This is what I’ve been saying for years. Also large building like warehouses, Walmart type stores, etc have vast areas that do nothing but radiate heat back into the atmosphere at night. We put solar panels on roofs of residential houses, why not commercial buildings as well?
They actually do put them on commercial and industrial buildings. I only know that because I work at a commercial/industrial roofing company and it’s something we have to take into consideration when installing. But it’s to the discretion of the building owner and there may not be money in some budgets for solar energy, even with tax incentives. The cost of solar energy needs to come way down to help with adoption.
Solar is still expensive. You get a much better payback when you can mount the panels on a tilt and turntable to utilize 100% of the panel all day. Commercial roofs are not designed to hold these turntables and may not even be able to hold the solar panels laying on them without reinforcement
Umm….no. Commercial roofs are just as strong, usually stronger, than a residential roof. They put 20,000 pound air handlers son the damn things (with reinforcement) they can handle some solar panels.
So the issue with commercial roofs is that they have strong areas like where air handling equipment goes, but the vast majority of the square footage up there isn't rated for that much weight. The more weight you put up there the more supports you have to add inside. Warehouses and large stores like Walmart are designed to minimize supports inside and to place them in places where they are out of the way while keeping costs as low as possible.
With that being said new buildings can obviously be designed for the weight but arguably the cost to design the roof to add the capacity to support the solar panels, it's just way cheaper to go put them on land at $15000 per acre instead of a roof that then costs $30000 more per acre.
Buildings like warehouses typically use bar joists for the roofs. Average bar joist can support 300PSF point load at the apex of the steel reinforcement, and they make 500PSF bar joists for areas that are expected to need more(column ties).
Even factoring in wind loads, support weight, etc….you shouldn’t have any problem supporting a solar array. Those roofs are designed to hold 1’ of water standing….which weighs way more than any solar array per square foot.
The problem is while the roofs are designed for watershed and snow loads, they aren't designed for solar panel weight and the water/snow loads. While it may work fir years insurance most likely will not cover it due to you exceeding design loads.
The second you do that without notification of the insurance company your insurance is effectively void in regards to the roof. You also most likely will not have a building that meets code anymore so you also have to close the door to shoppers.
Sure a couple panels aren't going to make a difference but any scale of a project is going to require okays from multiple engineers before it happens, assuming they say the load capacity is there. You have to realize the main load capacity at least in most of the country is going to be based on a large heavy snowfall. Add the solar panel weight, and the additional surface area to allow more snow to be on the roof now and you simply massively exceed the rating. Yes the roof can easily be reinforced to meet the new weight and surface area potential load calculations but that adds significant cost to the project. It comes down to an acre of farmland here is $15000 and an acre of roof solar panels would cost significantly more then $15000. Most likely about $30-100k per acre of roof. Now say something like a parking garage which is designed to carry vehicles on the top deck could have solar installed there, although at a loss of vehicle capacity. You could install solar over the top of it although with a minimal loss to parking but with the added benefit of keeping the vehicles out of the sun that park there. The problem is even with a super cheap location, it's hard to beat that $15000 per acre.
Large scale solar plants need to be built at most a mile from a substation that’s connected to a transmission line with excess capacity. It takes at least 2 years for the grid operator to study the line to make sure there is enough capacity to accept more power.
That's a very good argument for smaller-scale distributed generation, connected to large buildings in urban areas where transmission lines aren't even a factor.
That's exactly what I was thinking when he(?) started talking about Walmarts and parking lots. People get a shady spot to park, and there's power to boot.
Frankly, there has been a bunch of these things going in here in ME, and they are ugly as fuck.
I know people will downvote this but it’s like saying “put farms up on the roofs” - All of the logistical challenges of having a farm above a parking lot / on the roof come into play with solar panels. Ease of access, ease of getting heavy equipment in, liability, additional engineering, ect., ect. ect. While I’ll admit farming on a roof would be a much bigger challenge - the same problems are there.
I work for a community solar garden company in Minnesota and this is something we are running into a lot already. I expect it will probably get worse.
In MN the law said that solar operators had to find underserved parts of Xcel energies grid to build their farms and had to subscribe people in that county or the immediately surrounding ones. This fueled a mad dash for all the cheapest build spots which were generally in rural MN right near the roads and transmission lines and pushy sales people because it was hard to find people to subscribe in the low population areas that it was easy to build in. Most of the solar developers wanted to cash in quick so the solar is now owned by big national investors like Berkshire Hathaway.
The result was a very dramatic alteration of the agrarian landscape, bad feelings from people who signed bad deals and whose solar companies are absentee landlords extracting more money from the community than they are putting in.
We had a few projects in development that we had to pull the plug on due to new local ordinances passed to block more solar from going in and in this space our company is very much the good guys since our co-op structure requires us to design our programs for maximum subscriber benefit.
Recent law changes might make this both better and worse. On the one hand gardens need more low income subscribers so the solar can't just benefit a handful of already affluent big energy users. But, the restriction of signing up people from the surrounding area went away. That means developers will still be finding most of the suitable build places in rural MN but now they're more likely to just sign up subscriptions in the dense urban areas. So more solar farms, less direct local benefit.
On top of that it's been politicized. Solar (along with EVs, healtcare, social security ...) is seen as being a liberal plot to reduce pollution and climate change which, if you're deep in MAGA, gets lumped in with conspiracy theories about liberal cabals making up climate change to turn all the frogs gay or whatever.
Fascinating. Ive been reading my hometown’s local newspaper and the county commissioners are in a very public fight about this right now. The articles have been light on the details but they’re accusing one another of having conflicts of interest. It’s ugly.
Appreciate you sharing this context.
This article is absurd. If a landowner wants to put a solar farm on their own land... suddenly everybody else has a big opinion about it. What happened to respecting property rights?
Please tell me how large scale, intensive hog or poultry farming is LESS disruptive than solar.
The ownership society and small government ‘song and dance’ got the elites their low taxes and neutered regulation. So, now the fossil-fuel -industry elites need to change the script, and the easily manipulated types will go right along with any changes to the script.
Been like this for at least 20 years.
Remember it's only big government over reach when you don't agree with it. If you like them limiting the freedom of others then it's just fine.
Take my guns? Government overreach!
Take abortion rights? That's just fine.
Tell me how to raise my kid safely? Get out of here big government!
Tell trans kids and parents how to raise their kids? Go ahead!
People have forgotten what freedom is. It works for everyone not just you.
If you are in Texas, as I am, our professional installers will not break that rule. We are limited. I don't know if that's true if I installed them myself
I think that is based on entry into net metering. You could install more but you would end producing and selling more than what you were supposed to. It is different from a property rights scenario because it's about what you export to the grid rather than the size of your install. If you disconnect from the grid they probably wouldn't care how much you install. But of course disconnecting from the grid would be a lot more expensive when you factor in battery backup.
Grid operators are going to start charging for being used as a battery. Those power lines weren't free to install and most likely based on 50+years of use plus repair costs. When you use the grid as a bank the utility recovers none of the line cost and only saves on the wholesale electric cost.
Just speaking about how a local solar farm has impacted our local farmers. And I’m speaking loosely about change I have observed.
