Agreed that diversification is the way to go. Geothermal power, which Google includes on a small scale, has the potential to carry the baseload for the entire planet for the next 30,000 years and doesn't have the consistency problems of wind and solar (they can fall short of production levels or exceed them, potentially causing blackouts either way).

Anyhow, if we use many different sources of energy we're safer, I think that's fairly widely agreed upon. There's also the benefit of energy providers being forced to compete. Enough competition and the only way to get an edge would be to cut your costs. Ideally, that means companies reinvesting in their product and improving the technology.

As for Google, I commend them for putting a plan forward. T. Boone Pickens did it, and it's nice to see people coming up with ideas, even if Congress is still flailing around over everything.

I'm writing Google in for president on my vote.

I'm writing Google in for president on my vote.

Unfortunately, Google can't qualify to be President due to age. :)

Great sales pitch for their new solar products. Go G Go!

This isn't political at all-- it's just smart, forward-looking business.

>>Someone calculated that we'd need 600 giant solar towers to power the entire country.

1. According the EIA, the US consumed 4 million thousand megawatthours in 2006.
2. The most efficient solar panels produce around 13 watts per square foot. Let's call it 130 watt-hours per day (assuming 10 hours of light on average) or about 50,000 watt-hours per year.
3. Doing the math, we need 80 billion square feet of solar panels.

If we covered the rockies mountains (let's say an average of 2 miles high) the mountain range would have to be 1,434 miles long to fulfill our needs.

The rocky moutains are over 3,000 miles long so we'd only need to cover half the range!

Of course converting all cars to electric vehicles and the fossil fuel we burn to heat our homes will increase our electric needs so maybe we might have to cover the entire range to be safe. Oh yeah, we're going to need to store that energy unless we want all the lights to go off at night. So maybe we need a storage array of batteries a hundred miles long too.

This isn't as ridiculous as some of you make it sound. Realistically (obviously) going with solar-only for power generation is not the answer. It's one piece in the puzzle. There's wind, solar, coal & nuclear (for a while yet), water/turbine, etc. So don't make this into some crazy half baked idea. Although there are days where I have a tinfoil hat on when it comes to Google, I'm elated that they're committed to doing what's right when it comes to "the big picture" and the global warming issue that some disagree with.

My Google checks have paid for my new Prius (it seems Google likes them too) so I'm using that as an interim measure until I can purchase and drive an electric-only vehicle. I'd love to get a vertical axis wind generator for my home (and maybe solar panels someday too) but I haven't been able to find anyone locally who sells them or installs them or knows much about them. Granted, I have no idea what they cost.

It seems Google's social/environmental conscience is pretty well aligned with my goals and I support them for that. Plus them sending me nice checks every month doesn't hurt either ;-)

Good job, Google! Keep it up!

Billy,

Please go back and read my post. I hate having to explain things twice. Solar panels have absolutely nothing to do with solar towers. We will only have to cover the Rockies with solar panels if we hire illiterate engineers to construct the towers. The city of Seville, Spain is currently being powered by such structures and they don't have to turn out the lights at night.

Doesn't it make you feel all warm and fuzzy to know that oil sales to the US account for 36% of the exports of Venezuela? Wasn't it great when Russia delivered billions of dollars worth of weapons to Venezuela using OUR MONEY last week? Isn't it cool to buy palaces and ferraris for Middle Easterners? I'm personally a little bit tired of it.

We landed human beings on the moon four times and safely landed them on Earth again 40 years ago while the number two power in the world has only managed to fly past it last year! You guys don't think we can build power lines from the deserts of the SW to the existing power grid? Wow, maybe our empire deserves to crumble if that's the best we can do. We just can't wait 10 more years for expanded domestic drilling to pay off. It will take too long and it isn't politically viable anyway.

One last thing, I'm a Texas Republican, so don't call me Moonbeam or hippie or anything else ;) I'm a real American who's tired of being a slave to enemy regimes. I'm sick of our dollar being devalued due to half of our oil requirements being imported. Global warming does not come into play for me. It's all about retaining American power in the world and continuing on the path we're on now will end us soon enough.

All I ask of the American public is that when people have ideas on how to free us from our addiction to foreign energy that they at least read more than the first line of the proposal.

>> But it's also quite a liability if that is the only source of power. It sounds like very high profile (and not easily protected?) targets for terrorists (foreign and domestic).

How long will you live in that fear. We need to see the bigger picture.

Also these will be spread across states so there will not be a single point of failure.

Also it seems google wants to become another IBM !

It has nothing to do with the gov not wanting to do it or some big company. Nobody wants to live near any kind of power plant nor the cables that connect those plants to major cities. No self respecting neighborhood would even allow you to put wind turbines or solar panels on your property. Everybody wants to use alternative but nobody wants to live near it. It is not just some cheap thing anybody could just throw up and solve all our problems and some big company or gov is stopping it. It is very expensive and risky to do. Nobody wants to spend the huge up front costs to do all this stuff. If your living in the desert you can do this but nobody living in a real city can do any of this stuff even if they wanted to.

If you've ever been to West Texas or Eastern New Mexico you'd know that you can drive for an hour and not see a single car on the road. We exploded quite a few nuclear weapons out there actually. Our country is absolutely huge and great portion of it is almsot completely uninhabited. I don't think eyesores come into play here. Also, the nuclear plant in South Texas is also in the middle of nowhere and we were easily able to get power lines built to it.

We as a people can do this!

It all sounds good to me, but I'm not clear if they are going to take on a new engineer to sort out this energy thing, or get someone to do it in "20% Time" as a Google Labs project.

:)

bw3ttt - Did you read my post about transmission line losses? I don't like to repeat myself. And oh, by the way, I've evaluated these programs myself for the last 10 years. Do you work in the industry too?

And by the way, these towers are 200 MW each. We need closer to 5,000 of those towers to fulfill the needs of the US, not 600. The US has nearly 1 million megawatts of generating capacity.

Schmidt for president - 2012. whooo! lol. I think its great he propose something like this, and I think it could help their business more then anything else.