Can the sun solve New Mexico's energy conundrum?

[TexasTowelie]

The blue van turned onto the pitted road, and for miles the tallest objects on the horizon were the brush and yucca. Soon, signs appeared with arrows that pointed to dirt trails with curious names like “Illinois Camp Booster.” Suddenly, what looked like a hidden city appeared and the landscape was filled with warehouses, tall cylindrical gas storage tanks and, as far as the eye could see, rusted, bobbing oil pump jacks.

Inside the van were three members of Citizens Caring for the Future (CCFF), practically the lone organized resistance to the oil and gas industry in Southeastern New Mexico. They were an odd bunch. At the wheel was Nick King, a Mennonite pastor and owner of a small solar company. Behind him was Joan Brown, a Catholic Franciscan nun with a grandmother’s delicate voice. And aiming a camera out the passenger window was Nathalie Eddy, a field organizer with Earthworks, a national environmental nonprofit, who’d driven from Colorado for the day’s excursion.

“This is what it’s like, 24/7,” Eddy said, pointing at the busy landscape, the trucks entering and leaving and the arms of the pumpjacks rotating.

The Permian Basin stretches from Carlsbad, New Mexico, 30 miles across the Texas border. It is 75,000 square miles of metal and tubes and spire-like pipes burning gas, all above jackrabbit scrubland. Depending on your feelings about the industry, the Permian Basin is either awe-striking or nauseating.

Read more: https://www.hcn.org/articles/renewable-energy-can-the-sun-solve-new-mexicos-energy-conundrum
(High Country News)

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

1. It should.

Not long after I moved here more than a decade ago, my son visited me, and one day after driving various places, he asked, "Where are all the solar panels?" There were almost none at the time. Since then, lots of them have been installed, including on my own roof.

[Warpy]

2. The sun's going to need some help

MIT had a project a couple of decades ago, a small house on a closed solar panel-fuel cell system that supplied adequate power 24/7.

Scaled up, that would likely work well in desert areas. Fuel cells are more efficient the larger they are and the waste product is water which could be recycled back into solar powe4ed hydrolysis or used for other things.

I don't think the state is ready to make the switch overnight, but it's one of the systems that bears thinking about.

Other systems that supply power will likely come on line in the coming years. It's not going to be a one size fits every location solution to power needs. That will annoy some people.

And likely we're going to have to deal with less power and the need for more efficient items to run on it.

Still, if solar is going to work anywhere, it's here. Maybe someone at one of the national labs will come up with something from way out in left field that will make it cheaper and more practical.