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Trump's Solar Wall

How much power would 2,000 miles of solar paneling produce? Assume a width of four feet and stationary panels.
 
Fudbucker said:
How much power would 2,000 miles of solar paneling produce? Assume a width of four feet and stationary panels.
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as already stated, pretty much none because it would all be wasted in transport.
I guess you could use it to illuminate the wall, maybe power webcams and wifi routers etc.
 
The Great Zaganza said:
as already stated, pretty much none because it would all be wasted in transport.
I guess you could use it to illuminate the wall, maybe power webcams and wifi routers etc.
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That many panels is going to produce some amount of power. I'm curious how it would stack up to, say, a conventional natural gas plant.
 
Fudbucker said:
That many panels is going to produce some amount of power. I'm curious how it would stack up to, say, a conventional natural gas plant.
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You are not paying attention: since the output is so distributed, there is no way to wire the power to a nearby town etc. without losing most of the charge.
You would need a big transformer network to get the voltage high enough to make long-distance transfer possible, and that simply makes no economic sense.
 
The Great Zaganza said:
You are not paying attention: since the output is so distributed, there is no way to wire the power to a nearby town etc. without losing most of the charge.
You would need a big transformer network to get the voltage high enough to make long-distance transfer possible, and that simply makes no economic sense.
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You're right, I missed that post.
 
McHrozni said:
The wall itself is idiotic for technical and practical (and political) reasons and covering it with solar panels to pay for it while you're trying to make coal power cheaper than solar is a whole new level of idiocy, but if such a wall existed, covering it with solar panels wouldn't be a bad idea.

You just have to rework the concept slightly and don't think of it as a single huge power plant stretching thousands of miles, but a series of power plants along the path of the wall, connected to the power grid at multiple points to provide local power. I played with the numbers a bit and it came out to about 600 MW of power, which is quite respectable, a typical nuclear power plant provides about as much.

A road solar plant is already being tested in France. A power plant on top of a border wall is significantly less ambitious and much more cost-effective.

https://www.theverge.com/2016/12/22/14055756/solar-panel-road-electricity-france-normandy

If we want to switch to solar-wind-hydro mix we should consider covering anything we can afford to cover with solar panels, or else we'll either run out of room or destroy vast habitats or both. Megastructures like the wall or national road or highway systems should be high on the list, since their surface area is already lost to nature and because their aesthetic beauty doesn't need to be considered.

McHrozni
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A thousand miles of panels vs one nuclear plant? Yay solar :(
 
Trebuchet said:
I've got it! He could build the whole wall out of coal! It's a rock, after all.
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This could have unintended side benefits.

West Virginia has a growing and potentially even more lucrative tourist industry which could generate even more regular employment for locals than it does now, and most of those jobs don't require advanced technical retraining.

They could get rid of all the unsightly heaps of coal stockpiled by the coal companies just by dumping it along the border instead of keeping it in-state.

Keep West Virginia beautiful.

And as an additional benefit it would poison the water along the border rivers with its acid and toxic discharges whenever it rained, discouraging illegals from swimming across them.

Win/win.
 
Were I Mexican, I believe water balloons filled with oil paint, slingshots, and spray-painted graffiti would all seem so much more fun with this new plan.
 
You get a large enough gauge conductor, line loss could be overcome...in theory.
 
The Great Zaganza said:
Actually, there is a way in which Trump might get the left/environmentalists on board:

make sure the wall contains a lot of wide breaks for wildlife to migrate.

Not a problem, right?
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Your definition of wildlife includes Homo sapiens mexicanensis? :p
 
apathoid said:
You get a large enough gauge conductor, line loss could be overcome...in theory.
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Already available to the public here in Oz are panels with `micro inverters'
Each panel has its own inverter that steps up the dc panel voltage (usually 24 or 48v, altho 96vdc is also available) and the microinverters step the voltage and turn it to 240VAC in the process (I'm assuming they make 110VAC ones as well)

It would be easy enough to do a `grid system' but in reverse to how the normal street grid works- 110v for a mile or so, connecting all the panels together, that hooks to an 11kv transformer that feeds a longer stretch of wall, enough 11kv lines join together at megavolt substaions to send power crosscountry to where its needed

https://www.solarchoice.net.au/blog/microinverters-home-solar-systems

edit to add- that far south you may as well mount the panels flat anyway, the tilt angle woundnt be very much at that latitude
 
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Arcade22 said:
Besides isn't the cost irrelevant since Mexico is going to pay for it all? Might as well make it as expensive as possible.
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He literally said it was going to 'reduce the price Mexico has to pay for the wall' or some variation of that wording in a speech.
 
I doubt the solar panels would ever finish construction and produce any usable power. Because as fast as they were built, they would be damaged or disabled by hordes of Mexicans who have been insulted by the tangerine twat. They would need to be defended by expensive gun-towers with searchlights every few hundred yards, manned by vigilant guards 24/7. But I'm sure some enterprising Mexicans will find a way to disguise the tunnel entrance so the escapes can continue and the panels could be attacked from the other side. I think a wooden vaulting horse might suffice...
 
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