Quote:
Originally Posted by citanon
No one is talking about tearing down power plants and replacing them one to one with solar farms. Lots of people are pointing out that there is a crazy amount of barren land out in the mid west (mid west people might disagree but there aren't too many of those anyways  ).
If it's done at all, the solar power will be converted to a chemical fuel which will then supply the power plants.
It won't cost a quadrillion dollars but definitely would not be cheap.
So, assuming solar energy achieves cost parity with fossil fuel power generation in the US. What is the total replacement cost of all fossil fuel power plants in the US? Any idea? |
Okay, so there about
3000 power plants in the US at maybe half a billion dollars each. So that's about 1.5 Trillion dollars amortized over 50 years or so life of a power plant, excluding evolutionary upgrades to the electric grid and cost of conversion of existing fossil fuel transportation networks. If we add in all those costs we probably come in under 5 Trillion over 50 years, which is about 100 billion dollars per year, which is not too far off the normal pace of energy infrastructure investments.
So, actually I've just said essentially nothing: if we can bring the cost of solar energy to a competitive price point, we can essentially slowly replace our energy supply over time at the nominal rate of infrastructure investment.
The competitive per square foot price point for 20% efficient solar panels is about equal to the cost of a square foot of paint. So that's a pretty big challenge for solar power technology development.