Is Green Energy Viable?

[cmacq]

Right,
Your quite right. I live in the US southwest, and solar has been in use here, a variety of types at a variety of scales for quite a while now.

Please see Abengoa Solar

Also here are the basic stats on a few US solar plants.

Solar Thermal Energy Plants; proposed and operational
Solar Company & Electric Utility: BrightSource Energy and Pacific Gas & Electric. PLant Location: Mojave Desert, USA.
Megawatts: 500 MW, with plans to expand to 900 MW.
Status: Scheduled to be operational in 2011.

Solar Company & Electric Utility: Stirling Energy Systems and San Diego Gas & Electric. Plant Location: Mojave Desert, USA.
Megawatts: 500 MW, with possible expansion to 850 MW.
Status: Will be operational in 2011.

Solar Company & Electric Utility: Solel and Pacific Gas & Electric. Plant Location: Mojave Desert, USA.
Megawatts: 553 MW.
Status: Will be operational in 2011.

Solar Company: Solar Partners. Plant Location: California, USA.
Megawatts: 400 MW.
Status: Scheduled to be operational in 2012.

Solar Company & Electric Utility: Florida Power & Light and Southern California Edison. Plant Location: Mojave Desert, USA.
Megawatts: 310 MW.
Status: Operational.

Solar Company & Electric Utility: Florida Power & Light. Plant Location: Florida, USA
Megawatts: 300 MW.
Status: Scheduled to be operational in 2011.

Solar Company & Electric Utility: Abengoa Solar and Arizona Public Service Co. Plant Location: Arizona, USA.
Megawatts: 280 MW.
Status: Scheduled to be operational in 2011.

Solar Company & Electric Utility: Florida Power & Light. Plant Location: Mojave Desert, USA.
Megawatts: 250 MW.
Status: Scheduled to be operational in 2011.

Solar Company & Electric Utility: Ausra and Pacific Gas & Electric. Plant Location: California, USA.
Megawatts: 177 MW.
Status: Scheduled to be operational in 2010.

Photovoltaic (PV) Solar Power Plants; proposed and operational
By 2011, Deming, New Mexico, USA will be the home of the world’s largest solar power plant. This 300 Megawatt solar facility will be 15 times the size of the current largest solar plant on the planet. New Solar Ventures and Solar Torx are the companies behind the project. The solar energy plant will cover as many as 1,300 hectares and employ between 300 and 400 people. The project’s planners estimate that the plant will supply enough energy to power 240,000 homes.

The Solana solar plant, 70 miles from Pheonix, near Gila Bend, Arizona, USA, will compliment the Deming plant when both begin operations in 2011. It will produce 280 megawatts of energy, provide 1,500 jobs, and cover an area of 769 hectares. The solar power facility will be the child of Abengoa Solar and Arizona Public Service Company. However, the project depends on the United States Congress to renew clean energy tax credits, which would otherwise expire at the end of 2008.

An 80 megawatt solar farm in Fresno, California, USA will be completed by 2011. Cleantech, together with the California Construction Authority, will be responsible for construction. When finished, the plant will occupy about 260 hectares. It will be called the Kings River Conservation District Community Choice Solar Farm. In addition to this solar farm, Cleantech is in the preparing to develop several other facilities of a similar size also in California.

Las Vegas, Nevada, USA 14.2 megawatt solar park operated by SunPower. It’s located at the Nellis Air Force Base, which it powers. Saves the Air Force base an estimated $1 million USD annually in energy costs. The solar array covers an area of over 56 hectares and employs 70,000 PV panels.

[Whacker]

I submit the following: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pebble_bed_reactor

A nuclear reactor design that is very near foolproof if designed correctly, and far less likely (again by design) to catastrophically fail a la windscale, 3 mile, chernobyl, etc.

Looks great to me, the one problem I can see that will cause it to never take off is that it's not condusive to acting as a breeder reactor, ie. breeding nuclear materials for use in weaponry.

/shrug

[Raz]

I still don't know why we don't just use tilde-energy. As in, as the tide comes in, it spins a spinny thing... the water is then pumped back out as you don't want the spinny thing spinning backward. But seriously, I can't see too many bad points in that... it' renewable, it's clean, and if the planet keeps warming there'll forever be enough water to run this tilde-power-generator featuring spinny thing.

Edit: Spinny thing = Turbine.

[LittleGrizzly]

I always thought tide energy would be something we would use alot more in UK being a little island, is it just not effecient or too expensive ?

[Whacker]

Ti(l)de energy solutions tend to have a rather significant impact on the local ecosystem where they are installed. Not only do they tend to kill the local critters, the screen meshes that are installed on both sides to prevent Flipper from getting mulched need to be cleaned often as not to restrict water flow.