Portugal gets World Biggest Solar

I am definitely pleased. Portugal and Spain are two countries endowed with large amounts of solar, wind, wave, hydro, and biomass renewable energy. Both countries could easily and relatively quickly become self-sufficient in all of their energy needs if they put the right incentives and resources in place. And they could establish these energy plants while still being able to use the land for other purposes, as is the case in this PV plant. Wind farms still allow use of the land/water below for farming or shipping, as do other renewable energy plants of a diffuse character. I see these two countries moving in the right direction on this issue. I personally believe that the Iberian peninsula has the potential to become the first area of significant population density and relative importance to achieve energy self-sufficiency and prove to other nations still skeptical that it is possible. Of course, the first countries that will achieve energy self-sufficiency through renewable energies will probably be some of the Nordic countries such as Iceland, Sweden and Norway.

52,000 solar panels offsets 30,000 tons/yr greenhouse gases cost 75,000,000$
offsets 8,000 homes
----------------------
$9375 per house

Makes me wonder what the locals pay for a kW hour and what the average consumption of kW hours per household is a month.

@ $50 per customer per month direct energy payment = 188 months to payoff - 15-16 years

@ $25 per customer per month direct energy payment = 376 months to payoff - 30-32 years

Pretty good payoff point in the 15-20 year range with interest factored in. Better than any homeowner here in the states.

Still could do better with this by mixing in wind technology - lower per collector cost, higher peak wattage, able to provide power 24/7 versus 6 peak hours for solar.

Another "biggest solar farm ever" is being planned for New Mexico. This one will supposedly be a 300 megawat installation, and involves actually building a factory to make solar panels (which is good, since we need more capacity in that regard). We'll see if it actually happens, though.

This is good stuff - but I want to point to another vision of our renewable energy future.

Ultimately, I have a strong belief that the way to be moving with our energy infrastructure is toward so-called "micropower," localizing power production with many small solar panels, wind turbines, hydrogen fuel-cells, etc., and creating a resilient, economically-efficient "energy internet" that protects the grid against terrorism, price shocks, and minimizes environmental impact...

This is the vision proposed by Vijay Vaitheeswaran, the right-of-center Economist magazine's energy and environment columnist... in his occasionally infuriating but often brilliant book "Power to the People," Vaitheeswaran argues that this decentralization (maybe even democratization?) of energy will address a variety of economic, environmental, and even geopolitical ills, and he also shows why he believes it's coming sooner than we expect.

At this point, I'm all for massive solar and wind installations - we need everything we can get. But ultimately, I think micropower and "the energy internet" is how we'll be able to implement these changes most rapidly and economically, to deal with climate change, land use and pollution as soon as possible!

Portugal does have a number of wind farms and they will soon be installing the first (I think) off-shore wave farm in the world. They also have quite a few hydro electric plants and other renewable energy plants. Spain has a similar system of mandating that energy grid companies purchase PV energy at a relatively high cost. My parents live in Madrid. They do not pay the same high price as what the grid has to pay the PV plant. It is considerably less. If I remember correctly, it is a bit less than 20 euro cents per kWH.

Norway calling. Norway is in a peculiar situation right now. We used to be self sufficient in hydroelectric, clean, renewable energy, but that is about to change. Mostly because of industrial needs, there is several plans underway to build powerplants driven by natural gas, that will drive Norways CO2 output through the roof, not to mention prices. At the same time little or nothing is being done in other renewable energy areas. We have few wind projects, and norwegian enginers has also done important work in creating wave-based installations, but its all just small change. We are also starting to import dirty energy (coal) from europe, as well as exporting natural gas to germany. In effect, Norway is moving away both from being self sufficient (period) and being a country of clean energy. Breaks my heart. We are also lagging behind on metanol fuel for cars, as well as biodiesel, both solutions that the EU has made goals for.

I think that you guys behind the computer do alot of good work to makle your website the best. I thinkl that having links that are about conservation and saving snimals of endangered species. You have alot of support and my classroom is doing a research project on solar energy, I haven't searched the whole pages yet but if you could possilbly put links to solar powered things on the main page then that would ba the best! Thanks to you! Cassidy