You will likely see this ad by the We campaign on the air shortly. Solar arrays in a desert! Not a bad idea. Maybe that goes along with improving our grid so that we can transmit that power to where it is needed. Smart grid technology? Yes, funded in the stimulus package.
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Bill Manzi.com 
No more smelly pigs? YES, funded in the stimulus package.
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Meantime, one form of solar reaching the magic one dollar / watt. Still a ways to go, especially in terms of scale and storage, but impressive in its own right.
http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/research/4306443.html
-FM
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Your Honor,
Do you know what the cost of operating a solar arrangement like this in dollars per Kilowatt?
Is the array government subsidized or private?
Jules
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Fred,
This is not ready for prime time is what I unsurprisingly found out from your web site. It will be some time before we can shut down that dirty fuel, coal.
I have spent time working in the Southwest desert. The sand driven winds will sand blast the reflective arrays cutting down on their efficiency.
More work needed.
Jules
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Jules:
No question about it. If it were me, I’d be taking a distributed approach and spreading arrays throughout the country. It’s enough for me that costs are coming down to the grid parity point so early in the development cycle. If I can get below grid power pricing and get a long term payback, I’d put it on the roof of my house.
As we’ve both agreed, there is no one silver bullet in this fight to free ourselves from petro based energy.
I’ll give you one that you didn’t catch: the ad says that an array 96 miles square would replace all our energy requirements: 96*96 = 9216 square miles of mirrors. That’s a lot of mirrors to put in one spot …
-FM
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