Elon Musk told Joe Rogan the whole US could be powered with 100 x 100 miles of solar — and it’s ‘not hard.’
Musk says solar can power the entire US this way© Chesnot/Getty Images
Due to the complex interplay between environmental concerns, economic interests and geopolitical dynamics, energy is a highly contentious topic. But according to Tesla CEO Elon Musk, there’s a great energy source that can fulfill all our needs right above us: the sun.
“You could actually power the entire United States with 100 miles by 100 miles of solar,” Musk said during a recent episode of “The Joe Rogan Experience” podcast.
Host Joe Rogan was intrigued by the idea, asking, “Really? So you could just pick some dead spot, cover that sucker up with solar panels and charge the whole country?”
“Absolutely,” Musk responded. “We need batteries, but yes.”
AFTER CHRISTMAS DEALS
Musk explained that “it’s not hard” and “very feasible” to power the entire country with solar because the sun is converting more than four million tons of mass to energy every second and requires no maintenance.
“That thing just works. We have a giant fusion reactor in the sky,” he said. “If you can generate energy from solar panels and store it with batteries, you can have energy 24 hours a day.”
Musk’s perspective not only highlights technological possibilities, but also draws attention to the solar industry’s financial potential. In fact, many companies are already helping people harness the power of the sun.
The U.S. was expected to add a record 32 gigawatts of new solar capacity by the end of 2023, a 52% increase from 2022, according to a September report from the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) and Wood Mackenzie. The latter expects total operating solar capacity to grow from 153 GW today to 375 GW by 2028.
Good luck during the night, which happens – who could guess?-each night.
What about the storage?
Batteries man, Big Beautiful Batteries….made by Musk….of course.
Trillion dollar contacts await……Musk.
(s)
Oh yeah, I missed that. Elon did not. Neither you. Me feeling stupid, and for a reason.
Leave your radio on at night!
You seem to be a dumb mutha f*cker… Did you NOT read… BATTERIES*??? You store the excess electricity during the day IN BATTERIES moron. Also, you could also use passive solar, which would heat water to create steam and turn turbines and also store the heat in the ground too.
*I won’t get into the environmental impact of battery creation, but the technology is there.
Amazing how dumb people are allowed on the internet.
Based, NO-the technology is not there. If it were there it wouldn’t need subsudies.
Thorium salt nukes
They don’t produce fissile materials for MIC weaponry.
Exactly.
That is why they were dropped.
Greedy Evil Bastards: “The LAST thing we want are new solutions! After all, we already hold all the patents to the OLD solutions. What we need are new PROBLEMS that will let us keep on using the solutions we already own!”
Someone needs to tell Musk our overlords are not looking for energy solutions they are looking for ways to control/eliminate us. More mis-direction hopium from another “genius”? You will own nothing! I think that includes Teslas.
This is not an energy solution. It’s a sales pitch by the world’s biggest con-man.
Agreed:
He already knows. He’s one of ’em.
Elon the grifter could definitely build that with a few hundred billion more in taxpayer subsidies…
because the sun is converting more than four million tons of mass to energy every second and requires no maintenance.
No it isnt you fucking moron.
It is converting energy to mass.
The sun, spins energy down into atoms, which are ejected into the solar plane via CMEs.
Duh.
Fizicks is hard.
Physics has the sun ass backwards.
It is not burning hydrogen into helium.
It is assembling hydrogen and helium [and most other elements] from de-energizlzed [spun down] electromagnetic plasma which feeds continuously into the sun poles.
The heat, light and radiation are the energy components stripped away when the plasma slows down and is split into atom “packets”.
Mass is energy that is moving much slower than other energy forms.
Wow – this thread received serial automatic DVs on every post nearly instantaneously. Thanks for the heads-up flak, indicating over target, Langley.
So, this’ll be added to Slickipedia as disinfo about the climate change scam, then?
You’re on the right track, read up Dewey Larson and the Reciprocal System of motion. cheers
Everybody just guessing but the mainstream explaination is most likely the worst guess.
