The underlying concepts:
- The sun is always shining on some part of the earth.
- Many countries, for example, the United States and Russia, span several or many time zones.
- Part of a country may be in daylight while other parts are pre-sunrise or post-sunset.
- One country might be in darkness while a neighboring country is still sunlit.
- If that solar energy could be delivered to the other parts of the earth not under sunshine at that time,
everyone would benefit from "virtually unlimited" electrical power from the sun.
- It will take a huge investment and staggering amounts of international cooperation to create an international solar power grid, but we've got to start somewhere.
Many challenges must be overcome, similar to those overcome during the planning and construction of an Interstate Highway System, but on a much larger scale:
- Needs assessment.
- Design and engineering of the overall system.
- Environmental impact considerations.
- Aquisition of land and/or access for the power lines' right-of-way.
- Phased implementation.
- and so on...
Other Considerations and Ideas...
- All homes and buildings must be allowed to be equipped with appropriately-sized power generation units and linked into each nation's power grid.
- Covenants and restrictions on "look and feel" must be made flexible to prevent overbearing "aesthetics" from becoming roadblocks.
The need and benefits of this kind of solution should be self-evident, but it will take a large mind-set shift for people to seriously consider the implementation.
It will cost huge sums of money.
The benefits of power distribution to communities, cities and states and the lowering of costs for everyone is just the start.
Please give it some consideration.
First rev: 10.23.2007