this post was submitted on 01 Aug 2023
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So I should just ignore the first paragraph of your comment, where you introduce your own context for the rest of the comment and mention replacing coal, oil, and nuclear plants?
The person you replied to suggested a solar panel array. You stated you wanted to "play around with the thought of powering all of America with renewables" but then excluded all forms of renewables from your analysis except for two very specific options.
Who said it was? I said you chose the most expensive way of implementing it with concentrated solar power, a giant array of mirrors that focus light into a central tower. What about regular solar panel installations that don't require a gigantic central facility hundreds of miles from population centers?
Your analysis reads like pure misinformation intent on leading people to believe our only two choices are to stick with coal, oil, and nuclear or pay multiples of our nation's GDP and use several years worth of resources like steel in order to go the "renewable" route.
It'd be like me "playing around with the thought of powering all of America with renewables" and suggesting our only course of action with renewables is putting a giant dome over Hawaii to harness geothermal power from the active volcanoes and then running multiple 10ft thick cables 2,500 miles across the Pacific in order to feed the mainland at a cost of 200 trillion dollars and a 100 year supply of copper. It's an absurd and misleading proposal.
Now I am actually honestly not sure if you are actually being serious or if you are trying to troll.
"It’d be like me “playing around with the thought of powering all of America with renewables” and suggesting our only course of action with renewables is putting a giant dome over Hawaii to harness geothermal power from the active volcanoes and then running multiple 10ft thick cables 2,500 miles across the Pacific in order to feed the mainland at a cost of 200 trillion dollars and a 100 year supply of copper. It’s an absurd and misleading proposal."
Have you been smoking crack perhaps?
Yes I could have clarified that I was discussing solar but I thought the context of the conversation was enough. But sure, "renewables" was bad formulation on my part.
It would probably be unironically cheaper to power Hawaii by running an underwater DC high voltage cable from California to the island, then what they are currently doing.
I mean, if Japan can connect all of their islands with DCHV, and the UK can run a DCHV line from Morocco under the Atlantic, Hawaii wouldn’t be that expensive. There are thousands of miles of underwater DCHV lines around the world. We have one that runs from Washington to Southern California, which is ~1,000 miles.