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102 Comments
- SVOboy, on 01/01/2009, -0/+63Clean development in china is going to do as much for the rest of the world as it will for china, so I think this project is an important step.
- jboitnott, on 01/01/2009, -0/+44Most definitely a small step on a very long road. Hope we hear a lot more about China making solid efforts in this area in the years to come.
- etsa, on 01/01/2009, -3/+36It's about time. Brownish sky with no stars at night is typical in many cities.
- inactive, on 01/01/2009, -1/+30I hope this drives production up and prices down.
- avengingturnip, on 01/01/2009, -4/+22Despite the claims in the linked article 500 MW is small compared to a coal fired plant. The new coal boilers can produce over 1 GW steady, not peak, and they don't cover thousands of acres. Good luck to the Chinese though.
- monopolymen, on 01/01/2009, -3/+15A lot of this is due to inefficiently shielded and poorly planned street lighting though. Light pollution does more to damage star visibility than most people realise.
http://www.darksky.org/mc/page.do - CasinoJack, on 01/01/2009, -3/+13Great Scott! That's nearly 1.21 gigawatts!
- akchrs, on 01/01/2009, -6/+13If only we could get China completely off oil then their would be more for us.
- inactive, on 01/01/2009, -3/+10Sorar power FTW!!!!
- silent128, on 01/01/2009, -0/+4Good maybe some compitition will give us a new "cold war" so we can create better tech.
- zambuka, on 01/01/2009, -0/+4Now this is what we need to drive the future of energy technology, some good old fashioned cold war style one-upmanship.
It got a handful of men to the moon without us getting blown to bits, hopefully it can get us cheap effective renewable energy sources without us getting blown to bits. - krnldmp, on 01/01/2009, -0/+4Next will be world's largest solar installation planned in USA going all over the world like this until the capability of solar electric is fully realized.
- DarkShroud, on 01/01/2009, -3/+7I hope they don't screw this one up like their Hydro damn that polluted the whole area so badly that it was to toxic for people or animals to live there.
- ChinaLumberjack, on 01/01/2009, -1/+5China is making ambitious progress in the area of clean renewable energies, particularly in wind power which is forecasted to increase 10 fold by 2020.
- ZeeZee2k, on 01/01/2009, -1/+51000 megawatts
- zjbird, on 01/01/2009, -0/+4now if only we can get it to go 88 mph...
- frankdozier, on 08/10/2009, -1/+5This is good news because it can be a boost to the clean energy industry. As more countries commit to projects of this scope, more money will be available for further research into efficiency and storage.
Maybe one day someone will even build an orbiting solar collector and beaming station. That would be groovy. - UltraDavid, on 01/02/2009, -0/+4ctrl+f "1.21"
found - yaosio, on 01/01/2009, -0/+4If only there were uninhabitable areas of the planet that also get lots of sunlight and get very hot.
- dronesixtyten, on 01/01/2009, -0/+4Or 1 billion watts
- theaceoffire, on 01/02/2009, -0/+3The road to success is paved with failure... doesn't mean you shouldn't try.
- MrSlumberjack, on 01/02/2009, -0/+3They're not useless if they are using them
- silent128, on 01/01/2009, -1/+4ya but we don't need to create and dispose of radioactive materials.
- Metalcastr, on 01/02/2009, -0/+3Have you? If you did then you would realize the whole world is radioactive because it was bombed.
- Richandler, on 01/01/2009, -1/+4No, just tons of acres of solar panels that fade eventually.
- whodathunk, on 01/02/2009, -0/+3A gigawatt: About 1.3 million horsepowers, or 1700 Ferrari Enzo's at full throttle, or 3118 base 2008 Chevy Corvette's, or 29800 Yugo's, or about 400 times the power needed for the fastest supercomputer (Roadrunner) in the world today. Or roughly enough power for a full Space Shuttle launch every 6 (sunlit) hours...
Or, if we could use it for that... enough power for roughly 50 Million human brains... - inactive, on 01/01/2009, -0/+3Microwave power?
Oh Sim City 2000, how you shaped the future. - kakwakas, on 01/01/2009, -2/+5Typical European digger incapable of recognizing a jest.
- Richandler, on 01/01/2009, -1/+4Solar power, the only power source required to be bigger than the area it's providing energy to.
- GawtMilk, on 01/03/2009, -0/+21% of this energy? Are you joking? That would require 1% of the planet's surface area to be covered with 100% efficient solar panels. Call the earth 500,000,000 sq km, That's 500,000 sq km of paneling. Most commercial panels are only 10% efficient, which means that you would need five MILLION square kilometers of commercial solar panels at $300 per square meter. $150,000,000,000 to harness 1% of the suns energy using solar panels.
If you are talking about harnessing natural photosynthesis, that is not solar energy. That is combusting or otherwise utilizing organic plant matter as an energy form, and is just like saying "oil is solar energy" because it is decayed organic material, which got its energy from the sun. - Metalcastr, on 01/02/2009, -0/+2How about we get off of oil too?
