Solar Power Systems

Offbeat Climate Question?
It occurred to me that in switching to alternate power sources, we run into odd little bits of trouble, some obvious, some not. Wind power can be tough on birds, is often noisy, and actually slows down the earth's rotation a little tiny bit. Tidal power stations would have similar effects. Consider solar power. A really good solar power system would take energy, ie: heat, from desert areas, for example, and transfer it to snow-covered areas. This would tend to do things like even out temperature differentials globally, and melt snow, thus changing albedo, locally. For the geologists in the group: would the extra stress pumped through the earth's crust by forcibly slowing rotation add to natural earthquakes, making them larger; don't increase their total power but just make them happen a little sooner; or cause a bunch of little quakes that could relieve or build up stresses along fault lines? For the rest of us, would this moving around of heat release through highly efficient use of solar energy cause little effect, maybe shifting climate "boundaries" a few miles, or might it set up things like the Arctic [Dipole} Oscillation, and mess with the weather noticeably? This is just a fun question, no debating points to score here - just the 10 for best answer, I guess. Enjoy! ******************************************************** Okay, let's see... look at the continental US, the west coast. The prevailing winds are from the west. So set up a mile-wide [we're dreaming here, of course] wind farm the entire length of the US coastline. Meanwhile, the North American continent is sailing westward at some number of centimeters per decade. Now, the wind that would otherwise blow over the west coast and pass right across the US and on toward Europe - some of that wind is going to be caught mechanically on the US west coast by spinning blades fastened to the ground.This capture of wind generates power that would quite literally just blow away and be lost, some as heat to space. Instead, it's captured by physical blades connected by a pole to the ground. This mechanical energy is then converted into electricity, and sent elsewhere. Are you claiming that there is no mechanical energy lost to the earth, some of which energy would otherwise have been lost to space? Ev ********************************************* First, oops! lost the second, more rational part of the additional details. Second: Antarctic Ice, that first part was supposed to be for the geologists. I'm sure one of our self-professed geologists might have pointed out the glaring error in the first question. [No distractions in the "ankle bone connects to the shin bone, the shin bone connects to the knee bone, the knee bone... nonsense?] But the second question should be legit, and that was what I was actually curious about. Be darned if I know what happened to the rest of what I typed just above. To actually achieve reasonable quantities of energy from solar power, we are going to have to carpet large areas of desert [and undoubtedly urban areas, but they drop out, as they use the power locally] with fairly efficient solar panels. The US alone covers almost 10,000,000 square kilometers, or some 3.67 million square miles. So 20,000 sq miles or 50,000+ sq km could be dedicated to ab *************************************** Fascinating - lost half again. Something doesn't want me to finish this question. Moving on from the US to the Sahara Desert, which is the same size as the USA, you could literally cover one million square miles of desert with solar panels that, with modest advances in room temperature superconductors, could transmit 20% of the power hitting that 1M sq miles to another continent. This surely has to affect regional climate in North Africa. Ref: http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1872110_1872133_1872141,00.html Quote: In theory, a 35,000-sq.-mi. (90,600 sq km) chunk of the Sahara ? smaller than Portugal and a little over 1% of its total area ? could yield the same amount of electricity as all the world's power plants combined. A smaller square of 6,000 sq. mi. (15,500 sq km) ? about the size of Connecticut ? could provide electricity for Europe's 500 million people.

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How long can the solar power systems remain sitched off?
I have recently installed solar power systems in my home. I need to go away for two months during which the house will remain closed. What do I do with the systems,leave it on or switch everything off for that period? Will this affect the charger,batteries or the inverter?

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