Walmart Goes Solar In California 292
tekgoblin writes "Walmart today has announced that it plans to install solar panels on more than 75 percent of its stores in the state. From the article: 'When completed, Walmart’s solar commitment in California is expected to generate up to 70 million kilowatt hours of clean, renewable energy per year, which is equal to powering more than 5,400 homes. It will also avoid producing more than 21,700 metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions per year, which is equal to 4,100 cars off the road and provide 20 to 30 percent of each facility’s total electric needs.'"
percentages (Score:5, Funny)
and provide 20 to 30 percent of each facility’s total electric needs.
The remainder of the store, as usual is powered by crushing up the hopes and dreams of it's employees and competitors.
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Interesting that you show no concern for the consumers who get to pay less and find more of what they need in one place; saving them time, search costs, and travel costs. But of course any benefits must be ignored to fit your "evil corporation" paradigm.
Those benefits are directly tied to those same consumers being paid less and having fewer options for both shopping and employment. Its a vortex that will suck you in sooner or later. Until then, enjoy the cheap 5 gallon jars of Miracle Whip!
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Ooh, I see it everywhere. There's a WalMart, and surrounding it miles and miles of the burned-out buildings of their failed competitors.
Idiot
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No, you don't see that, because Walmarts are built in the middle of nowhere. Drive to the town center of the nearest town and tell me what you see... and no, they most likely won't be burned-out... but boarded up, quite possibly.
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Sure those are great benefits. Does not excuse treating your employees like shit. Just sayin'.
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They pay less because Wal-Mart bullies suppliers to sell at significantly lower prices.
Either the prices aren't cheaper (they can be more expensive), or they're cheaper by a few pennies. In fact, you can tell margins by looking at how Wal-Mart discounts. Toys are huge margines, so getting 30% off is common (as do books and magazines - the discounts can rival Amazon)
The ones that are cheap, have corners cut. Suppliers often do special
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Hard to save gas by driving to someplace that is located outside city limits (specifically to avoid paying taxes).
What kind of a deal did they negotiate? (Score:3)
Say what you will about Walmart; but they deal hard. I wonder how much they are paying per watt for this installation.
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it doesn't matter: the amount of energy that goes into the production of those panels is a significant fraction of the energy they generate over their lifetime. whoops... http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20090201062719AATwL62 [yahoo.com]
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it doesn't matter: the amount of energy that goes into the production of those panels is a significant fraction of the energy they generate over their lifetime. whoops... http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20090201062719AATwL62 [yahoo.com]
Maybe I missed something - the article you referenced seems to say that the energy generate equals the energy used in about 4 years, for panels with a lifetime of 20+ years. Seems like a net gain of a factor of 4 or 5, which isn't that bad in my opinion. I guess 20% is perhaps a "significant fraction" in some situations, but you seem to be implying that "going solar" is illogical from an energy-of-production point of view, when it certainly is not.
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Indeed. Any cost concessions they extract will ultimately come out of some Chinese solar panel plant workers paycheck.
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Indeed. Any cost concessions they extract will ultimately come out of some Chinese solar panel plant workers paycheck.
Whereas a less hard-bargaining customer would leave the Chinese company's management free to do what it really wanted to do.... give the extra cash to its line workers, rather than pocket the difference themselves.
Right.
Re:What kind of a deal did they negotiate? (Score:4, Insightful)
Sure must suck having a job that:
-pays above minimum wage
-has benefits
-helps keep the cost of goods from rising insanely
-is damned efficient at what it does
Mind you - I'm not going to disagree that there are some socio-economic issues with how walmart does business - but they aren't the only ones playing that game and they're not 100% evil. If you're a business owner - you're pretty much guaranteed to do very well if you can get in the same shopping center as a walmart as long as you're not in the business of selling the same goods walmart does for the same demographics. I've seen cities blossom around such shopping centers and a large portion of the stores nearby have been there for years as a result.
