----- Original Message -----
From: "Baardwijk, J. van DTO/SLBD/BGM/SVM/SGM" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Monday, July 16, 2001 2:05 AM
Subject: RE: Times have changed, 'green' sells products L3
> 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?
>
Come up with different ones, then. I think 1 in 100,000 chance of falling
off a roof and killing oneself is conservative. I do know that the death
rate, overall, in the US was 5.6 per 100,000 people. Most people I know
don't go on their roofs even once per year. Indeed, most houses around here
only have people on their roofs on rare occasions, (i.e. when the house is
reroofed.)
> 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;
I got that from my interpretation of your verbage.
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%.
>
OK, 5,000 per year is not unbelieveable. Washing from the ground may also
be a decent arguement...but then I would argue that one has to accept lower
efficiencies as a result.
> 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.
>
But, flat roofs are very bad for solar power. You need a south sloping
roof...angles and all. Plus, there isn't enough roof/person for the roof of
an apartment building to suffice.
Dan M.