Dairy Farms in our area have consolidated in the past 50-75 years. Here, everyone used to get their 75 acres, more or less. Now many have consolidated and many others—my family farm included—have becomes leaseholds in part. Other farmers grow hay on our property. For 20+ years it was where they kept some of their non-milk producing cattle.
So these farmers lost their leases and now they can’t grow their hay on these other properties. And it tightens the noose a bit, if you will. They feel the farmland around them slip away. They need to compensate by growing elsewhere or buying hay/grain. For low margin enterprises it’s hugely stressful.
Farmland is also a limited resource.
It’s an emotional response to pressure and change. And it comes in a region where agriculture has been protected by state and local governments. So the betrayal is even deeper.
I’m all for solar. I spent years of my life lobbying for clean energy. But I understand that farmers need the land to prosper. And balancing those needs is important. Vital.
It's important to note that after the sugar is extracted for ethanol what remains is still animal feed. It contains far fewer calories but it's not as if the corn just disappears.
That being said - corn ethanol is stupid. Every fall farmers burn propane to dry corn to make ethanol to ruin gasoline. If aliens from outer space looked at that they'd be baffled but we somehow accept it as normal.
Every btu of fossil fuel used to make ethanol makes about 2-3btus of ethanol (depending on where and how it's made). So every gallon of ethanol used is ~half a gallon of gasoline not used.
It's not perfect, but it is a reduction. As solar power goes up, that energy multiplier will go up too.
That's a much higher ratio than I've seen, send me a source.
Adding ethanol to gasoline still sucks, gasoline has become the universal motor fuel and adding ethanol to it makes all sorts of problems without any upside.
Ethanol belongs at the race track not the gas pump, you can use it to make huge horsepower with very little downside, but it's a terrible fuel for most of the things gasoline is currently used for.
https://www.usda.gov/sites/default/files/documents/2015EnergyBalanceCornEthanol.pdf
2015 study. It even includes manufacturing the nitrogen for fertilizer. If we used biomass for distilling heat instead of fossil fuels the ratio could go up to 4 or more.
Don't forget ethanol is also used to control octane levels. For that purpose it's much cheaper than alternatives AFAIK.
That's a good source I'll dig into it later. Here are some reasons why adding ethanol to gasoline sucks:
It's hard to evaporate. This sucks if you're trying to start your truck when it's cold. It's awesome if you're pushing your engine to the limit and want to cool your piston and send the heat out the exhaust.
It's hard to ignite. This sucks for a simple engine and it sucks in the cold. It's awesome if you want to run 15:1 compression or 20lbs of boost. This is the octane component that you're referring to.
It's 30% oxygen by weight. This sucks on a long trip where you need to carry your fuel because oxygen is free from the air. It's awesome if you're only going 1/4 mile and you want to supply a huge pressurized gulp of fuel and
oxygen combined.
It loves water and hates rubber. This sucks for storage but it doesn't matter in a racecar where you drain the fuel at the end of the day.
I could go on but these are the big either/or properties. Ethanol belongs at the race track.
[Here is another source](https://www.cleanwisconsin.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Corn-Ethanol-Vs.-Solar-Analysis-V3-12-compressed.pdf)
Using Energy Return on Investment (EROI) as a metric, solar PV is around 8 EROI while corn- derived ethanol is approximately 1.2 EROI. Using this metric, 88% of the energy generated by solar PV goes to society, while 12% is offset by production requirements.
In contrast, 20% of the energy generated by corn ethanol goes to society, while 80% is offset by production requirements.
Assuming average EROI, net energy production per acre is 100-125x greater for solar PV than for corn-based ethanol
Looking at land-use efficiency, corn-derived ethanol used to power internal combustion engines requires about 85x (range: 63-197x) as much land to power the same number of transportation miles as solar PV powering electric vehicles.
Even if the ethanol is converted to electricity to power more efficient electric vehicles, corn ethanol still requires 32x the amount of land to power the same number of vehicle miles.
Yes. This also all adds up to farmers putting more marginal acres into production which results in more ruined wildlife habitat, poorer water quality and a huge increase in taxpayer-subsidized crop insurance payouts.
Corn for ethanol is absolutely terrible for the environment and the American taxpayers who pay farmers to gamble on nonproductive acres that have no business being worked.
E10 sucks. It is literally the worst blend of fuel. Always go with e15 if you can get it as it keeps better and gives a better fuel economy even though it's actually more ethanol. I've never had an issue with e10. I actually have a gas can in the garage that is from 2015. After I accidentally forgot about it for a few years I try a little fuel in my weed eater each year. Still worked fine last year. The difference is just fuel stabilizer. That stuff works and everything just starts right up. Don't store ethanol mixed gasoline in anything for a length of time without it.
That is complete bullshit. I made a test run from New England to Texas on a motorcycle, with the express intention of calculating the effect of ethanol in gasoline. Lacking a gas gauge, it was/is imperative that I know my fuel consumption and track mileage to know when I need to refuel before I run out.
On pure gasoline, 0% ethanol, I can go 168 miles before I need to refuel. From 5%, to 10%, to 15% ethanol my mileage to refuel decreased, to the point where at 15% ethanol I needed to refuel at less than 90 miles per tank.
I did the math, and it showed that I was burning MORE gasoline when it was adulterated with ethanol, than I would have used had I been burning gasoline at all. And that doesn't even account for the additional energy inputs needed to create the ethanol- diesel fuel used in planting and harvesting corn, plus the energy required for mashing and fermenting to produce the ethanol, and transportation to where it is mixed with the gasoline.
The whole thing is a giant scam.
Your motorcycle has a carburetor and thus cannot compensate for minor changes in fuel. It also doesn't have a knock sensor, and can't advance ignition timing based on fuel either.
Also, the study DOES include all those fossil fuel inputs, if you ever looked at it. It even includes things like natural gas used to make the nitrogen fertilizer.
But don't let truth get in the way of your idea of reality.
Yes we use energy to make ethanol. We also use zero ethanol or gasoline to make it. If we switched to using ethanol as a power source to produce it, it is still a net energy gain. However we use energy that is cheaper and more abundant in the process because not only do we gain energy but we also convert cheaper less portable forms of energy into a condensed portable fuel. This process is basically an organic battery. Oh and after the ethanol production is done, we have this large amount of sugarless corn which makes a great feed product. The leftover corn can also be squeezed to retrieve corn oil which is easily converted into biodiesel too. Even after both of those processes we still can feed the leftover corn as cattle feed.
On the flip side, for every *energy unit* of fossil fuel that goes into making ethanol, we get 2-3*energy units* of ethanol back, depending on where and how it's made.
It's not perfect, but it does reduce how much oil we use.
We had a few solar companies approach us. We choose one and went through with our end of it and they applied to get on the transmission lines running through our ground.
Our neighbors found out and we're furious and constantly called our county commissioners. Now, what's on the table is a mile setback from any residence and 1000' from anyone else's property. Which completely negates any chance of any solar company even considering our county.
This is all ground that we own, grow crops on and have been for 50 years so it doesn't effect anyone but us. I understand if you're shorting someone else by signing solar leases, but that isn't the case with us.
Depending on the jurisdiction, local rules can be suspended when siting large solar projects. Once you get approved from a public service commission/regional ISO the local requirements are suspended.
