Marcus Tay's List: Energy for the future

• On sunny afternoons, those 10 plants would produce as much electricity as three nuclear reactors, but they can be built in as little as two years, compared with a decade or longer for a nuclear plant. Some of the new plants will feature systems that allow them to store heat and generate electricity for hours after sunset.

  • Why Solar thermal may be better than nuclear as they are faster to build
• solar plants receive a federal tax subsidy, like other types of renewable energy, which makes the economics work for builders but also feeds skepticism about the technology’s long-term potential. “Unless there’s a subsidy involved, it doesn’t seem like a very attractive technology,”
• olar plants do tend to produce peak power during the hottest part of the day, when demand is highest and electricity is costly, so at certain times they are already competitive with plants using natural gas
• dvantage over the other widely available form of renewable power, wind turbines: they are more predictable.

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• (56.2%, here in the U.S., according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration). As I understand it, by wasted we don't mean that it's used, but not used effectively. We mean that it is not used at all. It is the current dumped into the ground by power plants whose generation exceeds demand and other generated energy that accomplishes no task.
• s I understand it, no system can be perfectly effective at eliminating wasted energy, but if we managed to slash energy waste in half -- all other things being equal -- it'd be like eliminating roughly 25% of our energy-related emission