I think that we have different perceptions of risk…
Radioactivity at geologic timescale vs Arsenic forever and ever – one’s hazard goes down with time the other stays hazardous forever.
Ya, not really comparable… Toxics usually have a definite effect – radiation just raises the chance of getting cancer sometime in a lifetime by a fraction of a percent.
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Hmmm… it seems to be higher than 15 W/m2, but less than “ten times that in half the area.”
A solar panel with 20% efficiency and an area of 1 m² will produce 200 W at STC, […]. In central Colorado, which receives daily insolation of 2200 Wh/m², such a panel can be expected to produce 440 kWh of energy per year. (Wikipedia)
So if a 1m2 pv panel produces 440kWh in one year, it produces an average of 440000 / 8765 = 50 W.
If Colorado’s total insolation is 22000Wh/m2, Algeria looks to be perhaps 10% more, so pv panels there would produce about 55 W/m2.
So a 100 km by 100 km solar panel should produce about 550GW, or about a quarter of the world’s current electrical consumption.
Free? Seriously?
Unfortunately, it’s not that simple.
An oil pipeline is just a tube. What comes out one end is what you put in the other.
Electrical cables, on the other hand, have to be at extremely high voltages, and even then have losses proportional to their length. There are few, if any, high voltage transmission lines longer than 50 km. There was a recent contract for the longest one in the world – 162 km, but 162 km doesn’t actually get you very far from Libya…
Just use sun pipes to get the light from the desert to your collectors. 
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If you had read my other post, you’d realize you’re telling me something I already know. 
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I think one thing that will change is that energy companies will start renting solar panels to homes rather than selling them, either with a meter that gives you cheaper energy, or just at a flat monthly rate.
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That’s very hard to imagine
Mostly because Delaware is such a weird shape.
Man that needs to be done here in californai, we have a giant auquaduct a massive drought and a large area (LA) dependent on coal power. Talk about working on a bunch of issues in one step
Its my understanding we use most power during the day, people are doing things AC is running etc… because of this out night time draw could easily be done with our traditional power sources, or newer nuclear if they ever start building reactors again.
Someone correct me if I am wrong but aren’t there some bad chemicals used in either the solar cells or the production of them?
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I disagree–Arsenic and other toxic metals (if we are limiting the discussion to this) can be incorporated and dispersed by biological processes over time such as plants leeching the toxins and other animals then diffuse it, dispersing the relative concentration of the said toxin–possibly to less harmful levels, though likely changing it’s form. But radiation has been shown to slow decomposers so you get the worst of both worlds, less diffuse toxins and continual radiation.
Umm… yoo no read da joke as a joke.
ok ok–eees a bad joke.
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Even if there are, there’s a lot more problems with coal - like it being the world’s biggest source of mercury.
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This in fact is the most common way to get residential solar in the US! Not rented from the utility, but leased from a third party company that owns the panels on your roof, and sells you the power at a flat rate lower than the utility costs.
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It’s one of the problems with Discourse. With posts popping up and disappearing as you scroll, it can be hard to work out what the hell is been covered on a thread.
Also, when you click on the “replying to” link at the top of a post, it nicely gives you the complete contextual thread, but when you click on the “X replies” link below a post it doesn’t.
Yep. I’m a fan of the old linear nested BBS style of commenting, but as the marketing execs like to say, “who has that kind of time?” 
Maybe we should build a line of solar panels along the border of Mexico. Can we convince anyone that constitutes a wall?
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Possibly. Renting might be a good way to defray initial costs.
Most people don’t remember this, but it used to be few people actually OWNED phones. They rented them from the phone company. Everyone once in awhile you will find a story about some old lady who had the same phone for 50 years and was still paying ATT a monthly fee.
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Though of course the author is forgetting two main issues:
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Its not always sunny in the Sahara, so at night the energy output would basically be 0 MW. So in effect they would have to build a solar site that circle the world.
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I believe if you read the full article that the quote is from it also goes on to say that the UK used the most energy during the winter when the sun was not shining and there was no wind. So during their peak usage neither solar nor wind power would provide any power at all unless we could store the energy for later use, which we have no possible way to store that much energy in batteries.
So until we get some sort of ring around the earth to add the solar panels to I don’t think completely providing all of the worlds power from natural sources is possible or even feasible.
It would be nicer to get rid of nuclear waste and the dirty coal plants though.
You can completely discount the possibility of energy storage if you want. It works for an internet comment.
Given the amount of brine available from the ocean and North African halite deposits the usefulness of very large-scale, not-very-high-tech batteries are one possibility, as is any number of other schemes, including flywheels, air liquefaction, electrolysis, and even carbon-neutral generation of new petrochemical fuels.
“During the winter when the sun was not shining”
I think your image of the Sahara in December is not very accurate.
Yes, power lines all have losses (even superconducting ones require power to keep them at temperature), but oil pipelines have losses, too…
