The problem is building enough solar panels to cover New Mexico would cost about the world's entire GDP for a year. I mean it's worth it in the long-run, but the cost is so heavily front-loaded (it's like buying 25 years worth of coal and oil at the start of those 25 years) that people are reluctant to or simply can't afford to do it. You can't stop spending money on food and water for a year, just to build solar panels.
It also would lead to tremendous power variations, since the rate at which power is produced doesn't match the rate it's consumed. That's where the idea of storing the power comes in. But that introduces inefficiencies due to energy conversions. Battery storage is about 65% efficient (you lose about 20% of the energy charging the battery, and 20% discharging it). Pumped storage (pumping water into a tank at a higher elevation, then having the water turn a generator as it flows down) is currently the best, about 80% efficient. So now you've increased the land area you need to cover with solar panels (and the cost) by another 5%-10%.
Add to that we're doing this backwards. As long as renewable + nuclear power generation is less than 100% of consumption, it doesn't make sense to store electricity. If renewables + nuclear is less than 100%, the remainder is being generated by fossil fuels. So if you store part of your renewable power during the day instead of use it, you're just burning more fossil fuels during the day to make up for that losing that power. When you tap that stored power at night, true, you have to burn less fossil fuels. But due to the inefficiency of storage, the reduction in fossil fuel use at night is less than the increase in fossil fuel use during the day. And so storing renewable energy just causes you to burn more fossil fuels.
The way we should be doing it is using all the renewable energy the moment it's produced, and using fossil fuels to make up for when renewables are insufficient. Storing renewable energy doesn't make sense until renewable + nuclear generation exceeds 100% of consumption at times. It makes sense to research storage, to try to make it cheaper and increase its efficiency. But actually implementing it right now makes no sense and just causes us to burn more fossil fuels. (For most locations. There are a few remote communities where their renewable generation exceeds 100% of their consumption during the day. Storage makes sense there.)
The environmental movement has a lot of good ideas. But irrational exuberance about their viability is causing us to implement them in all sorts of wrong ways.
Yeah, that was my thinking reading this too. 75 kWh/yr works out to just 8.6 Watts if you leave the system on 24/7. So obviously they've got some sort of "typical use" profile they're measuring the computer against to come up with its power consumption figure. I've been searching trying to figure out what this profile is.
Ah, I think I found it. It's in the Energy Star guidelines, page 13. 15% off, 45% sleep, 10% long idle, 30% short idle.
https://www.energystar.gov/sites/default/files/ENERGY STAR Computers Final Version 8.0 Specification - Rev. April 2020_0.pdf
If correct, that's assuming the computer will be in use 40% of the time (9.6 hours/day). In my experience that's not how people use gaming systems. They typically have a gaming computer, and a regular computer (usually a laptop - who wants to be tied to their desk just to browse the web?). The regular computer gets used most of the time for web browsing, bill payment, work, watching cat videos, etc. The gaming computer gets turned on for just a few hours a night to play games. So it would appear the problem is poor regulatory definitions which don't really match the use profile of gaming computers.
I suspect Dell could get around the problem by creating a power profile for regular use which more severely throttles the processor. And a different power profile which kicks in only when gaming. But after the diesel emissions scandals, making these sort of use-specific profiles could be misinterpreted as trying to cheat on the regulatory standards tests. Even though it would create a real power savings for the end user. (If you limit an 8 core i9 with a top clock speed of 5.2 GHz, to 4 cores and a top clock of 3.6 GHz, it's only gonna use about as much power as an i3.)
The drawback of putting panels on all existing buildings is that the grid was designed for power to flow one-way. From a central generation source, to a multitude of consumers. If you try to use it to distribute power from multiple generation sources to multiple users, it creates maintenance issues. Right now if the power company needs to repair some lines, they shut off power to that block, then go repair those lines. But if all the buildings on that block are generating power via solar panels, then those lines are still live even though the power company shut off its power. And any maintenance worker touching those lines could be electrocuted.
They need some way to quickly and easily shut off power flowing from all the customers to the lines. It's not an insurmountable problem, but that infrastructure simply doesn't exist yet. They have systems for the power company to signal building solar installations to stop sending power. But it requires each building owner to actually maintain and keep that system in operating order. If you're a power line maintenance worker, do you really want to trust your life to
every building owner on the block keeping his equipment in working order? The system needs a better design.
Like I tell kids, everything has a benefit and a cost. If you're thinking about something only in terms of its benefits, or only in terms of its costs, that's an indication that you're being biased. You're allowing your preconceived opinion to filter out support or opposition for it, and you're not giving it a fair evaluation.
Actually, covering home roofs with solar panels with an air gap between the panels and roof, would decrease the amount of sunlight being converted into heat inside the home. It would reduce air conditioning requirements substantially. (Of course planting trees around your house accomplishes the same thing. But people hate having to clean leaves out of their gutters.)
California sits far enough south in latitude and the weather is sunny enough that solar hits about a 0.18 to 0.19 capacity factor (if you have a solar panel rated for 100 Watts, on average over a year it will generate 18-19 Watts). This is significantly better than the 0.145 average for the U.S. overall, and substantially better than the about 0.10 for the Northern U.S. states, Canada, and most European countries like the UK and Germany. So its policies to encourage adoption of solar do make sense.
But you're correct it has an irrational fear of nuclear power. There are (were) two nuclear plants here, with 5 reactors. Diablo Canyon and San Onofre (I live about 10 miles from it). San Onofre was shut down for maintenance in 2012, and regulators threw so many hurdles at certifying it for reopening that Edison just gave up and shut the plant down permanently. That removed about 9% of California's annual electrical generation. That lost generation was made up by natural gas (see what I mean about fossil fuels being the flex energy source which fills in gaps between generation and consumption?). So their shortsightedness caused a massive increase in consumption of fossil fuels.
https://www.energy.ca.gov/data-repo...-data/electric-generation-capacity-and-energy
(Note that these tables are actual generation, not capacity. That's another common trick - listing power sources by capacity, which exaggerates the efficacy of renewables. Since they have low capacity factors around 0.1 to 0.3, you need about 3x-9x more renewable capacity to equal the actual power generation of nuclear capacity. Nuclear's capacity factor is about 0.9.)
They're trying to shut down Diablo Canyon, which would remove another 9% of the state's electricity generation. Even though statistically nuclear power is the safest power generation technology man has ever invented. Safer than even wind and solar. Did you know that the same week of the Fukushima nuclear accident (where nobody has died), wind killed one person in the U.S.? A high school teacher in Ohio forgot to lock the maintenance ladder to the school's wind turbine. A student climbed up it and fell to his death. But you can guess which one got more news coverage, and so people's perception of the relative dangers of these technologies ends up skewed from reality.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesc...athprint-a-price-always-paid/?sh=79b81c32709b
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