Sum probabky only 3,ooo miles away at most yet they bullshit you into thinking it’s 93 milliom miles.
Retard.
Try again Captain!
Another taxpayer subsidized pipe dream to make the richest man in the world even richer?
What a fucking joke.
There’s endangered swamp snails, gopher ants, and Norwegian bristle mites in that 100×100 miles of wherever it is that absolutely have to be protected by all means. It would take the environmental groups 1000 years and 1,000,000 lawsuits to see it stopped. Even if viable it will never happen. Then one good hail storm would break it.
My suggestion is take all the liberal and communist ner’-do-wells, plus the welfare crowd and put them on giant tread mills generating free, clean and plentiful electricity, while creating meaningfully payback for all the government largess spent on them and ultimately reducing the welfare rolls in general.
Fort Hood now woke Fort Cavazos is already a 340 square mile toxic waste dump peopled by degenerates and free shitters… be a good place to build this solar energy boondoogle… nothing of any real value lost or gained.
That thing Musk is talking about covers about 540 times more land area than what you refer to there, plus there would have to be service roads and all the other infrastructure added to the 100×100 miles of light absorbing surface. All in all, about 1/4th of the land area of the state of Kansas.
For all of you who DV’d me for years when I said the US would be the new Saudi Arabia in oil and gas production, READ IT AND WEEP. From ZH today, right under Tyler Durden’s name, the article up front lists key points: The US is NOW number one in the world in oil and gas production. Solar is for dreamers.
http://www.zerohedge.com/energy/new-us-oil-field-developments-are-sign-things-come-saudi-arabia
We will start seeing by late spring 2024 who is right about China also, looking at you jdog .
Har, Har, fukkin Har.
That is their plan (literally) however to them we’re all destined for the treadmill.
it will only cost you 2 to3x more for electricity, at a minimum.
The choices a billionaire ticket taker makes might tell you something about the power of his decision process.
Please elaborate and/or clarify?
I presume she was a fling/one of the women he picked to be a mother to his child.
While he probably had a great time getting the job done, ideally you don’t pick a skank on purpose to be the mother of your child.
Grimes is the mother of one of Elon’s kids and also the women who claimed that his accent is deep fake , but he has a big dick…so there’s that. She’s also a demon carrying occultist…look it up , dumbass.
Billion dollars babies…smh.
Elon likes his whores dark and musky.
That one’s pasty white.
“Look it up dumbass.”?
I’m afraid I don’t know faces of who Musk has had kids with. Just asking what the pic was supposed to represent. You’re very self-righteous, and obviously have plenty of time on your hands to explain. You’d win more with a better attitude.
Here’ a nifty little trick …right click…search image on TinEye….you’re welcome.
BTW, I’m not trying to win anything…just sharing the shit pie, people that don’t pay attention to reality have baked for US.
https://tineye.com/search/080fff8bacd13d1a5f936d53f6f52c8ff2e4d3aa?sort=score&order=desc&page=1
You expend so much energy being a self-righteous asshole. Who even knew what point you were trying to put across with that gal’s pic? She seemed to be some pop entertainment character or something. You waste time and are so angry, to no good end. And you claim to be so much holier than others, and this frothing rage is how you roll, unlike Christians I’ve known, who seem calm in their faith.
Lol..tard. you’re reading anger where there is none. You’ve never seen me post an angry comment, but if I do, I’ll be sure to direct it at a butthurt feelz soyjak, like you.
.
Lookie here Herschel!
We got ourselves another self trashed white whore.
Permanent sensible renewable energy WITH KINETIC STORAGE.
Install large windmill pumps to lift water up to store water in an elevated storage lake or large tanks.
Run the water downhill through pipes to drive electric turbines.
The water that exits the power plant gets pumped back up to the elevated storage lake.
Simple.
Easy.
Low impact.
That is why this idea will NEVER BE CONSIDERED.
Too easy.
Too logical.
And pollute and lose billions of gallons of the few unmolested aquifers that remain?
