Interesting idea: needs help!?
The idea is solar power lines it eleminates the cost of land and generates power without the need of a plant. How can this be made? Flexible solar panel technology is available but any ideas on how this could actually work?
Two problems with this:
Line Loss — Electric lines are AC voltage not DC
Solar uses DC unless it has been converted,
and the converters are big and expensive.
AC is a requirement because we need to step up
the voltage to very high voltages and then step them
back down before entering a section of houses.
This decreases the line loss which requires high voltage.
Transformers work wel with AC (but not DC voltage)
Line Weight — Electric lines are just as heavy as the can
be to support thier own weight. They are under high tension.
If you add more weight for solar,
the poles would have to be much closer together.
This would add an enormous cost.
How wide are your "wires" going to be? Solar output is proportional to area, not length, so without allocating a substantial amount of land, you are getting nowhere.
Substantial amount in this case means tens of thousands of square miles. We have all that, but not around our power infrastructure but as roof area on our homes. The added advantage is that the electricity that comes from your roof does not have to flow through any power lines at all, its already where it is needed.
Solar technology is going to be THE solution to the world’s energy problems, eventually. But it will take time. Currently the world replaces roughly one power plant a year with solar. That number is growing by roughly 30% a year, sometimes more. If you look a the geometric progression at that growth rate, you will see that this is already on a very good trajectory:
2008: 1
2009: 1.3
2010: 2.2
2011: 2.9
2012: 3.7
2013: 4.8
2014: 6.3
2015: 8.2
2016: 10.6
2017: 13.7
2018: 17.9
2019: 23.3
2020: 30
2021: 39
2022: 51
2023: 67
2024: 87
2025: 112
As you can see, by 2025 even a modest 30% growth rate of solar technology can make it grow 100 fold in 18 years… that’s the time for a new born baby to grow up. Not a lot of time. And yet, given the technological trajectory we are on, by the time the next generation graduates, we can replace several percent of the world’s energy needs every year with solar energy. Given the lifetime of solar of 30 years, this will result in a solar dominated energy sector by 2050.
And you can help!
References :
Two problems with this:
Line Loss — Electric lines are AC voltage not DC
Solar uses DC unless it has been converted,
and the converters are big and expensive.
AC is a requirement because we need to step up
the voltage to very high voltages and then step them
back down before entering a section of houses.
This decreases the line loss which requires high voltage.
Transformers work wel with AC (but not DC voltage)
Line Weight — Electric lines are just as heavy as the can
be to support thier own weight. They are under high tension.
If you add more weight for solar,
the poles would have to be much closer together.
This would add an enormous cost.
References :