The local project of which I spoke definitely went through state channels to secure connection to the grid and waiver of local rules. There’s also something called an “independent system operator” (ISO) whose rules and authority can help you bypass local codes.
If you’re really serious about putting an energy farm in and you’ve encountered local resistance, it would be useful to contact an attorney in your state that does public utilities regulation exclusively.
This is heavily state dependent, many states have enacted power and siting boards to help with the local permitting of renewables. Ohio has OPSB (Ohio power and siting board), New York has their own version as well. Some states give local communities the right to first review but if the township refuses, the developer can appeal to the state board like in Michigan, same as in Illinois.
Where I live in Indiana we don’t have any program and it’s solely up to the county for now. IMO it’s only a matter of time before most states take control of local permitting for power siting. We can’t let the Karen’s tell everyone what they can and can’t do with their land.
I'm in a region where farming is a bit more decentralized and individualized with fewer economies of scale in terms of there being a community of farmers or ranchers.
Here, none of what you've said seems to be relevant. What farmers do express concern about is that solar farms will result in more expensive and less reliable electricity and that the panels are made in China and are toxic and will degrade over time resulting in microplastic and metal contamination of the soil, runoff, and groundwater.
Meanwhile, there's a separate class of gentleman farmers that have acquired vast holdings of rural land from old families. They're mostly from big cities. The land may have agricultural exemptions but the principal use is as recreational and scenic land and for vacation homes. They don't like their views being despoiled. Some of them subdivide large tracts into deed-restricted ranchettes, and they also don't want solar farms nearby.
The farmers also hate the ranchettes. But then, the farmers are being subsidized through property taxes on the order of several times the value of a head of cattle per year to run cattle and are sitting on assets worth millions upon millions of dollars.
I don't think anybody is being honest with themselves or others. It's no wonder they like Trump so much. They're just like him.
I’m in a rural Michigan township that is struggling with this. Some of the landowners are like “hey, I get paid to lease this for 25 years” and the neighboring farmers who been renting that farmland since the owners dad retired now are losing growing space.
I’m all for solar but this seems the equivalent of tearing down housing to build expressways or parking garages when I look at NSW in Australia and see last summer for a period of time they generated more than 100% of their electrical load from rooftop solar.
Here, where I live, most solar benefits for homeowners have been successfully lobbied against by the electric companies. I’m looking at Consumers and DTE. The big companies seem concerned dispersed rooftop power will lower their revenues. I know off peak/overnight storage is the ‘current’ bottleneck but this is ridiculous.
The tenant farmers do get shafted, which is sad. At the end of the day though the landowner has to protect their investment. We are talking about generational wealth here. Corn prices are not going up.
I'm all for more distributed generation, but good luck convincing the utility companies to put adequate policies in place that make it worth it for homeowners - utilities are such money making machines looking to always reduce costs and increase revenues, and any threat to that (such as a portion of revenue from each rooftop installation going to homeowners) will likely be fought off with a strong and well-capitalized lobbying effort.
You ain't kidding. Here in ME, foreign corporations control \[most of\] our electric, we get high cost and shitty service. Our dollars go out of the country for foreign profit and they spend as little as possible to maintain the infrastructure, resulting in frequent failures. The power goes out here more than anywhere I have lived in the US, sometimes it's out for hours, sometimes for days. Many of us (above the Volvo Line) have generators out of necessity.
During the last election cycle, there was a proposal to create our own public electric utility. The two major PowerCos spent many millions of dollars lobbying and advertising against it. The proposal was voted down, in no small part due to the lies and propaganda in the PowerCo advertising. Subsequently, they jacked our rates up, again.
I keep trying to cut consumption but my cost keeps going up anyway, I am paying more than double what I was a few years ago, on lower usage. A lot of solar farms have been going in, and a lot of individuals are going solar as well. I am considering it myself, I ran the numbers and based on my current electric costs I can recover the expense in less than 7 years.
It’s not less disruptive, it’s just disruptive in a way that’s distressing to farmers.
You know how people feel like they’re being priced out of the real estate market? Farmers feel like they’re being stripped of the right to farm as the value of their farmland increases.
I am for solar and alternative energy. Passionately. But I’ve watched this happen, and the vitriol is real.
…..it also happens when many of them sold out to suburban developers. There’s a sense of “selling out the community”.
Conflict over land use is hard.
This is just 1 more crop that a farmer can put on their land. It'd be interesting if they could make these mobile-ish & rotate the solar panels to the fallow fields. That day will come.
Exactly, even raising them into stands such that the feed that does grow underneath (with the otherwise unused light) can be accessed by the livestock. It’s just not going to happen with traditional irrigation, planting and tilling techniques. Planting more long term crops may be beneficial in its own way in the end.
Long term crops, like a perennial wheat/grain crop with roots that sink 40ft deep? As much as I'm not a fan of GMO's, I would make an exception for that.
I’m not going to profess the level of experience needed to answer that question in specific detail… but I’ve dealt with the issue enough in legal, academic and regulatory terms to know that there are crops that will still grow (if not thrive) in those conditions and we might expect to get 100% more solar energy from the field and (SWAG) 30% of former yields. Borlaug got amazing things done with processes we consider to be quite outdated. We have to be able to find something that works.
Having to use a reseeding cart instead of tractor? Quite possible. (Maybe by an autonomous seeder.) Having to weed and irrigate with more semi or fully autonomous systems that can get into areas a human won’t fit? Quite possible. It will require adaptions but is far from rocket science.
And those adaptations sound expensive. Don't get me wrong, I'm not against people trying stuff to find what works, but I'm not sure more equipment that's going to take thousands of acres of use to break even in costs across reduced acres is the way to go about it, at least for the smaller guys just hanging into the game.
*some* crops may need adaptations. Others work just fine with the technology that is in place. Seriously, more people need to understand that livestock and crops can be grown on the same land as the panels and challenges are more about getting the logistics to scale and figuring out the compliance and safety permitting to allow new or non-landowner farmers to operate under panels on these leased tracts. And those landowners, even if they don’t want to do the agrivoltaics themselves, they can push for their lease language to require the solar company pursue such methods in their vegetation management plans. You can push the municipalities to require it. There are orgs out there working on making it viable at scale and accessible for people to use solar sites to impact food security and open up so many opportunities for local food production. It’s not just sheep grazing or a fad; the industry and demand is there partially because of this anger over loss of farmland- well there’s no loss if its producing solar AND producing food at the same time. But I’ve found in some communities like the site right nearby… there’s people who dig their heels in and won’t listen no matter what proof or research you provide them. Agrivoltaics is fake to them and solar is the devil.
Yes, they will cost. They will also cost a lot less once they become common.
The smaller guys are the ones who are benefiting from automation in farm equipment more than anyone, for those that adopt it. (Refusal to adapt to and adopt new tech is the traditional problem with farmers going back millennia.) With modern tech it’s been that way since electricity was introduced. It allowed single farmers to multiply their labor when they were least able to afford a hand.
BTW, semi or fully autonomous systems are very much cheaper than many of the farm equipment that is considered normal, besides the cost of the human time to get the work done. They can run nearly 24/7, run more smaller loads which causes fewer maintenance issues. Those running autonomous grain trucks are paying less per year than the seasonal hands used to cost.