Leave the water for drinking and irrigation, bruh …energy is why God gave us oil and coal deposits.
My guess?
A hydraulic power generating system as described would pollute far far less than the current “renewables” crap.
How about a large system with closed storage tanks for the water?
Without evaporation the water is a static quantity. No more or less is ever needed.
Hey?
Less moving parts…
Can be installed closer to where it’s needed eliminating the transmission installation costs [and related water useage] and would be far easier to maintain as the important equipment-the pump, could be located at the BOTTOM of the windmill.
____
The most important invention of the American wind pumps arrived from the mind of Daniel Halladay, who in 1854 introduced self-regulating windpump design that required minimal maintenance that could be as little as once-per year change of gear box oil. During the height of the waterpump popularity in the United States in 1930s, around 600 thousand of them were actively used. Today they can still be found all around the world, with 60 thousand of them being used in United States. They remain popular because of their simplicity, reliable work, low upkeep and ability to be constructed in areas with poor infrastructure.
http://www.historyofwindmills.com/windmill-history/windmill-water-pump/
A wind pump and elevated water storage and a water driven turbine.
Scaled to need.
No long power lines.
No meters.
No bills.
Laws of thermodynamics haven’t gone anywhere. You can’t use energy to lift water and then generate more energy from letting it fall than it took to lift it.
Denmark and Norway have created a system, which transfers an excess of wind generated electricity in Denmark to water pumps in Norway, and the water is pumped up to the dam. Which preserves 70% of the energy generated, which otherwise would be lost. Of course thermodynamics apply.
Wrong laws. Right law “The law of conservation of energy.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservation_of_energy
Lifting the water creates the ability to use that energy when the wind isn’t blowing. Not sure it where you got the idea it created more energy though. Could be there as I just lightly skimmed through it, as it is rather old hat. You can also use compressed air.
What on earth does thar have to do with anything?
That is the second dumbest thing I’ve ever read.
What’s the first?
Musk’s claim.
Stop reading what you write.
Solved.
I had a similar idea that fixes your energy losses due to no wind issues. Use the earths natural rotation. A massive elevated gravity tank can be fitted with a bladed shaft through center connected to a turbine pump.
Open the valve and you spin the blades on the vertical shaft by the same water rotation you see when you open a drain on your sink. This happens due to earth’s rotation which is as endless as the Sun and doesn’t disappear like sun and wind. The shaft spins a turbine and pump to raise water back into the tank. To minimise energy loss from turbine and pump friction the tank has to be configured to the proper capacities, dimensions and H, as you need to get proper head pressure PSI: .433 x H to restore water to the tank for nearly closed circuit. Of course still need massive battery system but a few energy tanks could serve 100000 nearly indefinitely with a steady and uninterruptible energy source.
Aren’t eco-fascists concerned with bird vivisection via windmill?
All roads lead to depop. Davos is not concerned with saving Earth – just with owning it.
The old style of windmills did not kill mass quantities of birds
I’m gonna need a diagram…
Venn would you like it?
I’ll schematic to you.
What are the energy losses from electrical and mechanical resistance and friction in the motors, pumps, generator losses, bearing friction etc. Not being an ass, just curious.
Exel Energy (which bought Colorado Public Service) has had for around 40 years a pumped storage electric plant about 10 miles south of Georgetown, CO. Water from the upper lake drains down into the turbines located next to the lower lake during the day to help meet peak demands. Then at night, when demand is lower, the water is pumped back to the upper lake with electricity produced the old fashioned way and produced elsewhere in their system (it used to be by a large coal fired plant-but don’t tell anyone).
surprised this got downvoted. We’re already doing something similar via Mother Nature where we evaporate seawater and redeposit it as rain. The fact that some of this rain is deposited at higher elevations (i.e. higher potential energy) is what allows hydroelectricity to work. No reason we couldn’t do something similar by putting say a PV system below a hydro dam and pumping some of the water back up in to the reservoir. This would allow more turbines to run without drawing down the lake. Contrary to some of the comments, this would not contaminate anything as long as sufficient water is still allowed to pass downstream (and most hydro dams already have strict guidelines as to how much flow has to pass through).
