You could gather solar energy on the roof, but when something goes wrong with the secondary-loop heat exchangers at Sizewell B nuclear power station, there are teams of engineers on the premises at the Suffolk coast ready to fix it at a moment's notice, and there are twenty more power stations ready to ensure that the supply of electricity to England isn't much interrupted.
When something goes wrong with the primary-loop solar heat exchangers on my roof, I need to take time off work to pay personally for people with ladders and spanners to come and fix it, I go three days without a bath and possibly with water coming out of the ceiling, and I still need the gas or electric heating to cover the common case on rainy Wednesdays in January when there wasn't any solar heat for the exchangers to collect, so I need a small plumber's nightmare of storage tanks and interchange valves too.
I don't think it's unreasonable to prefer one mighty plumber's nightmare of inconel tubing and directional-solidified nickel turbine blades in Suffolk to one small kludged-together plumber's nightmare of plastic pipes assembled by the lowest bidder in my house and every other house in the street.
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2008-06-30 11:15 pm (UTC)When something goes wrong with the primary-loop solar heat exchangers on my roof, I need to take time off work to pay personally for people with ladders and spanners to come and fix it, I go three days without a bath and possibly with water coming out of the ceiling, and I still need the gas or electric heating to cover the common case on rainy Wednesdays in January when there wasn't any solar heat for the exchangers to collect, so I need a small plumber's nightmare of storage tanks and interchange valves too.
I don't think it's unreasonable to prefer one mighty plumber's nightmare of inconel tubing and directional-solidified nickel turbine blades in Suffolk to one small kludged-together plumber's nightmare of plastic pipes assembled by the lowest bidder in my house and every other house in the street.