PV Gap

Elaine Said:

Does charging solar batteries prior to usage have any neg effect on performance?

We Answered:

It could have been just the quality of the batteries. The manufacturer of your lights may have several sources for their batteries.
Nickle cadmium batteries have to be completely dead before charging, other wise degrading their holding power. Silver cadmium batteries can be charged at any level.

Lucy Said:

Why don't they build a giant Solar Power Plant in the Nevada desert ?

We Answered:

One problem with your thinking (regarding the giant reservoir) - Nevada is the driest state in the United States.

So where exactly, do you propose they get the water to fill this giant reservoir? Groundwater pumped to the surface? That would only lower the groundwater tables in many areas - which will dry up natural springs, and will also impact farmers/ranchers in those remote areas of Nevada.

I don't have a problem with your idea about the solar generating stations, but those do take huge amounts of land to make them viable enough to produce sufficient electricity. However, unless they use photovoltaics to produce electricity, they'll need water for the plant - and water is in short supply in Nevada (as I've already mentioned). If they're heating up a fluid to produce steam to run a steam turbine generator, they'll need cooling water for the condenser which will condense the steam back to usable water in their boilers.

Leslie Said:

New place for Solar Power?

We Answered:

Some flaws with that idea.

1) They also have half a year of basically all night.
2) There's nothing at the poles to power. You can't run power lines from the poles to the populated continents - that's too far.

It would make more sense to put solar panels in the Sahara and use them to power Africa and Europe. In fact, they're already building one such plant.

"Work on its first plant began late last month at Hassi R'mel, 420 kilometers (260 miles) south of Algiers, the capital. The plant will be a hybrid, using both sun and natural gas to generate 150 megawatts. Of that, 25 megawatts will come from giant parabolic mirrors stretching over 180,000 square meters (nearly 2 million square feet) — roughly 45 football fields.

Experts say it's the first project of its kind to combine gas and steam turbines with solar thermal input in a hybrid plant.

The plant should be ready in 2010, and the longer-term goal is to export 6,000 megawatts of solar-generated power to Europe by 2020, about a tenth of current electricity consumption in Germany."