EEVblog

Will Trump’s Mexican border solar powered wall pay for itself?
Dave runs the numbers to find out what the solar payback is.
NOTE: These are BEST CASE (non-practical) figures that don’t include any system losses from a single long line array like this, or anything to do with the changing wall topology, or increased maintenance costs etc.
The cost to maintain this system could be an order of magnitude higher than a traditional solar array farm.
The point of the video is to check if the *ballpark* figure works out before getting more techniical, it doesn’t.

SPOILER:
At best figure with *no losses* is $1BN payback for a 10 year period. 1/20th the cost of the wall. In practice it will be much worse than this, likely double the payback period or more.
And if you want to argue it will pay back the solar install cost then why not install a normal utility scale solar array farm in the Texas desert? Much more efficient and practical.
Installing a long array on a wall like this is a technically dumb idea.

Forum HERE