At 03:29 AM 7/16/01, Jeroen wrote:
> > -----Oorspronkelijk bericht-----
> > Van: Ronn Blankenship
> > [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
> > Verzonden: Sunday, July 15, 2001 6:58 PM
> > Aan: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> > Onderwerp: Re: Times have changed, 'green' sells products L3
>
> > 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?
I'm thinking of those rooftop units that are raised off the roof on "legs"
so the panel itself faces south at a steeper angle than the slant of the
roof so the Sun's rays hit it more nearly straight-on (perpendicular to the
surface), especially in winter when the Sun's altitude is low. Will the
units you are talking about be efficient enough to lay flat on the roof,
then? What about on flat roofs or houses with peaked roofs that run
north-south instead of east-west, so there isn't a flat surface tilted
toward the south?
>IIRC, those panels are only a few centimeters thick, not a few feet. Putting
>two-feet-high solar panels on a roof would probably not be doable; the total
>weight of all that material would probably let the roof come crashing down.
>(That, and it would look real ugly, all those boxes on rooftops.)
>
>So, I don't think there will be any need to raise wires for power lines and
>phone lines, and therefore no costs to pass on to the customers.
>
>This is not really in issue in much of Western Europe, BTW: high-voltage
>power lines usually don't run directly over residential areas, and phone
>lines are mostly underground, not above ground. Nice, living in a
>geologically stable area...
Unfortunately, the rule in the US seems to be to have power lines
(including those running to individual houses), telephone lines, cable TV
lines, etc., running overhead. For example, the power and phone lines run
from a pole at the far end of my back yard (wires run in the other
direction to serve the houses on the other side of the block that face the
other way) to attach to the rear of my house just below the roofline,
making the last several feet hang within about 10 feet (3m) of the ground,
meaning that there are some times when I have to be careful not to hit them
when I am working outside.
(As the problem here is more likely to be thunderstorms or occasionally ice
storms rather than earthquakes, some people think it would be a good thing
if all those lines were put underground to lesson the likelihood of power
outages due to falling wires. I presume it is cheaper to put them on
poles, but I don't know if that is the only reason no action has been taken
to bury them.)
-- Ronn! :)