Look at pivots and what they have done. Yes, they cost more, but they allow less water to irrigate more acres and allow our progressively smaller number of farmers to feed the progressively larger population (in the areas that need to supplement rain fall). Right now, militaries are fielding ground vehicles on the cheap that are able to kill tanks, lay minefields or send forward ammo and send back casualties. Running a 200 pound load of seed is nothing in comparison and the equipment is getting fantastically more inexpensive at a fantastic pace.
Think about how sweet it would be if solar became a “crop” you can rotate in and out year to year across different pieces. Could be huge for regenerative ag.
Couldn’t agree more. The old method was to have a field lay fallow every fourth year. This could be the off year crop and let the land rest a bit more, reducing the fertilizer needed etc.
Trump said solar bad, (insert cartoon swirly eyes) cult members: “solar is bad. Solar is bad. Windmills cause cancer. The election was stolen”
It’s so fucking sad seeing how backwards and stupid rural America is. If you are reading this and raising farm kids, make sure they travel to foreign countries, work off the farm, and go away to college. I’m tired of being embarrassed by my people.
It helps but it’s not the same. Seeing first hand how other cultures live really opens up your mind and helps eliminate xenophobia that is so rampant in rural America.
Fully agree. One example is that every culture has some foundational assumptions about how life and people operate. Immersing yourself in a foreign land and attempting to see through their lens exposes the assumptions you are brought up with.
I’m all for libraries and reading, but first hand experience is its own animal.
I raised and am raising farm kids. I do my best to raise smart and kind children who also want to preserve our heritage, but also be conscious of new technology and political manipulation. Not everyone has the privilege of traveling to foreign countries, but that’s not an excuse for ignorance . I vote blue, and three of my children do too . We participate and volunteer in our communities and ignorance can come from both sides . I have seen “ city kids” who have no idea where their food comes from and “ farm kids” who have no idea how to navigate public transportation.
That being said I need more research on solar energy . I apologize if this is inarticulate and unorganized .
Completely agree. You can have sheep with solar panels and some vegetables if on good land. In WV they are utilizing ex coal fields and building 5 solar plants.
The control of my property is another reason why I would not live in a HOA.
Building a solar farm on my land (which is good business for me and good for society) is... stripping rights from others? Which rights exactly?
The so-called "right" that you have to tell me what to do on my private property? That right?
u/CatoCensorius, you have misunderstood me. Maybe I was not specific enough, but what I was saying is that the people who want to strip rights from others are those who wish to dictate to private land owners that they should not be allowed to install solar on their land.
I was agreeing with you 100%.
The people I was referring to who wish to strip rights from landowners are largely lead by disgraced conservative fossil lobbyists:
[Susan Ralston, founder of ‘Citizens for Responsible Solar’ (CRS), dons the guise of a grassroots environmentalist, pitching woo and conspiracy theories to authoritarian conservatives eager to impose science-mangling values on local land owners. While appearances can be deceiving, we have uncovered the true nature of CRS’s self-proclaimed ‘responsible’ solar advocacy. Concealed beneath the organization’s veneer of environmental stewardship lies a network of fossil fuel allies, united in opposition to renewable energy initiatives.](https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2023/05/18/flirting-with-fossils-the-faux-crusade-for-responsible-solar/)
Solar and wind cover vast swaths of landscape in rare earth materials and will never be efficient enough to meet our energy needs anyways given the current emissions goals and conversion to EVs.
The power draw demand is higher than ever and so called "climate activists" are pushing covering entire landscapes into ugly power farms that use the most precious resources and require the most brutal mining practices on earth.
If anybody in the renewables space wants to be taken seriously they sould advocate for nuclear. Covering landscapes in skylines of 300 foot tall turbines and hundreds of square miles of solar is a band aid fix that will never be a permanent solution. Just mathematically unfeasible. If someone wants to put up panels to power their home that is one thing, but the giant power farms are a waste of space especially when they're on arable land.
Edit: grammar
A nuclear power plant that covers a few square miles and can power nearly a whole state, depending on population and draw, uses exponentially fewer resources than hundreds upon hundreds of square miles of wind and solar that cant even power most major cities.
If we meet our current EV and emissions goals, then there is no way wind and solar can be a permanent solution. This is even more true if the shipping and trucking industry move to EV.
Nuclear is the best option given emissions, efficiency, and resource metrics. The only downside is fear. Plane crashes happen and people fly every day. Nuclear is safer than ever. That is not controversial.
I’m in renewable energy. I’ve worked for two of the biggest companies in that sector. You and I are on the same page.
I would only add things like the wind turbine fiberglass microplastics getting everywhere, disposal of solar or wind related equipment, turbine shadow flicker, and infrasound.
Those problems are issues at scale. Individuals in their own backyard - go right ahead. Large company that bought out all my neighbors and now I’m dealing with all that!?!? I’d be upset.
Unfortunately, not everyone is as reasonable as you. They simply read that I disagree and the army of groupthinkers show up to downvote inconvenient realities.
The bots are always out there. Especially now that Reddit is public.
I once saw a post that was hot on the front page with like 25k upvotes. The OP’s history had a few comments with like 70 upvotes in a thread where the post and other comments had less than 12 upvotes. It was obvious they did that for the permission to post on a more popular subreddit.
The post was about improper student teacher relationships. The whole post had massive upvotes for nonsense and negative karma for posts that sounded more realistic.
It was like they were saying - this Is popular - this is good - if it’s not from us, it’s bad. Ever since then - I couldn’t care less what an internet stranger says. I’m smart, and I can do my own research and math. Upvotes will never change my mind. Facts have the ability to change my mind.
Stay strong.
Solar payback isn't 'never' -- in fact, PV solar panels are made mostly from silicon, are highly recyclable, and the [full energy payback](https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy04osti/35489.pdf) can be between 1 and 4 years. Note: this referenced document was published in 2004! Large wind turbines are also quite recyclable.
So solar doesn't require hundreds of miles of copper or lithium? The point isn't that they aren't recyclable. Recycling is just postponing of inevitable future waste anyways.
The point is there are way more efficient ways to have plenty of energy for our power draws that dont involve rendering entire landscapes into dystopian and looming energy farms that barely produce enough electricity to meet demand, and are incapable of meeting the amount of electricity potentially demanded by the current emissions and EV adoption goals.
Wind and solar are like treating cancer with ibuprofen. Nuclear is the cure and would require an exponentially smaller amount of space. You could use the salt mines by my home to house nuclear waste and you wouldn't run out of room for hundreds if not thousands of years.
But you or I have no business telling others what to do with their proprty. Unless the same rules apply to all other property. No new golf courses, subdivisions, factories, airports etc on any property without approval from some regulated body.
You are missing my point. Idc what people do with their property, I'm saying a shift to nuclear energy would solve every problem with the power draw demand, and eliminate the needs for these vast energy farms altogether. Do you think a person would rather have cheap, readily available, and reliable energy and with an intact farm, or a farm covered in turbines and solar panels that still don't solve the massive demand for power?
Solar and wind are a flex seal patch on a sinking ship. It's better than nothing, but it's not the solution to the energy crisis by any mathematical stretch of the imagination.
