

A hundred manufacturers and technology-makers will field products





Marc Nigliazzo




Center director




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By relztes on 7/1/2013 6:57:15 PM , Rating: 2
A handful of homes = 20,000? To be fair, I do think they've overestimated a bit. The average household electricity consumption in Texas is about 1130 kWh/month (or 1550 W). Assuming a capacity factor of 22% (my guess for central Texas), I get 7000 homes total, minus whatever the university would consume.

But regardless, using 800 acres to power 7,000 homes is not a waste of land mass. Do you have any idea how much land it takes to raise livestock or to grow corn for ethanol? If you used that land for corn, for example, assuming 400 gallons per acre as a typical yield, that land could produce about 320,000 gallons of ethanol per year. So those 7000 households have a choice. A year's worth of electricity or 45 gallons of ethanol.

Another way of looking at it is that the total investment is about $750,000 per acre. What fraction of a percent of that is land?

Anyway, it doesn't matter what we think. Solar is already the cheapest source of electricity in a few small markets, and I'd wager that within 20 years (probably sooner), it'll be the cheapest source of electricity in a place like Texas, even if carbon emissions are still free. There is no stopping it.

