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BeatNick5384 t1_jd9fccm wrote

Reply to comment by piratecheese13 in Maine's Energy future by mainething

Radiative cooling is a great developing technology, but ultimately puts out a tiny percentage of what the panels put out. Your link leaves out that it's about 3% of the generation of panels during the daytime, leading to an incredibly inefficient system to handle even the smallest portion of the peak load around dusk. Batteries are a great idea for homes with current technology, but on a generation and delivery scale ultimately useless with what we have today. I'm not saying emerging or green technology is a bad thing by any means, but before an investment like that is made by a state, there needs to be the technology to generate a fiscal return or the bills will get loads higher than when they started. Small applications of this around Portland, OOB, Lewiston, Scarborough, Bangor, even Sanford would be great, but 300 miles of underground transmission and possible generation is beyond foolish with the current infrastructure and technology we have. Money much better invested in a state wide rail system in my own opinion.

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