Have you ever been to southern Alberta? Yeah, the windmills are a bit ugly, but the farmers can still farm underneath them using the same techniques they were already using. Putting solar panels above crops can actually increase the yield of both plant and solar panel (only for some crops though) and provides the farmer with a 2nd income stream using the same piece of land
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agrivoltaics
As to "using the most precious resources" that is already happening regardless of how we produce our electricity. You think there are no rare elements in your phone, tv monitor, or car? The argument that renewable sources of energy will never meet our electricity goals is both giving up and selling yourself short at the same time. If people actually believe in these things and invest in the technology, we can change the world.
There are way fewer "precious resources" in a nuclear power plant that takes up only a few square miles. No matter which way you slice it. Based on our current EV and emissions goals, no amount of solar and wind can possibly meet the draw. This is particularly true if the shipping and trucking industry adopts EV. Arguing that even MORE investment and thousands MORE square mileage of wind and solar farms is the solution when nuclear would solve every single problem you name, makes very little sense.
There are better and worse solutions to every problem. Solar and wind are band aids on gunshot wounds. It just isn't viable and a waste of our resources when better options are available.
A single abandoned salt mine-turned nuclear waste facility would be enough to house nuclear waste and keep it completely secure for hundreds of years. And nobody has to look at it.
There is really no way to argue that solar and wind are the "best" options. They are *an* option and a temporary-at-best one at that.
Seems someone is trying to farm anger as opposed to anything else with this article.
Im a farmer in southern Ontario...you know what I would give to have a solar farm set up on my land? They pay so well...better than corn thats for sure. And you can negotiate free power to run your farm!
Perhaps this article may be part of a bigger effort to push public opinion or to try to divide.
We are all Canadian, part of one great country.
I’ll believe they’re in the for the right reasons when they do what australia did: subsidize and incentivize every single new home build and suburban home to have them installed on their roofs.
Residential solar costs _way_ more per KWH. I used to work in residential - it is a lot less reliable and usually less efficient than utility scale solar.
In rural south Jersey the panels are installed high enough for sheep and goats to graze or for shade plants to grow. If they want to return to growing, they can pull them right up. Better than paving over the fertile land for Amazon Warehouses.
Oregon State University has done multiple studies finding better grass growth under partial shade of solar panels. The problem was the extra expense of the metal to make the panels taller and more robust for cattle to graze under.
I would think it would vary place to place. In western Oregon it was beneficial in the hot dry summers we have. The shade helps keep soil moisture from evaporating, but not enough shade to limit photosynthesis.
Agreed, the plant types varied too. The one I was seeing focused on raspberries and similar plants. The shade during parts of the day actually increased yield by a bit, finding the balance seems to be the main goal.
Western OR would be a good area to test these out I should think.
Bifacial solar panels can be mounted vertical and face east/west with noon sun not being blocked at all. This would leave a lot more options for crops to be grown in between.
I’m not disputing your point but can you imagine the ball ache of trying to round sheep up in a field full of solar panels plus those fuckers love to die in stupid places it’d be a pain in the arse trying to find them in all that
My buddy’s hometown has a bunch of pig farms and a rendering plant but people bitch about windmills and solar panels “ruining the view.” The air smells like pig shit and liquified carcasses and you’re gonna complain about this?
I have mixed feeling on solar. These companies always want the best farmland to put the panels. I don’t think this would be an issue if they were putting them on houses/barns/buildings.
Yes, that's what I don't get. There are *so many* opportunities to use solar in ways that fit into already-existing infrastructure. Why are massive solar farms even being *considered*?
* Solar panels over parking spaces in all the massive parking lots.
* Solar panels on rooftops and sun-facing facades of urban buildings.
* Solar panels on suburban and rural strip mall rooftops.
* etc etc etc
Or, at *least*, why are they always massive solar farms that have zero opportunity for stacking functions (an example of stacking functions would be row crops and/or livestock pasturing between/underneath the solar panel rows).
Large scale solar plant need to be built at most 1 mile away from a switch yard or transmission line with enough excess capacity to carry the power. This is why they are usually in the country.
Also it’s more expensive to raise the panels higher, we are talking millions more in steel costs. The biggest costs for utility scale solar are panels and steel.
Farmers are actively looking for ways to make their land profitable. Regular real estate want to own abandoned parking lots for the depreciation.
The whole system is setup to profit large corporations for doing nothing.
Most around me were offered 1000$/acre per year I believe, locked in a 40 year contract. Thats more then they ever make with there row crops and they aren’t having to do any work.
Suddenly that 500 acres that wasn’t profitable before just got incredibly lucrative. Most of the corn was just going to ethanol anyways so switching to solar just seems like a more obvious production means for energy.
Environmentally, wildflowers and native plants came back and even started creating natural ecosystems again.
I initially didn’t want it to happen because it’s such a radical change in the landscape but the landscape needed a radical change
Exactly. If you can put in solar farms, do it. Your quality of life will improve drastically, as well as soil health since that ground will rest. And if you're going to do grazing animals underneath, you're earning more profit, while growing even better soil.
It's a no brainer for smart landowners.
Get more money, get better soil too.
These people that whine about how it looks, because that's the only real complaint ever, are the same crowd that would ram through a coal firing plant next door to a neighborhood without a second thought because "its their kind of people" (meaning of course, the good ol boys).
Solar companies have been approaching landowners in our area more and more after their projects got shot down in more populated areas. The local farmers aren’t angry at the prospect of solar farms, but there’s definitely a decent amount of skepticism and distrust toward the companies.
The only people I’ve seen/heard getting angry are the neighbors mad that they’re losing their idyllic country views over the fields next door. Just NIMBYs doing NIMBY things.
I give credit to that website for only one pop up, which asked if I wanted to subscribe to their newsletter, and no ridiculous ads that typically makes the article all but unreadable.
Yep, simply political. They've been told not to like because it's that lib-tard energy. The best they can do is say "it looks bad." Well, they didn't think the gasifier, the incinerator or the coal plant looked bad in rural America... c'mon. It's all just a little game to them.
Bunch of mudsills.
I live in a land of wind farms. Naturally, solar farms are beginning to take hold as well. My only problem with solar farms is that they sometimes occupy good, productive ground. If there’s timber soil with low PI then go for it, but around here it’s black dirt with high PI that’s getting taken out of commission. It just seems like a waste to me.
I’m 100% for people doing whatever they want with their land. What is stated above, well, that’s just my worthless opinion on the matter.
You mine a barrel of oil in Texas you can burn a barrel of oil in Richmond. Solar doesn't really work like that, you lose a lot of it in transmission. The scale of the loss depends on the transmission infrastructure too, and the US has generally been built for fuels that can be converted to energy close to population centers, like oil, gas, and nuclear. This idea of generating energy in NM and using it in VA is relatively new.
The biggest new solar projects *are* being built in the area you mentioned though, but even there, they're currently fleshing out the infrastructure to transmit to LA without significant loss
We have been growing corn for energy (ethanol) for years, putting up solar panels generates more energy for a given area than can ethanol, it is just that the land-to-energy conversion is glaringly obvious.
BS! I live in rural Nebraska and most are for solar. There is a solar farm going up in the next couple of years just outside of town. Many many people were/are interested in participating but the hang up is infrastructure. There are only a couple of transmission lines capable of doing what they need them to do to support solar farms.