Re:What kind of a deal did they negotiate? (Score:4, Interesting)
Sure must suck having a job that:
-pays above minimum wage
-has benefits
-helps keep the cost of goods from rising insanely
-is damned efficient at what it does
Mind you - I'm not going to disagree that there are some socio-economic issues with how walmart does business - but they aren't the only ones playing that game and they're not 100% evil. If you're a business owner - you're pretty much guaranteed to do very well if you can get in the same shopping center as a walmart as long as you're not in the business of selling the same goods walmart does for the same demographics. I've seen cities blossom around such shopping centers and a large portion of the stores nearby have been there for years as a result.
I like that the benefits are based on qualifying for foodstamps and medicaid, but at least they're semi-provided by Walmart because they train employees to sign up for and use those services. See http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0473107/ [imdb.com]
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During my brief stint in the US Army, the drill instructors spent an hour or two one evening going over finances with the group. A good portion of that was spent explaining how to get food stamps to supplement the shit pay.
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My favorite hardware store (Wallys, Sumter, SC) is near a Walmart, a Lowes, and not far from a large Simpson's hardware store.
It THRIVES because the provide good, personal service. The proprietor WELCOMED the newer arrivals years ago because they drive massive traffic to his location.
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Citations necessary. The benefits they offer were paltry last I checked and in many areas the state is effectively subsidizing Wal-Mart employees because the wage is below the poverty line. Employees are cut off from further raises after only 5 years and the last thing you want is for your employer to be keeping the cost of goods down and being efficient by undervaluing your work and ensuring that nobody else can afford to pay more.
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Re:What kind of a deal did they negotiate? (Score:5, Interesting)
No, they are people who know a lot about Walmart and know that if you're poor, you can find ways to shop that don't shoot you directly in the foot (coupons, buying things on-sale, buying from farmer's markets, buying in bulk, buying cheaper raw foods, etc.)... you know, all the things that responsible people were doing long before there was a Walmart (which is now something that is apparently essential for survival somehow)... and back before everyone moved out of town to live in cheap shit housing developments and started clamoring for Walmarts because there's nowhere to shop.
Walmart fucks EVERYONE, even people who don't shop there. Go watch any of the documentaries on Walmart -- you can look up what's in the movies if you don't take their word for it.
Re:What kind of a deal did they negotiate? (Score:4, Interesting)
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This is not intended to be a slam at GP, but really, who better to evaluate Walmart than someone who used to work there... and how good is the English of a person likely to be if they can't find a better job than that?
Good (Score:3)
Now give people 40 hours shifts, and better pay and working conditions.
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How do you give them 40 hours shifts if a day has only 24 hours?
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Hospitals manage it with residents.
Unionize (Score:2)
Unionize and and watch Wally World close down stores. [wikimedia.org]
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Now give people 40 hours shifts, and better pay and working conditions.
I haven't done a 40-hour 'shift' since College, but boy was that brutal. I wouldn't recommend it.
I'd also not recommending eliminating low-paying jobs, because people who can't get high-paying jobs need low-paying jobs. Walmart shouldn't be a career for most people.
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It shouldn't be, and yet it is. Which is the problem, as the US dismantles the tools that the poor use to better their situation you find more and more people making a career out of busting their asses for low pay and little to no benefits.
You're definitely right, nobody should be making a career out of it, but in practice there's plenty of folks who bust their humps for an entire career at minimum wage.
Re:Good (Score:4, Insightful)
One of the problems I see is that Walmart purposely keeps most of their employees at 40 hours/week so they can't get benefits. Further, they promote all of those employees getting on all the government assistance they can. Yeah, nice favor, but how about sharing your load and letting those who want to work 40 hours work that and obtain the benefits they should be provided and off of government assistance. Walmart's low prices are the result of than government-funding which we cannot afford, which not only drains the taxes coming, but increases the national debt and causes inflation to rise.
We all pay for Walmart. The problem is that people won't say no. Not the lawmakers and not the masses who shop there.
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What number of hours a week did you mean? Can't be 40.
