At 00:36 15-7-01 +0100, Andy Crystall wrote:
> > On the topic of solar power, yes, every power type has an impact on
> > the environment, it takes much resources to manufacture solar cells.
> > I still believe that it is the cleanest energy source with the least
> > impact (note, I never said it had *no* impact I said it had the
> > least). Silicon is one of the most abundant substances on earth,
> > there is no shortage and little demand for it in the ecosystem, and is
> > on the Earth's surface, so mining it is not terribly dammaging to the
> > earth.
>
>Mining isn't the issue. It's the actual process. Also, solar power
>has some major, major drawbacks. Firstly, except in tropical
>countries, it is simply not economical to run solar pannels
Then why does more and more relatively small equipment (pocket calculators,
weather stations, pollution measuring devices along highways, automatic
feeding equipment on farms) run on solar power? So the government has an
excuse to raise taxes and companies have an excuse to raise prices?
>(we're talking decades to pay back for a house!)
Yeah, so? How long does it take most people to pay off the mortgage on
their house? Hey, what a coincidence: that also takes decades! :)
That is, around here it takes most people 30-40 years to pay off their
mortgage. (With "around here" to be interpreted as "in The Netherlands".)
So, the time to pay it back is not necessarily a reason not to use solar
power. When you take out a mortgage to buy a house (or build a new one) and
increase it to include costs of installing solar panels, it won't hurt very
much in your wallet.
If you can afford to take out a 400k mortgage for a house, adding 30k to
install a solar power system shouldn't be a much of problem for you.
>Also, you need storage for night-time and at times
>you will have to get mains power anyway.
An alternative is to use net-connected systems. You won't be able to run
your household entirely on solar power, but it will significantly lower the
amount of kWh's you'll have to buy from the local power company.
Net-connected systems are significantly cheaper than autonomous systems.
BTW, the idea behind using ecological energy is that you can drastically
lower the need for power from conventional sources like coal and natural
gas. It's not intended to be your sole source of electricity (at least not
for the next few decades).
>Commercial carriers into space have a VERY low failure rate..it's
>onlt the failures we hear about, generally, after all (unless it's a
>manned mission).
True, but statistics aren't much help when a carrier does explode right
after lift-off. The same goes for nuclear power plants: *statistically*
they can be safe, but when things *do* go wrong...
Jeroen
_________________________________________________________________________
Wonderful World of Brin-L Website: http://go.to/brin-l
