http://egpreston.com/costofcentralsolar.pdf
cites a cost of installation of 4 dollars/watt, at a capacity factor of 15 %, which is shit compared to.. anything. (the author also makes a fairly compelling case for the economics of rooftop solar with cheap panels in new build. Logic does not hold water for retrofits, as the author costed the labor of a normal roof refit at 0. Which only makes sense if you are looking solely for the diffrence between a solar roof and a regular roof you are putting up in any case)
Most of Canada's population lives to the South of Frankfurt... maybe even Munich. *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
So essentially, your figures support the argument that retrofit rooftop PV should be installed as a counter-cyclical policy during a construction slump.
I suppose you could make a case for doing counter-cyclical nuclear buildouts instead, but I am not convinced that the lead times on nuclear plants make that viable for the initial phases of a recession.
- Jake If you only spend 20 minutes of the rest of your life on economics, go spend them here.
We should build a europe wide HSR net for people and rededicate the regular lines for freight.
And local passengers. *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
There is slowness from lower priority related stops, but the latter are not due to the number of passenger trains, but the speed differential -- and that more vs. expresses than stopping trains. In that sense, replacing expresses with high-speed trains on dedicated lines would indeed be the way to go. I note though that due to noise issues, currently ever more countries return to the (IMO bad) idea to put freight trains on the high-speed lines (because those are avoiding lines), and hope that advanced signalling will improve capacity.
Meanwhile, European railfreight is also slow due to a low top speed of trains, inefficient switching when trains are re-arranged, and (considering the distances at which rail is most competitive) above all borders (which are often technological borders). There are improvements in each field, though. *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
This makes the average trip shorter, which disadvantages rail over truck given the current underpricing of truck fuel.
He wrote:
The second part of the cost is everything else other than the solar panels. This cost is currently $4/watt in the $7/watt estimates I have been stating in this and other papers in this series.
That's not just installation, but inventers and cables and transport (and possibly Canadian dollars); still, it appears too high. In this comment thread from 2004, you see prices that are a fraction of 1€/Watt-peak. More current figures put the panels at still well over 50% and installation at 15%, which translates to around 0.5€/Wp. *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
I think there are two separate issues here: The financial and environmental coast benefit of solar on new build rooftops vs. other forms of generation, and the social/environmental benefits of retrofits vs. other forms of stimulus spending. Since the latter target a specific subgroup of building workers - roofing specialist and electricians - there is no reason why a stimulus plan targeted at a range of sectors in recession might not include such subsidised spending as one element in the mix. notes from no w here
