SSPS for Hydrogen Economy

>>Well, a nuke plant produces 7.9 billion KWh in one year - enough to
>>supply electricity for 773,000 households.
>>http://www.nei.org/
>>
>>Powersats produce more electricity the bigger they are, and the
>>standard seems to be 5 GW. But what is that in KWh?

> Back of the envelope: a GW is a billion Watts, or a million KW.
> There are 8760 hours in a year so one GW full time would produce
> 8760 Billion Watt Hours or 8.760 billion kWh. So a 5GW SSPS would
> essentially produce a little more than about 5 nuke plants. If
> that's correct would need just under 200 SSPS to power a hydrogen
> based transportation economy instead of 1,000 nuke plants.

Cool. ISTR reading that "five nuclear power plants" figure
somewhere, but can't be sure. And if we build those 50GW powersats
that are sometimes mentioned, it would take only 20.

Of course it all comes down to price. Will the electricity be cheap
enough to produce hydrogen at a price that will be competitive with
gasoline? The rising price of gas makes that an easier target, I
suppose.

Xenophile (who will maybe write something about some of the
ramifications of this, if it were to happen)