RE: Times have changed, 'green' sells products L3

[Baardwijk, J. van DTO/SLBD/BGM/SVM/SGM]

At 13:40 14-7-01 -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.

That's an awful lot of assumptions you made there, Dan. Where did you find
those numbers?

You can prove a lot with assumed numbers. I don't know how often solar
panels would have to be cleaned, but 5 times per year sounds high; once or
twice per year sounds more reasonable to me. Assuming for now that your
other figures are correct, having to clean the panels twice per year would
lower the death toll to 5,000 per year -- a drop (no pun intended) of 60%.

Further, you should take into account that in Europe many people live in
apartment buildings. This lowers the number of deaths in two ways:

1. You have many people living under one roof, so you can serve a lot of
households at a time when you go up on the roof.
2. Apartment buildings have flat roofs. Chances of falling off a flat roof
are a lot smaller than falling off the sloped roof of a house.


Jeroen

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