We’re Going To Build A Wall And The Sun Is Going To Pay For It.
At first glance, Mexico was going to pay for the wall. Next it seemed like the United States was going to have to fund it, and find out how to cover the rest of the cost afterwards. Now it looks like the sun may be funding the cost of the wall.
President Donald Trump has been promising a wall since early on in his presidential campaign. On June 6th 2016, he made a remark suggesting the wall would be between 40 and 50 feet tall in order to keep a strong divide between the United States and Mexico. He’s now turning to an unlikely funding source to make good on that promise.
During this introduction in June of last year, the President announced that the wall would be lined on top with “beautiful structures.” These beautiful structures are solar panels, and his idea is that by adding them in the wall should pay for itself over time.
A small Las Vegas construction firm is negotiating a deal with Trump and the federal government for the construction of a wall. The U.S. border with Mexico runs for 2,000 miles, and current estimates put the cost to build a wall at $7.5 million per mile. By adding in the solar panels as mentioned earlier, the President says the wall will pay for itself. The issue is that this will take over 20 years – if all goes according to plan.
PowerScout, a company whose employees have aided in the financing and development of over $750 million in solar projects, reviewed the estimates to see if these claims all added up. From the overall cost of solar panels, to the time it should take to pay it off, PowerScout outlined the realistic estimate of these figures.
Generating enough revenue through energy sales to overcome the enormous upfront costs of the wall could be achieved only with the most optimistic assumptions, as far as PowerScout is concerned. Their team estimates that in a best-case scenario, the wall would mathematically be able pay for itself in about 25 years. This depends heavily, however, on the rock-bottom costs proposed by Gleason. PowerScout believes this estimate excludes a lot of essential expenses, such as maintenance and land. Especially with the addition of solar panels, PowerScout says that number is “virtually impossible to achieve with any set of assumptions.”
Final estimates of the wall vary considerably. Some prices have included the addition of solar panels, and others account for just the wall. The lowest price estimated by The Department of Homeland Security was about $21.6 billion in total cost, which was calculated in February. Many Democrats think this is overly optimistic, and the Senate Democrats’ committee developed a more grueling estimate of about $70 billion. Of course, these prices both exclude the price of solar panels. At an additional cost of nearly $46 million per mile of solar panels (as per PowerScout’s estimates,) the total price of a solar-equipped border wall could fall between $68-$158 billion.
PowerScout believes the wall could generate as much as $169 billion in electricity over the course of 25 years, which is the estimated life span of the solar panels. This is enough power to generate over 9.2 million homes. With this amount of new electricity flooding the market, however, prices are likely to drop meaning sheer scale of the project could hurt its ability to produce adequate revenue.
Tom Gleason, the owner of the firm who calculated $7.2 million per mile, completely disregarded PowerScout’s cost analysis of the wall. “I am sure they did not have the structural engineers review in detail our design… Our wall is designed by experts and common sense,” said Gleason.
If their firm’s goal is to design an economic plan backed by solar power, the wall still isn’t the way to do it. Even if the wall is able to generate $169 billion worth of electricity, a similarly sized solar farm mounted on the ground near the border wall could generate 25% more electricity at a much lower cost. Adding solar to the wall may help cover some or most of the cost, but if the Trump administration really wants to pay for the wall, they are better off funding a separate solar farm project.
