most lithium reserves in the world ...
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the-pi-guy said: Fossil fuels aren't going to last forever either. Oil is expected to be gone by the end of the century, with some estimating much sooner. Coal might last a little longer at our current pace.
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I'd rather not use that land that we use to make our food or livestock on to make fuel ...
