Dear Mr. Pickens,
This message is the sixth in a series of 6 messages on the energy sources that you enumerated on the You Tube video explaining "The Pickens Plan."
The sun has been used for light since the beginning of time. Over the years solar radiation has also been used for a wide range of uses including cooking, heating water, heating and cooling buildings, and generating electricity.
According to Wikipedia: "Photovoltaics are 85 times as efficient as growing corn for ethanol. On a 300 feet by 300 feet (1 hectare) plot of land enough ethanol can be produced to drive a car 30,000 miles (48,000 km) per year or 2,500,000 miles (4,020,000 km) by covering the same land with photo cells. [2500 / 30 = 83.3 LBB] The deserts of the South Western United States could produce sufficient electricity to fulfill all of the electrical needs of the United States, and could even electrolyze water into Hydrogen and Oxygen to power the entire U.S. land fleet."
According to Wikipedia photovoltaics are not the only or most efficient way to produce electricity from the sun, but photovoltaics are subsidized by the governments (federal and state) so they've become the only game in town.
The problem with both solar and wind power is that the electric power output varies with time. The problem with electricity generated from the sun, directly with photovoltaic cells or indirectly with wind turbines, is that the power can go away, partially or totally without warning. As a result there must be sufficient conventional generating capacity available to "get along" without the "alternative" power sources.
The effects on the environment of extracting relatively large amounts of power from the solar radiation is not discussed in the Wikipedia article. The energy crisis cannot be completely solved as long as energy production depends upon the consumption of material (mass). Solar Power is one energy source that can be part of of the long term solution to the energy crisis, but because of the intermitentcy of solar radiation striking the Earth solar radiation cannot replace a single large conventional power plant.
I have more to say, but this is probably already too long. My next message will conclude my series of messages and introduce a plan superior to the Pickens Plan.
Larry Brown
Your Eyes and Ears in SW Oregon
Now using a Mac Mini (Apple)
P.S. I saw your plan in a You Tube video. As a Caltech grad (MS in EE, 1954), I was impressed. IMHO, we, as a nation, should consider all of the energy sources that you enumerated along with any new, "out of the box" technologies, but the "playing field" should be leveled allowing all technologies to compete. The market will select those technologies that are most cost-effective. It was government regulations, subsidies, and taxes that brought us the "energy crisis."
P.P.S. This message along with my previous messages are published at
http://www.emref.net/PickensPlanMsg.html