At 10:36 AM 7/15/01, Jeroen wrote:
>At 08:44 15-7-01 -0500, Dan Minette wrote:
>
>
>>Plus, think of
>>the deaths that will occure as millions of people climb on the roof several
>>times a year. Let me do some quick numbers. If the chance of falling to
>>one's death is 1 in 100,000 every time one climbs on one's roof and one
>>climbs on the roof 5 times a year, and there are 250 million households in
>>Europe, then if everyone had solar power, it would be responsible for about
>>12,500 per year.
>
>I can play this game, too. How many people worldwide work in nuclear power
>plants or have work that is related to nuclear power? All those people
>(save the occasional telecommuter) has to travel from home to work and
>back, most of them five times per week. There is a certain chance that you
>will be killed in a traffic accident, so one could easily claim that
>nuclear power is responsible for a certain number of deaths in traffic
>every year. That is however not an argument to shut down all nuclear power
>plants, just like the chance of falling off the roof is a reason not to
>install solar panels.
However, it's likely that if those people did not work at the nuclear power
plant, they would work somewhere else, so they would be driving to and from
work anyway, whereas maintenance of a roof-mounted solar power system will
probably require someone to climb up on the roof to maintain the solar
power system when they would not be going on the roof at that time if there
was no solar power system to be maintained. (Unless we assume that the
same person could work on the solar power system and clean the gutters or
repair leaks on the roof all in the same trip, and the solar power system
would never require repair at a time when the gutters or roof did not also
need work.)
BTW, how will the presence of a solar power system on the roof affect the
cost of roof maintenance or replacement, e.g., will having more stuff up
there lead to more leaks than one would have without it, and will it cost
more to get the roofing replaced every 10 or 20 years because the workers
have to either work around the panels or perhaps remove them temporarily to
re-shingle the roof?
Something else I just thought of: in some areas, there is not much
clearance between the roof and overhead electrical or telephone lines. If
a solar power unit sticks up X feet above the roof, will it be necessary
for the power and phone companies to raise their wires by X feet also to
maintain the minimum legally-mandated clearance? How much will this add to
the overall cost of installing a solar power system, as said utility
companies are likely to pass along the cost of raising the wires to their
customers?
-- Ronn! :)