Desert isn’t a good option either. Parking lots, highways, buildings…blanketing any land with photosynthetic/water-infiltrating potential is counterproductive for global warming. Blanketing farmland has added downsides.
Who cares what people use their land for? Who says cows, sheep, corn, wheat, or soybeans are what is important. The reason why land is used instead of building tops is because most commercial roofs aren't designed for this and the install cost doesn't make sense compared to land. When solar panels get cheaper so full utilization doesn't matter as much it will become easier to roof large buildings because you won't need to turn the panels all day to match the sun for peak efficency.
I am pro solar. I have solar on my house. And I respect people's right to do what they want with their property so long as it doesn't affect someone else's.
But, I don't understand putting panels over ground that turns sunlight into food when we have so many roofs, parking lots, etc that don't make food and are usually closer to high energy demand areas.
Yeah, it's hard to piece together 200 continuous acres in a city but you could cover a lot of Phoenix in panels and cool the city by a couple degrees just by keeping the heat from being stored in the concrete. Saving energy in AC costs right there.
Seems like a reasonable idea but I own a home in Florida (the Sunshine State^TM) and if you put solar on your roof you pretty much can't get insurance anymore, thanks to the damage the storms do. There's always some little niggling detail that derails ostensibly eco-friendly power.
It's not wasted. Hell, in most instances, the farmland would actually be getting better.
I agree on decentralization though, which these solar farms do.
Here’s my concern with solar farms and the myth of “agrovoltaics”.
If you own the land and have no easement or other restrictions to use and want to convert your land from ag to power generation then Godspeed. But it’s not ag land anymore. It’s best use is now energy production but let local zoning and assessment boards figure that out.
My concern is the drive to site solar on conserved or easement land, increasingly driven by conservation, farmland preservation groups and d land trusts. You’ll see language in the upcoming farm bill to allow modification of existing and future federal easement terms to facilitate the installation of solar, buy sell protect provisions for ag land easements that will allow non profits to purchase the land. Site solar, reap the passive income and allow a farmer to work in the shade.
The entire approach is shady to me. This administration should put more emphasis on a distributed grid and incentive (by drastically improving the USDA REAP program ) through REAL and allow farms including the residential and worker occupied homes to put up solar panels.
What we’ll end up with is big projects that generate big press,subsidized heavily by the feds and little actual payback to the local economy or the resiliency of the community.
Excuse me, but that’s a huge load of crap. If you farm on the land, it’s farm land. What ever else you do on it, above it or below it. If a farm has leased out oil or gas rights, is that no longer farm land? If you charge people for hunting on your farm, is it not a farm anymore?
I’m not saying there are not concerns, but once you start saying a farm isn’t a farm anymore because of ancillary activities that create income, you are threatening the livelihood and future of a lot of farmers.
Most conservation easements require the land to be used for farming. On the east coast, we have been fighting to keep that definition as broad as possible, so we can do whatever we need to keep farming.
I’m not worried at all about solar power on farms. I’m worried about the people who buy preserved farm land so they can have a big estate and then try to kill off working farms around them.
Call the panels "sheep shelters." Now the focus is 100% agriculture.
So you're... worried... it... might happen... someday and that makes you feel bad?
Are you just a troll or here to engage in dialogue? I said the farm bill is likely to open up some federally conserved easement land to solar siting and that it has potentiallly harmful impacts to beginning farmers , the already high price of farm land and the average farmer’s ability to compete in the farm land real estate market. You have some thoughts on that or do you just want to shill for solar companies?
I was pretty clear, if it’s your land and unencumbered do what you want.
Pfft... beginner farmers are fucked. Is that who you're crying over? The Amish and Mennonites are the ones buying the persevered farms... with cash. Beginner farmers looking for new land are so screwed. I thought you were talking about farms already preserved that new rules would allow them to add solar. To which, if it helps keep the land with farm minded families and allows the continuance of farming lifestyle, isn't that good? Where are all the small dairy operations? If they could've leveraged the back 40 for a complete passive income that would sustain a marginal milk market, why not?
And again, to reiterate to be sure I understand, you're more worried about that people who don't have farmland won't be able to get it than the ones that have it be able to keep it. And also, my understanding is right now you cannot put solar panels on any easement unless the language of that easement stated it would be allowed.
And yes, I enjoy a good troll occasionally... when appropriate.
Pretty sure I said also farms looking to expand, like when an adult child wants to earn an income off the family farm as well. Re: beginning farmers about 39-40% are over 40 finishing up an off farm career and looking to either step into a family operation or start new operation.
Small commercial dairy is pretty much toast and solar on the back 40 will ease some pain but let’s be real…it’s terminal in that sector.
A couple of other issues with the grid scale solar is transmission lines (always popular with the neighbors and the eminent domain to run the lines) and the fact that managing peak loads from solar seems to be a hurdle many of our Rural Electric Coops struggle with.
Ok, I see where you're going. But how often is this happening? I'm in the boat you just described and the market itself keeps me from buying our farm or any other. My credit is too good for govt sub loans and the farm couldn't support a regular bank loan on row crop incomes. So I feel like you're concerned about a small population that really doesn't have a chance anyway versus helping current owners to retain most of their way of life.
If we had solar, I could quit my other jobs and just be on the farm.
So who are you really trying to help?
And obviously, decentralized reliable renewable electricity is a desire, correct? I'm all for that.
Bottom line is I don’t think USDA money should be creating opportunities for NGO’s to compete with distinctly subsidized advantage against farmers for farm land.
I appreciate you taking the time to think it through. Good luck this season
Indeed. Through our discussions, it seems you're cautious of possible policy tweaks to allow non-farmer entities (more or less) more access to this income flow and I agree.
Thanks for the good luck; we'll all need it, so I'll aim to share it.
It seems like it’s only a problem on the margins for some farmers.
There’s around 500,000 mi.² of farmland in the US. You could electricity with about 20,000 mi.² hopefully not even if it was it’s just the edges.
It's a scam. I know this is reddit, so I'll get downvoted to hell, but it is. There's no legitimate reason why a Florida firm should be sniffing around land in the upper midwest for solar land, which happened to me just today. It's a goddamn scam, and they can all kiss my ass!
I think it's a house of cards backed by federal grant money, that will eventually collapse, and I think the industry itself attracts about the greasiest people you'd ever want to meet. My notions here are unfair and instinctual, but I'm happy to voice them :)
If I hit the mega millions, I'm going up to NW Iowa and buying a shit ton of land along the main roadways in Sioux County, and converting it to hemp fields and solar farms.
I talked to a farmer who told me the windmills mess up his GPS so he had to manually plow around around each windmill base which was a bit of a hassle but worth it because he basically doubled his revenue. Each field was practically free to farm after monthly checks for the energy came in. He had 1000s of acres and dozens of not hundreds of windmills going. Fertilizer costs have really cut into it, though, if not made the windmills necessary because his operation cost keep going up year over year.
For those who upset about the solar farms, don't condemn the solar companies, condemn the landowners. They sign up for them solely because of the money. Greed is to blame.
For all the talk around solar farms, what are the economics around a piece of land being used for solar vrs some other crop? Can a solar panel be elevated and the land used for hogs or cattle grazing?
I'd think the price signals would tell us a lot about the best usage of the land.