27,000 homes? (Score:2)
So this is implying that each big box uses the same electricity as up to 27,000 homes? Shocking.
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Costs (Score:2)
In California, electrical rates are insanely high. Even with the relatively low efficiency of solar and the high associated costs, when subsidies are taken into account it may simply be the cheapest path forward.
None of this addresses why California's electrical rates are so high to begin with, of course.
Re:Costs (Score:5, Insightful)
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hyperbole (Score:2)
In the Western world? Get serious.
California has high electrical costs because it uses low-carbon sources (natural gas) that cost more than coal. Additionally, the prices for electricity were locked in at a time when Enron and other companies were artificially manipulating the price of it. Far from there being no protection, these manipulations were neither legal nor moral.
The electric company that maintains the infrastructure (PG&E for most of California) doesn't generate or sell electricity, so they d
Windows, duh! (Score:4, Insightful)
You know, if they just put in some windows (hey light tubes too!), they could save a whole lot more money on lighting too.
It always amazes me walking into these huge stores in the middle of the day, and they have hundreds of lights on to make it as bright inside as it already is outside. How hard is this to figure out?
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Given the size of the average big box store, and the number of shelving units therein, I'm skeptical that windows would provide much light for most of the store. They'd also make heating and cooling a lot more expensive, probably more than wiping out whatever energy savings the store realized on lighting.
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One of the area's Walmarts has lots of skylights in its ceilings. Can't speak as to HVAC efficiency, but on sunny days it's pretty bright in there.
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hey light tubes
You have me thinking... I wonder if its possble to wire the world with some special polymer fashioned in extremely long fibre optic light pipes... from the day side to the night side of the planet... so there is always light in the dark even without power.
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I read long ago about projects for satellite mirrors that would focus, for example, on disaster zones so crews could work overnight as if it was day time.
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You have never been in a walmart have you? I have never seen one without skylights.
http://www.sunoptics.com/success_stories/retail/walmart/wal-mart.aspx [sunoptics.com]
Jobs For Many (Score:2)
I hope the solar cells are made in the USA but at the very least a large number of people will be employed doing the installs on these bid stores. Good for Wall Mart .
Cue the Zombie film (Score:2)
8 Mwatts of generating capacity (Score:2)
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Averaged over 24 hours a day, seven days a week, of course. In practice, it'll probably be closer to 20MW worth of panels.
So, they'll basically have carbon credits (assuming CA is doing them by then) worth about $500K per year. Plus the electricity savings. Minus the increased property taxes based on the higher valuation of the property for the solar system.
Wonder how much those solar panels are going to cost...
Working The Numbers Backwards (Score:2)
Solar panels on 75% of its stores will produce 20-30% (let's average at 25%) of those stores' electricity needs.This is 70m kWh, equal to the power for 5,400 homes and polution equal to 21,700 metric tons of CO2/4100 cars.
So, they currently produce 4x that across those 75% of their stores plus a third again of that total for their other 25%. So 5 1/3x that figure. Or over 100,000 metric tons of CO2, the equivalent of almost 22,000 cars and draw the power of almost 30,000 homes - over a third of a billion ki
Not even good PR if you know the facts (Score:2)
In my current job I manage development at an environmental software provider. We have a couple dozen chemical and petrochemical customers who are using our software to calculate and report there GHG emissions to the EPA. We are actually in the middle of the first year of reporting for 2010 this month. The plants who are reporting make chemicals that are used directly or indirectly be each of us everyday including ethylene, glycols, nylon precursors...the list goes on. To the point, a single ethylene cracker
caiso - california utility power incl wind,solar (Score:2)
To see the daily power generation for California's CAISO, including the contributions by wind and solar, here is the URL:
http://www.caiso.com/Pages/TodaysOutlook.aspx [caiso.com]
For 2011-09-21, peak power was about 38,000MW, peak wind contribution was about 1100MW, peak solar contribution was about 450MW
Perhaps as more Walmart's, Ikea's, and residental grid-tied PV is added, the solar contributions will rise to what wind adds now.
