What are the hurdles for big industries to have their own wind/solar energy plants to meet their requirements?

Just as the other two have already stated, space is a big issue. Also, batteries. Wind %26amp; solar energy are not available everywhere in the US and around the world. It can only be very effective in certain areas (like the Southwest for solar and Midwest and Appalachian Mountain Chain for wind). There currently is not an efficient way to store and transport energy to other parts of the nation/world.





So, in addition to what everyone else has said so far, I would say that the industry's biggest hurdle is focusing primarily on wind and solar. They should be looking at biomass, hydrokynetic, and other forms, as well. Did you know cow manure (a form of biomass) can be processed to use the methane as a source of energy (like natural gas... It is natural, and it is a gas). The by-product of the process is smelly-free fertilizer! Farmers that have used the method on their dairy farms are churning out so much electricity into the grid, their entire farms run on it AND they get money from the power companies that service their area.


Hydrokynetic is relatively new to the industry. Basically, it's the equivalent of putting huge turbines under large bodies of water to use the energy of the currents to create electricity.|||I have a serious concern (theory) that wind turbines are contributing to friction slowing the Planet Earth's rotation!,,,,, and as a result decreasing our magentic field and solar radiation protection,,,,,,, i.e. free wind energy is essentially just energy drained from the rotation of our planet.... this could have devastating consequences, if we lose our magnetic solar protection, the magnetic field suddenly shrank to 1/100th of its size several years back, and then reappeared a few days later, ... our magnetic field is dependent on the speed of the rotation of the Earth.|||The single biggest issue is the amount of space required to generate enough power for say, a small welding shop. Welders, fans, lights, ac, fridge etc. would mean more space for solar panels the the footprint of the building and parking lot would allow, also solar means batteries so you need space for enough battery capacity to cover for cloudy days and shorter fall and winter days. Wind power is only viable where wind is reliable and small systems that produce several hundred watts cost on the order of a grand without batteries and controllers and an inverter. Home based solar is one thing because the average home is not as power hungry as say an arc furnace for steel production that will need on the order of a million or more watts to run. I'll end with 12v solar panel, 400 watt output, an average of 9 hours of useful sun equals enough power to light your average home for less than four hours. The panel, charge controller, batteries and inverter would top two grand.|||As Robert said, space is an issue. Why? Because the technology in it's current available state is just too inefficient for large scale industrial use.|||If it's done in the desert then no problem!