My thermodynamics prof talked about something similar back in the 80’s so idea has been around a while. I believe there was even a functioning prototype at the time (memory is sketchy, but I think they pulled water up from an aquifier/cave system and then discharged it through turbines back into the underground storage.
Been done! In the Azores – Spain paid a mint to seal off a crater lake at the top of a mountain, and surround it with wind turbines driving pumps to keep the lake filled. The water ran down and drove turbines that provided about 25% of the power needed by the small town at the base. Not very efficient – and bloody expensive!
(F)elon ??? 🤣🤣🤣
10,000 square miles of solar panels – until a bad storm comes through with hail or strong winds.
Forget about the energy required to construct those panels. Also forget about their usable life span – barring any environmental damage.
It’s not true. It’s not possible. It’s a gimmick.
Best case using the bs estimates of the solar industry would require 4 times as much area (40,000 square miles).
In other words, paving the equivalent of the state of Kentucky.
We have to pave the Earth in order to (fail to) save the Earth.
That said, it’s about twice as good (half the area) as it would have been 25 years ago ( mostly due to those bs solar industry estimates of efficiency).
If only there were some way to harness the already collected and concentrated solar energy of millennia past. If only there had been something around for millions of years harnessing solar energy and storing that energy. If only that stored energy had been compressed and condensed, say by geologic pressure, into little nuggets of stored, concentrated, solar energy that we could just dig up and use. Hey, I can dream, can’t I?
Get Elon to develop a rocketship that runs at least 1,000 C or faster then send it into the deep Cosmos to harvest the solar energy that has been overtaken by the speedy rocket. But, he would need to get some design help from Einstein first on the limitations of C so he could keep the rocket’s clock accurate.
Multimillion dollar solar project gets reduced to a heap of toxic rubble by one single hail storm.
The Scottsbluff, Nebraska 5.2 MW Community Solar project was part of the NPPD’s Sunwise program that consisted of an array has over 14,000 solar panels. It’s reported that it had been put into operation in 2019…
Now it has been just recently reported that the multimillion dollar solar energy park was literally reduced to a heap of rubble as hail literally pummeled it to a pulp in just a matter of minutes days ago…
And how long will it take to clean up the toxic mess left behind?
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2023/06/29/huge-nebraska-solar-park-completely-smashed-to-pieces-by-one-single-hailstorm/
Hail.
They forgot about hail.
Hilarious.
Trust the scien(tists).
/s
Engineer one “Isn’t this entire state susceptible to heavy hail?”
Engineer two “Shhhhh. It’s job security for renewables engineers.”
Engineer one “Oh shit. You’re right.”
“Hail proof solar panels!
Damn the costs!
From now on, all solar panels will have 1 inch thick plexiglass over the top.
Let’s see the hail break that!”
Cost increases were negligible, we just charged the customers more.
Should have put a protective shed over the entire project.
That’s what the Polack engineer kept harping about.
In areas that may get hail, there is a relatively cheap and simple solution. In fact, it might even increase efficiency a bit. Most big solar installations have a fixed angle, an angle chosen to balance the output for maximum total power over the year. As a rule of thumb it is somewhere roughly equal to the location latitude pointing due south from the zenith. That slightly lowers output during the times around the solstices, but increases overall year-round output. Hailstorms? Add pivots and actuators so you can match the panels to daily north-south changes in the solar path; that slightly increases efficiency, and if a hailstorm is coming (and it will be cloudy anyway, so no lost power) just tilt the panels all the way vertical, let the hailstones bounce off the metal frame. Any that still hit the panels will be only glancing blows.
Why try to engineer a solution to a made up soluition to a non existing problem. It’s like pissing into the wind. It’s a fucking waste of time even talking about it
Many hail storms in the West have at times during lengthy storms hail that is blowing near horizontal. One time we were hit with a 45 minute storm where the incoming hail rotated a complete 360 degrees. Every side of the house was battered and both sides of the wood fence got badly dinged.
