PV Gap

Jordan Said:

Why even bother building dams, windmills, solar panel farms? Nuclear energy is much better?

We Answered:

Well....
dams, windmills and solar panels are known technologies. In particular, dams and windmills have been in use world-wide for a few hundred years. The technological expertise needed is significantly lower - they can be implemented and maintained relatively safely in virtually any country - by engineers and technicians with not a lot more than high-school educations.
In addition, there is a public perception difficulty with nuclear power - particularly after incidents such as Three Mile Island and Chernobyl. (If you are too young to remember these, google them to learn what happened, and ask your parents and grandparents what sort of fear these created.) Nuclear power frightens people - it is a ''magic genie'' that is too closely associated with nuclear weapons.
And yes, I know that this is not entirely reasonable - failed dams have killed more people than every nuclear weapon dropped and every nuclear power-plant failure combined.

The Three Gorges dam in China is situated in an earthquake zone - and if it fails, has potential to kill hundreds of thousands of people, possibly even millions - all in one fell swoop.

But the technology is understood and easily 'sold' to the public. And is readily 'scalable'. (Ie, you can add extra windmills and solar panels quite easily - with very little in the way of commissions and environmental impact studies - compared to adding a nw nuclear power plant.)

Dianne Said:

Is this a good guide to building a solar panel?

We Answered:

If you are just interested on panels that gives you less than 75 watts and don't care for the whole system yes it is.