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Originally Posted by Acres per Second
Being a news-junkie often pays off with revelations such as below. This is a solar-collector array in Bavaria. The panels turn to face the sun automatically. "Small" as it is, it produces 10MW.
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Great to see this - but it may not as efficient as quoted. Check out
http://www.photon-magazine.com/news/...light_big2.htm
The same picture as posted is shown, with the caption:
Bavaria Solar Park: The 1.9 MW system in Günching is one of three PV systems with a total of 10.1 MW.
http://www.pvresources.com/ is also interesting, including a shot of a photovoltaic plant built in Tucon, AZ.
Flying over the desert in the Western US, there sure seems to be hundreds (thousands?) of square miles of sun drenched land that could be used for solar collectoring. Transmission loss over long distances may be a problem, but a professor in a class, taken over 30 years ago, predicted this would come, and the power would be transmitted as direct current (DC) to reduce losses. His theory was that only one wire would be required, and the earth would be used as "ground". We'll see...