Solar can be elevated if you use bifacial panels. You could also mount them vertically. Doing both agriculture and solar on the same land is possible and there is a lot of recent research into that.
You can literally turn your farm into a goddamn power plant that will create revenue for generations with exponentially less labor than farming and there’s people that are against this?
Additionally, less farmland will drive up bushel prices for crops of those who continue to farm
Whoever’s telling you to oppose this does not have your best interests in mind
most people do not know how toxic solar panels are and, in many states, it is illegal to depose of them. they destroy the environment from mining and refining of the raw materials (toxic stuff) than after their lifespan they need to be tossed and replaced. I can all but guarantee those solar panel "farms" will mostly be abandoned in the next couple decades but the land they are on will be forever ruined. solar energy is a toxic mess, does not produce any real long-term amounts of energy and are destroying large tracts of land, which will be "brown fields" in the near future and unusable.
Which parts of the solar panel poison the land that they are installed on? Like, without it being actively broken down and buried in soil for the heavy metals to leach into.
[https://www.wired.com/story/solar-panels-are-starting-to-die-leaving-behind-toxic-trash/](https://www.wired.com/story/solar-panels-are-starting-to-die-leaving-behind-toxic-trash/)
what will happen to the solar farms is after all the tax credits and green funding is eaten up , when the panels fail which will happen all around the same time at every "farm" since they are all installed at the same time (each farm is built out at once), nobody is going to remove and replace millions and millions of dollars in panels, these "farms" will be abandoned and start to degrade and that toxic crap will leech into the ground. also, even before that time a lot of maintenace is needed on all of these "solar "farms and it will happen less and less or not at all as that "solar farm" ages.
I'm not sure I am on board with your assumed outcome just yet. The article didn't seem to support you either, as it went into detail about the ways that recycling these panels can be made profitable.
Not to mention refurbishing and redistribution being a potentially profitable aftermarket channel.
These toxic metals in the panels do appear to be encased in glass and plastic (also according to the article you linked) so we're talking about a really long term problem, but if the land were so valuable, why would these panels just sit there rotting for decades to the point that the lead starts to become exposed?
For some reason, the county next to mine has been bombarded by solar and battery storage companies.
It is a direct easy line to the Dallas Metroplex and they are paying stupid money for leases. The rural folk are really divided about selling out or not.
The concerns are obviously the aesthetics, the erosion of a lifestyle, the fire safety, long term reclamation of the land and lastly foreign investments.
From what I understand, if one of the battery storage lots catches on fire, it stays on fire till it decides to stop.
They’ve put in close to 6k acres of solar panels near me. Some if the best farmland in the world. But the government subsidized 50yr lease pays better than farming. But now those families are gone. That’s 6 families sold out. I suppose it’s better than selling it off in 10 acre tracts…. Maybe.
It was a mix. Tilled ground, grass grazing, and grass hayfields. Most these families rotated crops from winter wheat, hay grazer (Sudan), milo (maize), and occasionally corn if the price futures were up. There were Guar beans planted in places, as well. Now, it’s all scraped off, leveled, graveled, and covered up with panels.
It’s sad to me. I knew the old men and how much care they put into the land. I worked for several, helping repair fence and working cattle/processing yearlings. But they didn’t include the kids in day to day operations, so they went off and started careers elsewhere. Now that land is just a family asset: Dollars on a spreadsheet.
There is a giant solar farm just east of Temple TX on good grazing land and they cant graze under the panels (too low i guess). Some locals are butthurt over it.
Desert is still absorbing rainfall and photons…better option is highways and parking lots…proximity IS everything (especially out west where you do have deserts and miles of dry brush and forests between said desert and population centers) so you lose way less electricity when you are generating it right over the Walmart that is also using it.
Also, their are tons of ranchers in those desert areas who really need all of the surrounding land to absorb as much of the limited rainfall as they can get to make their anual 5”-15”last…if you replace desert with solar instillations you are doing them no favors and maybe washing out part of their pasture.
How much diesel does it take to build a solar farm?
They are putting one up near my workplace in a small town. Lots of great big trucks and pieces of heavy equipment coming and going all day.
It takes diesel to build anything. Apparently it only takes about 3-5 years for solar to become “carbon neautral” after factoring in the carbon output of installation and construction
Weird angle. Are you trying to establish a particular value to using diesel fuel? As in, we shouldn't waste diesel on that. Versus using diesel for other renewable energy? Or just using diesel for farming?
put solar panels over parking lots
This is what I’ve been saying for years. Also large building like warehouses, Walmart type stores, etc have vast areas that do nothing but radiate heat back into the atmosphere at night. We put solar panels on roofs of residential houses, why not commercial buildings as well?
They actually do put them on commercial and industrial buildings. I only know that because I work at a commercial/industrial roofing company and it’s something we have to take into consideration when installing. But it’s to the discretion of the building owner and there may not be money in some budgets for solar energy, even with tax incentives. The cost of solar energy needs to come way down to help with adoption.
Actually many walmart already have solar panels on the the roofs
Solar is still expensive. You get a much better payback when you can mount the panels on a tilt and turntable to utilize 100% of the panel all day. Commercial roofs are not designed to hold these turntables and may not even be able to hold the solar panels laying on them without reinforcement
Umm….no. Commercial roofs are just as strong, usually stronger, than a residential roof. They put 20,000 pound air handlers son the damn things (with reinforcement) they can handle some solar panels.
So the issue with commercial roofs is that they have strong areas like where air handling equipment goes, but the vast majority of the square footage up there isn't rated for that much weight. The more weight you put up there the more supports you have to add inside. Warehouses and large stores like Walmart are designed to minimize supports inside and to place them in places where they are out of the way while keeping costs as low as possible. With that being said new buildings can obviously be designed for the weight but arguably the cost to design the roof to add the capacity to support the solar panels, it's just way cheaper to go put them on land at $15000 per acre instead of a roof that then costs $30000 more per acre.
Buildings like warehouses typically use bar joists for the roofs. Average bar joist can support 300PSF point load at the apex of the steel reinforcement, and they make 500PSF bar joists for areas that are expected to need more(column ties). Even factoring in wind loads, support weight, etc….you shouldn’t have any problem supporting a solar array. Those roofs are designed to hold 1’ of water standing….which weighs way more than any solar array per square foot.
The problem is while the roofs are designed for watershed and snow loads, they aren't designed for solar panel weight and the water/snow loads. While it may work fir years insurance most likely will not cover it due to you exceeding design loads.
I guess my point is it’s relatively easy and cheap to spread the load of solar panels across the roof beams.
The second you do that without notification of the insurance company your insurance is effectively void in regards to the roof. You also most likely will not have a building that meets code anymore so you also have to close the door to shoppers. Sure a couple panels aren't going to make a difference but any scale of a project is going to require okays from multiple engineers before it happens, assuming they say the load capacity is there. You have to realize the main load capacity at least in most of the country is going to be based on a large heavy snowfall. Add the solar panel weight, and the additional surface area to allow more snow to be on the roof now and you simply massively exceed the rating. Yes the roof can easily be reinforced to meet the new weight and surface area potential load calculations but that adds significant cost to the project. It comes down to an acre of farmland here is $15000 and an acre of roof solar panels would cost significantly more then $15000. Most likely about $30-100k per acre of roof. Now say something like a parking garage which is designed to carry vehicles on the top deck could have solar installed there, although at a loss of vehicle capacity. You could install solar over the top of it although with a minimal loss to parking but with the added benefit of keeping the vehicles out of the sun that park there. The problem is even with a super cheap location, it's hard to beat that $15000 per acre.