OK (Score:2)
Cue the WalMart Hate Brigade in 3... 2... 1...
I really wish our culture had more interesting bogeymen.
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Because there's nothing to hate about Walmart? That's why you write this sarcastic comment?
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Re:Not a real savings (Score:5, Funny)
Dude, it was vetted by a friend of his.. a FRIEND.What more do you need~
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So they'd get everything they sell from China, but their solar panels from the US?
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And so do solar panels. Unless of course they've developed ones that work at night, at which case I'll shut up as they've clearly contributed something amazing to humanity.
Batteries (Score:2)
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Doesn't work at night. While solar doesn't work at night, you still have the light you can power. If you cut a bunch of holes in the ceiling, you can't put lights their. And that assume they don't have storage above above the ceiling.
Re:Finally (Score:4, Interesting)
I live in California, and installed solar on my house back in March.
There's federal and state subsidies, but they're much lower now than they were in the past. I just filled out my state rebate form today - it amounts to about 5% of the cost of installation. I can't recall what the federal rate is off the top of my head, but it's certainly a lot lower than the 50% subsidy rate solar used to get.
The reason for solar's success here in California is only minorly due to the subsidies (they are being phased out). The real reason is that California's power generation system is 40 years out of date, and electricity prices have skyrocketed, with top-tier power costing 55c per kilowatt-hour, the last time I checked. It's not too difficult to get into the top pricing tier, either. If you set your thermostat below 78 in the summer, you'll end up paying over a thousand dollars for power in a month. (YMMV, depending on the size of your house, the efficiency level of your AC, and the thermal properties of your walls and windows.)
If you have solar, you apply your generation credits to your most expensive kilowatt-hours first, meaning you're generating at 55c/kWh. Small scale PV Solar systems have a 10-year levelized cost (after subsidies) of around 25c/kWh, which is why the optimal solution is to buy solar capacity up to a level that it will drop you into the cheap tiers of power. That's why I switched to solar (the environmental benefits are a nice bonus), and is certainly why Walmart is switching to solar in the state.
In states that don't have such backwater environmental laws, power is often flat rate and around 5 to 10 cents per kilowatt-hour. Solar doesn't make sense in these states.
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Simply because the California electricity system has been an internationally known joke at least since the early 1990s. Ask electrical engineers in any third world backwater about California if you want to cheer them up and make them feel better about their own generation and distribution problems.
Photovoltaics, while a horribly expensive way to produce electricity in bulk, are a cheap way to say "look at me I'm green" when a more sensible large scale long t
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They desperately need the kind of PR that solar panels bring. It should theoretically help appease some of the liberals that are fighting to keep them from opening stores in their areas. Although, I'm not sure that the difference between almost completely evil and completely evil is really enough of a distinction to be worthwhile.
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So you think a Walmart opening in your area is a good thing and that only liberals would criticize it? Why on earth?
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Stupid question, but would it not also shield the roof from sunlight as well? Would that not cut in electricity costs? I presume the roof is not *that* well isolated?
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All I can attempt to get out the lines above is possibly some sort of implication about insulation and increased reflectivity possibly cutting cooling costs. If that is what is meant a coating of white paint would be more effective.
The panels don't insulate but panels set above the roof with a large air gap would have a noticable shading effect.
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>>Stupid question, but would it not also shield the roof from sunlight as well? Would that not cut in electricity costs? I presume the roof is not *that* well isolated?
It's not a stupid question.
PV panels actually do provide a significant amount of thermal insulation (they have an air layer beneath the hot, black absorption layer). The area of my house underneath the PV panels is a lot cooler than the other areas exposed to the same sunlight, and a lot cooler than last year. I don't have any way of es
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Yep. The recent blackout in San Diego is only the most recent symptom of the underlying problem.
