When mass-produced the prediction has been made that strategically placed solar "dish farms" could generate electricity at comparable costs: Approximately 6.5 cents per kilowatt hour.
That is much more expensive than wind generated electricity.
Other concerns: Obviously, a 100 x 100 square mile solar dish farm would be a sight to behold, including from orbit.
It would be a bad idea to put the entire array in one place. Inclement weather and heavy cloud cover would drastically reduce production. Clouds and seldom cover the entire US west. Also it would be a bad idea because there are no heavy-duty power lines running to places such as the Mohave Desert, and because you cannot transmit electricity thousands of kilometers.
I do not think it would be more expensive to spread out the capacity to 10,000 standalone locations. A million locations might be more expensive, but if many of them were located on the roofs of large buildings, where the power is needed, it might actually be cheaper.
Wind energy is more concentrated than solar energy and it occurs day and night. Some locations have a great deal of wind, while others such as Georgia and Japan have no commercially useful levels of wind. Solar is more evenly spread out. Also solar collectors are horizontal, whereas wind turbines collect from a vertical cross-section of the sky, so a wind farm has a far smaller "footprint."
In Japan, solar water heaters for bass are very common. People like very hot bath water and the solar heaters makes the water as high as 60�C. There are millions of them, and they must save millions of tons of fuel.
- Jed
