Could Enough PV Significantly Cool the Desert?

Depends on the coordinate system used, jimp!

Nope, not unless you are constantly cleaning all these tracking mirrors.

I guess you missed the part where the clown is talking about a PV system with multiple reflecters where the losses are already going to be very high.

For most sane people not on drugs, the reference for elevation angle is

0 degrees for horizontal, 90 degrees for straight up and -90 degrees for staight down.

How is that any worse than cleaning PV panels?

What losses?

This would allow cultivation in the summer in places where it is impossible now.

Bret Cahill

Other than being somewhat thicker how would you even be able to tell the difference between conventional tracking PV and tracking PV designed to transmit red?

Bret Cahill

And HVAC power lines lose 10% of their energy to resistance heating over just 200 miles.

What's your point? That it was a mistake to build transmission lives?

Anyway the plant problem in the summer here is _too much_ solar energy frying the leaves.

The concentrating PV problem is _too much_ solar energy [with the wrong wavelengths] frying the panels.

It's the perfect dovetail: Just send the red and maybe a little blue light to the plants and just send the green light to the panels.

Bret Cahill

How doies that make it impossible to separate wavelengths, sending red to plants and green to tracking PV panels?

Bret Cahill

Because the losses are multiplicative, not additive.

If you have two things that are 80% efficient, you wind up with 64% of what you started with.

The sin (theta) losses and the reflective losses, which multiply together.

If it is impossible now, it is because there is not enough water.

There are LOTS of crops that just love the full heat of the desert if you can get enough water to them.

PV panels will not make water magically appear.

Because your system started out with added mirrors and such to separate light and send it to different places, or did you forget that?

Utter nonsense.

Mostly that you are a clown.

Nope, the problem with crops in the desert is the availability of water.

There are LOTS of crops that like really high temperatures if they have enough water.

Yet again, see the San Joaquin Valley happily growing about 13% of US crops in over 100 degree F heat.

The solution to that is to just not concentrate.

It is a cartoon scheme that does nothing for the base problem, i.e. not enough water.

rade mirrors.

Where did the 80% figure come from?

Besides, it's as easy to clean 2 surfaces as one.

You don't think tracking is possible with grating or reflectors?

That wasn't true even back before 35 cent/watt PV.

Only alfalfa & hay. Nothing humans eat except napolitos.

PV + reverse osmosis = fresh water.

Bret Cahill

Here, try again:

Other than being somewhat thicker how would you even be able to tell the difference between conventional tracking PV and tracking PV designed to transmit red?

Bret Cahill

How does that make it impractical to separate wavelengths, sending red to plants and green to tracking PV panels?

It is an example, as is indicated by the sentence starting with the word "if".

No, it obviously takes twice the effort somewhere, either in machinery to do it automatically or labor to do it manually.

Once again, you need to learn the difference between "possible" and "practical".

The price of PV panels has nothing to do with the availability of water.

Are you on drugs?

Well, actually there are lots of things humans eat that grow just fine in very hot places. And there is also cotton, which is a major crop by itself.

Neither PV panels nor reverse osmosis will make water magically appear where there is none to start with.

Are you on drugs?

It is not just thicker, it has more total obscured area because you are adding mirrors and gratings as well as their support and tracking structures.

Again, it has nothing to do with that at all.

What makes it impractical for starters is the huge system cost, which includes the stuff necessary to get water to a place where there currently isn't any water.

Are you on drugs?

What is "obscured area"?

Are you having difficulty understanding that a m^2 of sunlight can suppy a m^2 of red light to algae and a m^2 of green light to PV?

Did you flunk out of middle school geometry or what?

An area obscured from the Sun, moron.

Where did algae come from all of a sudden?

Are you having difficulty understanding that your whole scheme is Rube Goldberg at best, economically insane, and the basic premise of growing crops around your Rube Goldberg scheme is idiotic because there is no water there in the first place?

Are you on drugs?