Until we can muster the political capital (which won't happen) and clear enviromentalists out of the way (which won't happen), electricity prices will continue to rise and our power infrastructure will continue to be ignored. Which was one of the major reasons I put solar on my house. It makes se
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Points 1 and 2 really don't have much to do with what I've written and I agree with them anyway. Markets are skewed so insanely that things that are not remotely economically viable in once place provide a
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they started in NJ, not CA so you don't have to have crazy environmental laws to make solar make economic sense
Clearly you know little about NJ DEP environmental laws, the recent SREC bubble and the political machine in my home state. SunEdison exists because of minimum requirements of renewable and solar sources on NJ power generation which was copied in other states.
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There's a 30% federal tax credit until 2016. California used to have a bigger rebate (originally $2.50/kW, now $0.35/kW) but solar panels are also cheaper now.
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>>Insulation is a lot more price effective than solar power. Payback at the rates you are absurdly claiming would be a couple of months.
Eh, I actually priced all that stuff out and ran the math on it.
Replacing all the windows and sliding glass doors in my house, reinsulating, and replacing my AC unit with a more efficient one would have run about the same cost as the solar system.
But at the end of the year, my net power consumption will be close to zero (depending how much longer it stays hot). If I r
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you deserve the bill if you run your AC all day.
Yea, you should only run the AC when you get hot! The real problem is that nobody should be living in southern California where it's hot all day. I suggest they use eminent domain to seize all property south of say, Mount Shasta. After the ecologically unsound places to live have been depopulated, then California will no longer have problems with high AC bills.
Solyndra (Score:2)
Solyndra probably could've used some of that business, except that with the way Wally World works, they probably would insist Solyndra to relocate their factory to China...
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Yes, but Wal-Mart stores are still typically far enough away that I wouldn't be surprised if the amount of emissions these save are offset by the amount of extra emissions by placing large stores where people have to drive a ways to go to. Rather than the shorter distances needed to get supplies at the stores that Wal-Mart drives out of business.
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So are you trying to say Walmart is a decent company and when people criticize them it's spin? Because if so, you're an idiot.
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somebody else will just take their place in line. its not the company but the people it caters to. convince them to not buy shit...and there wont be a need to sell shit.
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Well, they had an order with Solyndra, but... well...
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Re:Stop the clock now! (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, more realistically, what is happening is that China is producing solar panels well in excess of demand (and doing a number on their environment in the process, but that's another story), and it's forced prices for panels down so much that all the other panel producers are dropping like flies. Has nothing whatsoever to do with U.S. regulations (unless you want U.S. creeks to run black with industrial chemicals too), or conspiracy theories about siphoning government money or anything like that.
Even worse, panel prices are now low enough to compete against large industrial-scale mirror/tower systems. So THOSE companies are also getting crushed as contracts get canceled and buyers go with panels. Think about that for a moment. It isn't that panels are less expensive than mirrors, it's that panels are now less expensive than mirrors + tower system + workforce required to keep it maintained.
-Matt
Re:Stop the clock now! (Score:5, Informative)
China shut down a solar panel factory on Monday after hundreds of angry residents staged days of violent protests over pollution, the second such incident in as many months.
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As opposed to what? Buying them from a US manufacturer and being able to afford about half of the effect due to price difference? "Buy from us, we're more expensive" doesn't work, no matter which country you're from, sorry.
At least not when the "Buy from us, we're cheaper" types give nothing back to the communities they extract their billions from.
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At least not when the "Buy from us, we're cheaper" types give nothing back to the communities they extract their billions from.
By the definition of "cheaper", I think they actually gave more back.
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Quiet you. It's not enough that you've sold them something material, they also want something intangible for doing business with you.
That something intangible is usually some form of rakeback. They want the money they just gave you, back.
Remember, when someone says they want someone else to do something for the community, it typically means they want someone else to do something for free. I.e. We want free services, that you pay for. A cash grab.
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As opposed to what? Buying them from a US manufacturer and being able to afford about half of the effect due to price difference? "Buy from us, we're more expensive" doesn't work, no matter which country you're from, sorry.
