Arctic Methane - This Does Not Sound Good...

[Bob Wallace]

19. Sorry...

I overlooked the link.

OK, let's look at your numbers. 500km2 for 4,000 turbines.

That's about 31 acres per turbine. As I suspected, a common trick attempted by anti-renewable people. 31 acres might reflect spacing of turbines but it does not represent the amount of land needed to site a turbine. The footprint of turbine is quite small, roughly 98% of the land in a wind farm is left usable for original purposes - ranching, farming, wildlife.

10km2 for solar panels. Assuming we were to try to power the world with nothing but solar, which isn't likely. Cut that down by at least 50%. A couple of square miles a day. Start by covering existing rooftops, parking lots, brownfields, landfills, played out farmland, highway right of ways. Then use up a tiny bit of the desert.

No problem.

Those were "Bryce" numbers.....

--

I gave data from two studies of solar panel cleaning. Apparently flat mounted panels do need some cleaning. Angled panels do not. I'll include them again for you...

"The rooftop solar panels are a different story. Our data indicates that rain does a sufficient job of cleaning the tilted solar panels. Some dirt does accumulate in the corners, but the resulting reduction in energy output is fairly small — and cleaning tilted panels does not significantly increase their energy production. So for now, we'll let Mother Nature take care of cleaning our rooftop panels."

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/07/should-you-spring-clean-your-solar.html


"One partnering PV module manufacturer recently
retested PV modules which had been in service in Tucson for 28 months to test for dirt
and time related output degradation. Modules were tested first without cleaning and then
after cleaning. Results indicated soiling effect was less than 1% output degradation from
modules which had not been cleaned in two years and overall time related degradation of
clean modules much less than that expected. 9,000 of these modules are used in the SGS
solar system. SGS modules have historically been cleaner than Tucson located modules
due to no oily deposits and the ability of snow to very effectively remove solid deposits
like bird droppings."

Page 9

http://www.greenwatts.com/docs/HansenPGDec2003.pdf


Your link - a company selling panel cleaning equipment. Now that is convincing. They certainly have no dog in the fight....