In reply to Jones Beene's message of Thu, 26 Feb 2009 18:25:55 -0800 (PST):
Hi,
>Agreed - but Solar is the very kind of investment by government ("low fat
>pork" ;-) which not only can provide many jobs for the short term- and yet
>with a meaningful long-term net benefits ... the gift that keeps on giving, so
>to speak...
[snip]
I agree completely. Note that I didn't say that I was averse to the notion of
spending money on Solar, I was simply pointing that the stated price needed to
be corrected for a meaningful comparison. Even so, $4/W is not exorbitant, and
would not seriously upset the economy, even if we had to reply solely on it.
(Note that for a truly valid comparison, one needs to total the capital +
interest + maintenance + environmental cost over the projected lifetime of the
power source e.g. solar cells, and hence calculate a true cost / kWh for the
power produced). This can be done with power from any source, and makes a true
cost comparison possible.
In fact there are lots of things that I would spend money on that others would
probably consider pork, e.g. I would try building lots of different "magic
magnet motors", just to see if there really was anything to them or not.
Only one such invention needs to pan out, and the dividends will more than pay
for the total investment in all the rest combined. So we should spend a small
amount on each of these far fetched notions. Of course if someone can find the
reason why someone reported that something worked when it didn't, then that
device can be eliminated without being tried.
I would guess that if a million were spent on each of 100 *different* power
sources (CF included), then there would be a very good chance of at least one
proving useful.
Just the opposite of putting all your eggs in one basket, which is what we
currently tend to do.
Regards,
Robin van Spaandonk
http://rvanspaa.freehostia.com/Project.html
