Space for Power

Hey I have talked about this before but I thought I would say it again, you know get more hits on the Internet on this subject and maybe someone will wise up.  People are so singleminded.  They think because an area is being used for one purpose it can't be used for another and this is stupid.  People no think it is smart to put solar panels on roofs, that is more because they always put them there.  I am talking about other things.  They put oil wells in farmers fields, why not wind turbines?  Think about it, a big cleared open space with no one near, perfect place to put a wind turbine.  Highways, perfect place as well.  Big clear places with easy access and lots of noise because of the cars.  The split median highways are also great places to put solar panels too.  What about the cleared sides?  They want to keep the vegetation down there and treeless.  They are typically 10m wide and there are thousands of kilometers of such roadways, and there are two sides and some have a clearance in the center.  think about it a square km has a million square meters, that means fifty thousand km of road is a huge solar farm a thousand km of roads could hold two to three hectares of solar panels, the power lines are usually right there too.  On hectare can produce about a Gw/h electricity.  How many gigawatts of power do we need?  The Hoover Dam generates 2Gw an hour.  The Trans-Canada highway outfit this way, about 5000 km would 10 to 15 Hoover Dams every hour.  That is just one highway, granted a long one.  

Consider power lines from power plants.  They keep them clear, people can farm under them, but they can't build under them.  You can put open parks under them, but no trees.  They are about 200m wide.  They stretch from each hydro power plant to the big cities, and much of that land is not suitable for farming.  People have to sweep it regularly to clear trees from the land.  Solar panels would block the sun and prevent trees from growing.  The ones that do grow can be cleared by the panel maintenance crews.  The power can be added directly to the grid.  Some of these corridors stretch more than a thousand kilometers.  A thousand kilometers translates into 500 square km, or 50 000 hectares, or 25 000 Hover Dams.  Let us assume that there is less land, some of the land is not suitable (lakes, boggy, cliff like) we are still talking about terrawatts and hour of power, ie no more coal fired plants anywhere.

People say but only during the day, like when the peak power uses are.  What about the night?  What if it is cloudy, not that it will be cloudy everywhere.  The wind blows at night, hydro power can be turned on at anytime to supplement.  Geothermal is constant, nuclear can be revved up to meet needs.

What if they produce too much power?  Store it.  Huge batteries are one solution, so is pumping water up hill behind a dam.  Yeah, did you catch that I said, what if they produce too much power.  If we fully use all our spaces that we just let sit, we could have too much power