4 ms·

That is significantly more land than the USA would need to power the entire USA with solar power. Why so much land? (That is 34k miles^2 when we would only need

• maxerickson 3y ago
  You want the regulator to start with a perfected land use plan?
• TaylorAlexander 3y ago
  The article says we would need 700k, but clearly the idea is that 22m acres of land are permitted to have solar, not that 22m acres of land will all have solar deployed. As the article says, this gives maximum flexibility. For example 700k acres in one spot would not be ideal as transmission losses to other regions would be significant, so we need more possible space to allow distributed production.
  • kwhitefoot 3y ago
    > transmission losses to other regions would be significant, Significant but not as much as one might think. "Depending on voltage level and construction details, HVDC transmission losses are quoted at 3.5% per 1,000 km (620 mi), " https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-voltage_direct_current https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-voltage_direct_current https://library.e.abb.com/public/d4863a9b0f77b74ec1257b0c00552758/HVDC%20Cable%20Transmission.pdf https://library.e.abb.com/public/d4863a9b0f77b74ec1257b0c005...
• SamBam 3y ago
  Presumably this is opening up that much land for potential use, not putting diggers on the ground to start setting up panels tomorrow. The next phases will be deciding where to actually put individual farms.