- thespice, on 01/01/2009, -0/+2+1 for your groovy idea, we're gonna need some funding
- nmessick, on 01/02/2009, -0/+2Yes is bastardized by capital, and it should be you fool... cheap energy is what drives major parts of the economey. This is the core problem with green energy and the government pushing technologies before they are mature enough to be economical. Pouring money into a problem does not fix it over night. If Obama was really serious about reviving the economey he would be offering tax breaks for building oil refineries now, then when our cash reserves are back up start putting money into green tech after its had some time to mature. If putting money into it now was a good idea, private investment firms would be doing it.
- thespice, on 01/01/2009, -0/+2Very skeptical of comments skeptical of solar power. Any effort to use the sun instead of burning ***** is a great leap forward. Solar power is not pseudoscience and while one can compare it to existing generation methods, to say that it is somehow less good than burning ***** is really missing the point. The science behind our current energy production is bastardized by capital—at which point the scientists are asked to leave the boardroom when they concede the lack of it's sustainability. It seems to be more a question of "when" we use the sun than "if".
- wontstoptalking, on 01/01/2009, -3/+5HAVE YOU PLAYED FALLOUT???
- thredden, on 01/01/2009, -0/+2i love the related stories suggestion
http://digg.com/environment/Los_Angeles_Unveils_Wo ... - frankdozier, on 08/10/2009, -1/+3What the hell's a jigawatt?
- nmessick, on 01/02/2009, -1/+3thats fine you can do that, but its a pretty lame idea to spend more $$$ for the output. This is the problem with the government getting involved in this, they never make the best choice... and you and I pay for that.
- BassMastr, on 01/01/2009, -0/+2We should all be excited when we see something like this...
All the energy stored in Earth's reserves of coal, oil, and natural gas is matched by the energy from just 20 days of sunshine.
In 40 minutes of daylight The SUN releases upon The Earth the amount of energy that is consumed by the entire population of the planet in ONE YEAR
Each day more solar energy falls to the Earth than the total amount of energy the planet's 6 billion inhabitants would consume in 27 years.
Currently we harness about 1% of this energy
http://www.solcomhouse.com/solarpower.htm - Vosona, on 01/02/2009, -0/+2The thing with coal-fired power plants is that you can't install them on rooftops to generate electricity for that house.
- 1smartguy, on 01/01/2009, -0/+2Oil is rarely used to generate electricity. China uses mostly coal, which they have a lot of.
- avengingturnip, on 01/02/2009, -0/+2FTA - Utility-scale, thin-film solar manufacturer OptiSolar just released plans to create the largest solar photovoltaic farm in the world. The farm would be built in San Luis Obispo County, California, and would, at peak production, produce about 500 MW of solar power. This is roughly the same amount as a coal-fired power plant, enough to power some 190,000 homes.
- GawtMilk, on 01/03/2009, -0/+2Chinese 具有中國特色的社會主義 is all about large-scale projects, but they never work out as well as the smaller private projects in the US. I'm sick of hearing how great the Chinese government is as at building these projects. I have seen a lot of them first hand and they are awful.
Generally, government spending erects large utilities that they can point to and say, "we're developing!" where as it would be much more efficient and better for the country to build a number of smaller ones.
Also, the spending by the government on the government is of much higher quality than the spending on the general population. The Sichuanese houses that fell down were all built recently for the public; whereas the recently build Government buildings and the buildings built 25 years ago survived, because they weren't trying to cut costs to pocket the savings.
I don't like it when people praise something they've never seen first hand. - gnotDigger, on 01/01/2009, -1/+3this is great news. Upon completion it should be generating ~ 1/15000 of total world energy use (current use is ~15TW according to wikipedia). Green energy can be made a reality if all countries make it a priority!
- FordSVT1, on 01/01/2009, -0/+2L2SCIENCE
- FordSVT1, on 01/01/2009, -0/+2In parts of Asia, it really is also the smog chocking out the light though. I've been to Wuhan and Shanghai in the summer months and it's disgusting. Like LA on the worst day of the decade back in the 1980s.
- silent128, on 01/02/2009, -0/+1while yes we rely on cheap fuel, you have seen hyper inflated prices at the pump for over 2 years. I doubt that we will have long with this large down turn on prices since its the goal of the middle east to make gas around $3-4 a gallon. We are slowly losing trillion's of dollars to foreign oil, and having problems with our coal plants (Tennessee). We do need research and investment in alternative energy's, i 100% agree with you that we should not rush into deploying large scale technology that hasn't matured. Currently solar cells only convert 15% of the sunlight they receive, there needs to be investments to this field to boost there effectiveness and lower there cost. As with many industry's including stupid ones like corn ethanol they rely heavily on government money to get off the ground. I beleive with the right direction we can have cheap solar cells in less then 10 years.
- BassMastr, on 01/02/2009, -0/+1I'm not smart enough to wether you are right or wrong, but as long as they are building them they become more and more efficiant and it's free renewable energy and I like it better than the alternatives.
- inactive, on 01/02/2009, -0/+1You would think that a communist government would make more large long-term government investments. I have always just chalked it up to their government not caring about the future of their people.
- shinywind, on 01/02/2009, -0/+1cool :)
Next typhoon-windmill? -
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