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Definitely a "renewable" paradigm that should be developed. Battery bank storing from solar collection provides power when sun's not shining. For low power appliances and tech devices, considering what one gets out of a couple flashlight batteries (or even smaller), most of a residence's needs could be powered from a secondary "in-house-grid". With less light flooding of areas (more directed) where needed and LEDs, the light from such a solar/battery system should suffice. Already in rural countries, a single solar panel (often made from scrap mat'ls of mainstream panel construction) is sufficient to provide light and run the village tv.
Covering appropriately positioned surfaces with panels (including building walls), probably all illumination and tech device needs could be powered by solar with very large battery storage per area of a city, or per building.
Obviously higher power needs would require either "collaborating alternatives" (solar plus wind plus, perhaps input from aqueous sources which would include regional tidal and even gravity-flow aquaduct turbines). But unless there's a significant decrease in power usage, there will always be some demand for "conventional" grid electricity generated by coal, diesel, natural gas.
Industrial machinery power demands, servers, HVAC systems, electric heat especially . . . . no chance sufficient solar for those needs. Just one of the examples I ran across in researching DI VS: to power one diesel locomotive would require 128 acres of solar panels (and that's computed before the resistance power loss over distance. Yes, for example between Boston and NY there's electricity running Acela via overhead caternary. But that's not pulling the mass weight of freight trains. And that's electricity generated conventionally (fossil fuel burning). Even passenger trains would be impossible to power via solar given all the variables of length of day, intensity of sunlight, distance between input facilities to RR grid, temperatures, grades, etc.
But to have panels charging batteries powering low-demands and saving even 30% energy demands for even just residential . . . . it should be demanded, even required for new construction codes. The same type of revolution of systems would be the re-use of "gray-water" (rain and drain) for watering, washing car, flushing toilets.
There's so much we could do and eventually, I think, will have to -- in order for a world of increasing numbers of people in increasing regions of mech-tech affluence and advance to be able to survive.
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Democrat
Colorado Springs, CO
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Tree Hugger, July 13, 2015: Gigafactory to be biggest building on Earth? Tesla buys additional 1,200 acres, could make it twice as big as original plans Take a look at the photos in this article. ""More batteries needed for home and utility storage? "Tesla's Gigafactory, which is currently under construction in Nevada, is truly deserving of its giga prefix. The goal is to make as much battery pack capacity in that single factory in 2020 (50 gigawatt-hour, enough for 500,000 EVs per year) as the whole world was making last year. The original plan called for a 10 million square-foot building, but made in a modular way so that once the first part is done, it can be operated as a pilot plant while the rest is finished and ramps up." At least one company is looking to the future. Impressive.
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