Quote:
Originally Posted by redpoint5
Solar probably does make sense in places that are sunny, with expensive and unreliable electricity.
Portland is overcast, has among the cheapest electricity, and it's very reliable.
Regarding cell phones; US land area is huge and population density is relatively low. It's relatively easy to cover a place like South Korea with a robust cellular network.
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True about Portland. Even then the solar I had quoted showed payback in about 8 years (going from memory here). Think about Eastern Oregon 2 miles from the closest power lines.
For phones I was thinking more of China than the Korea.
Also my experience in Europe shows much faster and cheaper mobile internet. (Europe is 33% larger than the US lower 48) The difference is that we sold the airwaves to private companies that built out 4+ incompatible networks. (That is slowly changing with LTE) The EU used GSM everywhere and requires networks to sell access to other networks.