On Sun, 14 Dec 2003 03:46:21 +0000, Stewart
wrote:

Because there's more to the internet than hits alone, athol wrote:

Andrew wrote:
Again I doubt this, though I was surprised to see their working life
put at around 20 years. Of course the whole drive for these is highly
dependant of the renewable obligation payment levied on fossil fuels.

Thank you. You have reinforced my fundamental point. These devices
are _not_ environmentally positive. The energy required to make them
exceeds the "renewable" energy that they produce.

This sounds worryingly like axe-grinding to me.

Possibly, its certainly not the inference I would take, such is
usenet.

Snipped points of general agreement

I am actually quite optimistic that the design life of both pv and
wind will be longer. PV seems to be guaranteed to produce 80% rated
power for 20 years and in practice seems to be likely to more than
double this in temperate regions.

AJH