Michael Hoskins:

Mechanical engineer here. And I think that solar and wind are fine, for where they are fine.

A friend of mine had a cabin so far back in the Vermont mountains that he has no phone, no lights, no motorcar, not a single luxury. Or he would, except he has solar voltaic panels and a battery storage system. And also a propane backup generator. And he does not try to live there in the winter but comes down here to Florida.

A friend says he works with someone who has photovoltaic cells on his roof that supply all the energy his house needs and feeds the excess back into the main power grid. And at night or when it is very cloudy he runs off the grid. This makes a lot more sense than putting in a battery storage system. But it basically means you need power plants just as large as if his solar system was not there. Obviously, you have to size the power plants as if his system was not there, because at night it is not and it may go down at any time. As for the cost – $20K – it will take 20 years to break even and by then I think he will need a whole new system.

So go ahead and do wind generators – but remember what a hurricane or tornado outbreak will do to them and size the power plants accordingly.

And don’t bother to cover miles with solar cells because they will inevitably be in the middle of no where and getting the power to where it is needed will be a gigantic pain. If you can use them somewhere where you need the power there, fine. Here, locally, they are going to build a new natural gas fired power plant to replace the old coal fired one. A bad idea, I think,- we got lotsa coal – but they are going to use solar cells to run the lights in the power plant! An insane publicity stunt!