Saw an episode of Building off the Grid where a couple of Yuppies built a house in the Rockies with one of those tracker solar panel arrays and it was around $100K in 2017 money. Can you imagine the cost for a tracking system for 10,000 sq miles of solar panels?
You forgot to mention all the rare earth minerals required for the solar panels and batteries, copper for the wiring, steel for the structural supports, asphalt for the roads, concrete for the foundations. Sounds to me like it would be spending a $1 Trillion to save $200 Billion.
Glass.
And silver. About 20 grams of silver are used in a 2 sq. meter solar panel. In the hail-damaged array above, the 14k panels would have used around 10,000 ounces of silver.
It takes 5 years of electricity to produce a panel, another words you have to run the panel for 5 years to get back the electricity it used to produce it. So how are we to pull 5 years of electricity forward.
And wouldnt you say we already have 50 square miles of solar installed over the last 20 years, yeah elon we are halfway there and getting 2% not 25%, yeah i know not all panels are not in Arizona.
cold fusion is possible
/s
I did see one workable cold fusion setup. Unfortunately, the fusion process could only be fueled by large quantities of long chain hydrocarbons.
(Joking!)
Heh.
Yeah, the only thing they’ve invented is a perpetual jawbone machine.
The perpetual gas generator.
LOL… I’m thinking you’d have to be a special kinda stupid to believe much of what elon says.
Like what others have mentioned, the heavy energy costs to produce the solar panels, which btw is very toxic in both production and disposal. They have a short life span and would need constant replacements and maintenance and easily damaged.
Elon yaps about 100 sq miles would power the usausa… lol ok, we’ll pretend hes right. How much space will be required for the battery farm to store that energy for night usage?? AND, the batteries are another HUGE issue as they too are limited life span, limited supplies of cobalt etc, toxic to produce and dispose of, etc etc etc.
Its all about the green cheddar the grifter is sell’n. He just needs the govt free billions and he’ll deliver the product on the fast trains.
It may be technically true that 10,000 square miles gets as much solar energy as the US uses. I don’t know whether he means on average over the year or at noon on June 21st – but I don’t care to even think about it because the obvious issues of nighttime, cloud cover, battery storage, the insane amounts of rare earth minerals needed to create the solar panels AND the batteries and the transmission requirements make it ridiculously unfeasible.
When I hear the name Elon, I am quickly reminded of P.T. Barnum’s famous quote.
When I hear the name Elon, I am quickly reminded of P.T. Barnum’s famous quote.
“If you can generate energy from solar panels and store it with batteries, you can have energy 24 hours a day.”
Batteries? Hmmm. Methinks Musk has realizes his temp #1 spot as richest human being on planet because of dying elec car biz needs to.create another lie to create demand for his dying battery plants. Send him to Mars.
He’s already on Mars. He left his clone here for us to worship.
Every time I have a modicum of hope for this guy he sprouts off something idiotic like this.
C’mon, duuude, cut The People’s Billionaire some slack!
It’s more disingenuous than idiotic, but yeah.
His “simple” solution is fraught with real technical problems, let alone all the other problems such as environmental, use of private land for tranferring that power to where it’s needed, and many others. I also believe that the model of the Sun consuming Hydrogen as fuel is ridiculous. The billions invested in fusion reactors with almost nothing to show for it is evidence that we are pursuing the wrong path. I do like the electrical model of a star’s energy production. It makes far more sense.
There are huge tracts of land in the West that are no longer productive because of lack of water; the reasons are many, but you can’t grow profitable crops with little or no water. Western Kansas is such a place, plus there are many others.
This is complete bullshit. We are currently evolved in 3 wars over oil and natural gas. Do you think we are risking WW3 because oil and natural gas are going to be replaced by solar? It is all bullshit and you idiots fall for the bullshit every single time….
The wars are not over fuel. That is a ruse. All war is for dominance. Carbon-based oil is continually produced beneath Earth’s crust – abiogenically.
