How many solar generating facilities for $60 Billion a year?

 Quite a few I suspect.



Pentagon is spending nearly $5 billion per month in Iraq and Afghanistan, a pace
that would bring yearly costs to almost $60 billion. Those expenses do not
include money being spent on rebuilding Iraq's electric grid, water supply and
other infrastructure, costs which had no parallel in Vietnam.

In Vietnam, the last sustained war the nation fought, the United States spent
$111 billion during the eight years of the war, from 1964 to 1972. Adjusted for
inflation, that's more than $494 billion, an average of $61.8 billion per year,
or $5.15 billion per month.

President Bush announced Sunday that he will ask Congress for $87 billion for
U.S. operations next year in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere ? $66 billion for
military and intelligence efforts, $21 billion for reconstruction. Senior
administration officials said the request demonstrates that the president's
commitment to fighting terrorism would not be shaken by the growing financial
burden.

  darla wrote:

A few years back I saw figures of $6/Watt cost for grid-tied PV panels
installed on trackers for a utility scale project. PV panels cost pretty
much the same today as they did back then due to increased demand.

At that cost, $60 Billion will buy you 10 Billion Watts or 10 Gigawatts.
According to the PVWatts calculator, if this was installed in (or near)
Tucson Arizona then it should produce about 23.458 Billion kWh a year.

This wouldn't power the entire country but it's more than a drop in the
bucket.

Anthony

 Anthony Matonak wrote:


And what will you do with the US army? Send it on welfare? Not sure
they would accept 'peacefully' :)

 
==========================
===============
Give each of em a bottle of windex, a roll of paper towels, and a
ladder, and a ticket to Tuscon Arizona

 On Mon, 31 Dec 2007 17:22:01 -0800, Anthony Matonak


The cost of IRAQ in the 150B$  yr range..
    Much of the cost is currently un accounted for, lifetime of
medical care for the wounded, equipment depletion, etc..


Foolish assumptions...

Anyone spends more than a billion dollars per year on PV is going to
cutout ALL the middlemen and  build them themselves(mostly on site).

PV panels will drop to less than a dollar per watt..   As of today,  I
can still purchase PV panels for ~$3 watt (retail).

Same goes for the mounting.. ergo dual axis trackers..   $0.25 per
watt.


60 billion will buy you ~48Billion watts of PV on dual axis trackers.
in US southern desert climates, that will produce  210BkWh per year or
(5.4% of total US generation) .

 With full  IRAQ accounting 120Billion watts of PV.. 525BkWh per
year.. (13.5% of total US generation).   Or enough energy to propel
150 Million EV's a distance 14,000 miles each..(assumes 250wh per
mile).   EV's could be used to level out grid demands.

Note: 2002 Annual milage for the US's 135M  auto's was 12,200 miles.
http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0004727.html

Displacing that most ICE autos with EV's would have reduce our Oil
consumption by 5.2M Barrels of gasoline per day.  Choping our need for
imported oil&distillates by ~40 percent.    

Note: Cost of EV's not included, similar to ICE vehicles.
   In such a future .. EV's would be much cheaper..

And this doesn't include secondary cost savings.
Like reduction in infrastruture,  wear & tear, and maint costs.
Fuel savings.. 200B$ per year we wouldn't send abroad!!!

WHOA !!!. A one time expenditure of $150B on PV in one year could save
200B$ per year in oil imports !!!!    WOW, I like those numbers, time
to start grid powering trucks and trains as well.  

========

Let's not forget we've been involed in the IRAQ war for almost five
years (March 18,2003).  

Thus we could have displaced a significant portion of our Coal, NG and
Oil usage if we had invested in PV's and EV's  instead of this stupid
war over access to oil.   We would be closing in on a goal of zero CO2
emissions and saving tons of money.