Some states in Australia, if not all, have a competition at christmas held by the power company for the best lights display. The winner wins free electricity for a year. Obviously the real winner is the power company, as thousands of families try to outdo each other with more and more outlandish lighting... wonder how long they'll keep that shit up as we run out of oil?
Apparently not. They have tried it, and there is a competition every year to race solar cars, but it's still waaaaay too expensive to install on a large scale. They cost money, but also resources. It's prohibitively expensive on a large scale, even though australian houses do often have small scale systems to offset their bills.
Another issue I've heard about is absorption. The desert reflects a lot of heat, where solar panels by deign absorb it. A large scale panel array would absorb so much heat it would potentially affect heat transfer around the planet, affecting the water cycle and so on.
It's one reason they couldn't just cover the Sahara in panels.
Some states in Australia, if not all, have a competition at christmas held by the power company for the best lights display. The winner wins free electricity for a year. Obviously the real winner is the power company, as thousands of families try to outdo each other with more and more outlandish lighting... wonder how long they'll keep that shit up as we run out of oil?
ReplyDeleteSurely Oz could easily switch over to solar power?
ReplyDeleteApparently not. They have tried it, and there is a competition every year to race solar cars, but it's still waaaaay too expensive to install on a large scale. They cost money, but also resources. It's prohibitively expensive on a large scale, even though australian houses do often have small scale systems to offset their bills.
ReplyDeleteAnother issue I've heard about is absorption. The desert reflects a lot of heat, where solar panels by deign absorb it. A large scale panel array would absorb so much heat it would potentially affect heat transfer around the planet, affecting the water cycle and so on.
It's one reason they couldn't just cover the Sahara in panels.