At least not when the "Buy from us, we're cheaper" types give nothing back to the communities they extract their billions from.
Because this general statement apply to all... what exactly are you referring to? And what do you mean by "extracting" from the community?
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This would work only because then people would be forced to shop elsewhere, at higher prices, and thus able to buy less landfill-destined crap.
This assumes that whatever you pay, all you will get is landfill-destined crap. The alternative is that you will spend more to by fewer, but durable things. They might be more expensive because they require more highly skilled labor to build.
Of course, there is no money in durability if you are a manufacturer or retailer, and highly skilled workers are a liability. Thus, they flood the market with garbage and talk only about price, or at best, trendy features.
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This would work only because then people would be forced to shop elsewhere, at higher prices, and thus able to buy less landfill-destined crap.
This assumes that whatever you pay, all you will get is landfill-destined crap. The alternative is that you will spend more to by fewer, but durable things. They might be more expensive because they require more highly skilled labor to build.
Of course, there is no money in durability if you are a manufacturer or retailer, and highly skilled workers are a liability. Thus, they flood the market with garbage and talk only about price, or at best, trendy features.
I'm sorry, but a lawn chair is a lawn chair is a lawn chair. Just rubber dog shit is rubber dog shit and shower curtain rings are shower curtain rings! All this stuff is crap, and no matter how much quality you put into any of these crappy products, they last about the same amount of time and perform about the same as those that have little to no quality control. These are not automobiles or complex microprocessors. These products have two levels of quality; works and doesn't work. There is no middle g
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Guess what will happen when your employer decides that it's better to outsource your job than to keep paying you your large salar so you can sit all day and read Slashdot?
Alternatively, if you are self-employed imagine what would happen when all those union-employed napping-on-the-job hippies are fired and nobody has money to buy stupid shit you're producing?
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Except that you didn't have to shop at the worst retailer possible to buy a cheap food processor.
Re:Savings? (Score:4, Informative)
>>Walmart probably already got a quote from this and already knows that if they generate excess power they will get a fair price for the extra electricity. So this may pay for itself and more in the long term.
In general, you target solar to reduce your electricity needs down to the baseline (cheap) tier of power, which is subsidized by the higher tier prices, which run up to 55c/kWh in the state.
PG&E used to not have to pay "net surplus customer-generators" for any extra power they produced, but one of Arnie's last acts as governor was to make PG&E pay the same rate for generation as customers would pay for consumption, with AB 920 (http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/pub/09-10/bill/asm/ab_0901-0950/ab_920_bill_20091011_chaptered.html).
What this means in practice is that for any realistic small-scale installations, PG&E will pay you to generate power at the baseline rate, which is not especially profitable, and certainly not worth the cost of installation.
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TFS says it only generates 20-30% of a facility's power needs.
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Actually, yes, in some cases they do:
http://www.businessweek.com/innovate/NussbaumOnDesign/archives/2007/02/can_this_be_true_of_wal-mart.html [businessweek.com]
This is not the best article on the subject, but it is common for Walmart to contract for a cheaper version of an item with sometimes an identical model. Another mention would be here, in an article about the Snapper mower guy not wanting to sell to Walmart:
"The Wal-Mart vice president responded with strategy and argument. Snapper is the sort of high-quality nameplate,
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Taking the number of solar panels needed produce roughly 245 watts apiece. Remember that previous number? It's about to get a whole lot bigger. Roughly 10.49 billion watts is the total output. That translates to approximately 7.67 trillion killowat hours per month
While I applaud people who attempt to do the math the average hours of usable sunlight per day is on the order of 4-5hrs when you figure in cloud cover, night time, fog,smog...etc over much of the US.
What really sucks about solar is not the cost of panels. The major problem and cost come from energy storage and distribution. For any significant dent the grid would need to be overhauled or we would need to see dramatic advancements in reliable cost effective energy storage.
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Go watch this one: http://www.walmartmovie.com/ [walmartmovie.com] ... your opinion of their environmental track record will bounce back down in no time.