All of nature is a recycling center. Carbon does not stay in the atmosphere, just as 300,000 gallons of water to produce a cow does not stay in the cow. The Mississippi empties into the Gulf . . . but never empties.
Animals exhale CO2; plants absorb it and expel oxygen. Yin and yang, back and forth, pendulum, seasons, cycles . . . payback. Nature abhors a vacuum. Nature allows no trade imbalance.
“The whole of what we know is a system of compensation. Every defect in one manner is made up in another. Every suffering is rewarded; every sacrifice is made up; every debt is paid.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson
“The history of persecution is a history of endeavors to cheat nature, to make water run up hill, to twist a rope of sand. It makes no difference whether the actors be many or one, a tyrant or a mob. A mob is a society of bodies voluntarily bereaving themselves of reason and traversing its work. The mob is man voluntarily descending to the nature of the beast. Its fit hour of activity is night. Its actions are insane, like its whole constitution. It persecutes a principle; it would whip a right; it would tar and feather justice, by inflicting fire and outrage upon the houses and persons of those who have these. It resembles the prank of boys, who run with fire-engines to put out the ruddy aurora streaming to the stars. The inviolate spirit turns their spite against the wrongdoers. The martyr cannot be dishonored. Every lash inflicted is a tongue of fame; every prison a more illustrious abode; every burned book or house enlightens the world; every suppressed or expunged word reverberates through the earth from side to side. The minds of men are at last aroused; reason looks out and justifies her own and malice finds all her work in vain. It is the whipper who is whipped and the tyrant who is undone.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Compensation: An Excerpt from Collected Essays, First Series
“As no man had ever a point of pride that was not injurious to him, so no man had ever a defect that was not somewhere made useful to him. The stag in the fable admired his horns and blamed his feet, but when the hunter came, his feet saved him, and afterwards, caught in the thicket, his horns destroyed him.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Compensation: An Excerpt from Collected Essays, First Series
.
The funniest thing was the stupid Germans shutting down their nukes and then having to restart burning dirty lignite once they stopped using Russian gas. Also funny was Britain running into a uniquely wind-free period (Dec 2022?) that made their many ocean-based windmills useless.
“Much of the social history of the Western world over the past three decades has involved replacing what worked with what sounded good.” ― Thomas Sowell
“There are no solutions. There are only trade-offs.”
― Thomas Sowell, A Conflict of Visions: Ideological Origins of Political Struggles
Joe Rogan is a puppet. Elon Musk is an actor and who invents nothing but lies.
Believe nothing he says.
(f)Elon’s a lie. Rogan’s good, if imperfect – like so many of us.
“I have something to sell.”
Complete delusion. The rare earth metals used to make them are not enough, and not to mention many have shown, they are not as good as they say they are.
And it would only require a mining operation 1000 x 1000 miles x 10 miles deep to extract enough raw materials to build it. LOL. What a rent-seeking parasite that guy is.
That’s essentially Sudan, with its sand removed.
We already have a solar collector with an area 75% of the Earth’s surface and it comes with a built-in battery. The deep ocean is a constant 2 degrees or so Celsius. The temperature difference between solar warmed surface water and the deep ocean is only about 30 C degrees — not much, but enough to run properly designed generators. Alternatively, in locations that have hot, desert areas close to deep cold water, one can circulate water in solar heated pipes and get a temperature differential close to 100 C degrees. Water pipes are MUCH cheaper than solar panels.
It will take energy to pump hot water down below the cold one.
Solar panels again?
Thermal siphon like used for homes?
solar power during a grand solar minimum just makes sense…to ideologues and sycophants.
Let’s turn Elon’s financial genius into an easy math puzzle! I have a residential backup solar system for a small cabin that is only 5 years old. It already needs a new inverter and battery package to the tune of $20,000. My normal electric bill without solar input averages $100/mo.
Q: How many years will it take me to break even?
A: 16.666666 years.
The devil is in the details… and that’s why Satan owns so many billionaires.