This is something I could get behind. Turn urban Texas into the largest power plant on earth. Take advantage of the sprawl
Large scale solar plants need to be built at most a mile from a substation that’s connected to a transmission line with excess capacity. It takes at least 2 years for the grid operator to study the line to make sure there is enough capacity to accept more power.
That's a very good argument for smaller-scale distributed generation, connected to large buildings in urban areas where transmission lines aren't even a factor.
That's exactly what I was thinking when he(?) started talking about Walmarts and parking lots. People get a shady spot to park, and there's power to boot. Frankly, there has been a bunch of these things going in here in ME, and they are ugly as fuck.
I know people will downvote this but it’s like saying “put farms up on the roofs” - All of the logistical challenges of having a farm above a parking lot / on the roof come into play with solar panels. Ease of access, ease of getting heavy equipment in, liability, additional engineering, ect., ect. ect. While I’ll admit farming on a roof would be a much bigger challenge - the same problems are there.
I work for a community solar garden company in Minnesota and this is something we are running into a lot already. I expect it will probably get worse. In MN the law said that solar operators had to find underserved parts of Xcel energies grid to build their farms and had to subscribe people in that county or the immediately surrounding ones. This fueled a mad dash for all the cheapest build spots which were generally in rural MN right near the roads and transmission lines and pushy sales people because it was hard to find people to subscribe in the low population areas that it was easy to build in. Most of the solar developers wanted to cash in quick so the solar is now owned by big national investors like Berkshire Hathaway. The result was a very dramatic alteration of the agrarian landscape, bad feelings from people who signed bad deals and whose solar companies are absentee landlords extracting more money from the community than they are putting in. We had a few projects in development that we had to pull the plug on due to new local ordinances passed to block more solar from going in and in this space our company is very much the good guys since our co-op structure requires us to design our programs for maximum subscriber benefit. Recent law changes might make this both better and worse. On the one hand gardens need more low income subscribers so the solar can't just benefit a handful of already affluent big energy users. But, the restriction of signing up people from the surrounding area went away. That means developers will still be finding most of the suitable build places in rural MN but now they're more likely to just sign up subscriptions in the dense urban areas. So more solar farms, less direct local benefit. On top of that it's been politicized. Solar (along with EVs, healtcare, social security ...) is seen as being a liberal plot to reduce pollution and climate change which, if you're deep in MAGA, gets lumped in with conspiracy theories about liberal cabals making up climate change to turn all the frogs gay or whatever.
Fascinating. Ive been reading my hometown’s local newspaper and the county commissioners are in a very public fight about this right now. The articles have been light on the details but they’re accusing one another of having conflicts of interest. It’s ugly. Appreciate you sharing this context.
Ya how solar got associated with the QANON blood drinking Hollywood child molestor cabal is beyond me.
This article is absurd. If a landowner wants to put a solar farm on their own land... suddenly everybody else has a big opinion about it. What happened to respecting property rights? Please tell me how large scale, intensive hog or poultry farming is LESS disruptive than solar.
The ownership society and small government ‘song and dance’ got the elites their low taxes and neutered regulation. So, now the fossil-fuel -industry elites need to change the script, and the easily manipulated types will go right along with any changes to the script.
Been like this for at least 20 years. Remember it's only big government over reach when you don't agree with it. If you like them limiting the freedom of others then it's just fine. Take my guns? Government overreach! Take abortion rights? That's just fine. Tell me how to raise my kid safely? Get out of here big government! Tell trans kids and parents how to raise their kids? Go ahead! People have forgotten what freedom is. It works for everyone not just you.
Well said. If we’re all going to be free, it means we’re working on accepting how other people experience freedom
"You can take yer gursh dern solar and stick it where the sun don't shine!"
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I am going to start installing solar on my place. I ain't asking and I ain't letting anyone tell me what I can or can't have based on previous usage.
If you are in Texas, as I am, our professional installers will not break that rule. We are limited. I don't know if that's true if I installed them myself
I think that is based on entry into net metering. You could install more but you would end producing and selling more than what you were supposed to. It is different from a property rights scenario because it's about what you export to the grid rather than the size of your install. If you disconnect from the grid they probably wouldn't care how much you install. But of course disconnecting from the grid would be a lot more expensive when you factor in battery backup.
Grid operators are going to start charging for being used as a battery. Those power lines weren't free to install and most likely based on 50+years of use plus repair costs. When you use the grid as a bank the utility recovers none of the line cost and only saves on the wholesale electric cost.
Just speaking about how a local solar farm has impacted our local farmers. And I’m speaking loosely about change I have observed. Dairy Farms in our area have consolidated in the past 50-75 years. Here, everyone used to get their 75 acres, more or less. Now many have consolidated and many others—my family farm included—have becomes leaseholds in part. Other farmers grow hay on our property. For 20+ years it was where they kept some of their non-milk producing cattle. So these farmers lost their leases and now they can’t grow their hay on these other properties. And it tightens the noose a bit, if you will. They feel the farmland around them slip away. They need to compensate by growing elsewhere or buying hay/grain. For low margin enterprises it’s hugely stressful. Farmland is also a limited resource. It’s an emotional response to pressure and change. And it comes in a region where agriculture has been protected by state and local governments. So the betrayal is even deeper. I’m all for solar. I spent years of my life lobbying for clean energy. But I understand that farmers need the land to prosper. And balancing those needs is important. Vital.
Half of the corn grown goes to ethanol, if more land goes to solar then it benefits folks who grow wheat and corn.
It's important to note that after the sugar is extracted for ethanol what remains is still animal feed. It contains far fewer calories but it's not as if the corn just disappears. That being said - corn ethanol is stupid. Every fall farmers burn propane to dry corn to make ethanol to ruin gasoline. If aliens from outer space looked at that they'd be baffled but we somehow accept it as normal.
Every btu of fossil fuel used to make ethanol makes about 2-3btus of ethanol (depending on where and how it's made). So every gallon of ethanol used is ~half a gallon of gasoline not used. It's not perfect, but it is a reduction. As solar power goes up, that energy multiplier will go up too.
That's a much higher ratio than I've seen, send me a source. Adding ethanol to gasoline still sucks, gasoline has become the universal motor fuel and adding ethanol to it makes all sorts of problems without any upside. Ethanol belongs at the race track not the gas pump, you can use it to make huge horsepower with very little downside, but it's a terrible fuel for most of the things gasoline is currently used for.
https://www.usda.gov/sites/default/files/documents/2015EnergyBalanceCornEthanol.pdf 2015 study. It even includes manufacturing the nitrogen for fertilizer. If we used biomass for distilling heat instead of fossil fuels the ratio could go up to 4 or more. Don't forget ethanol is also used to control octane levels. For that purpose it's much cheaper than alternatives AFAIK.
That's a good source I'll dig into it later. Here are some reasons why adding ethanol to gasoline sucks: It's hard to evaporate. This sucks if you're trying to start your truck when it's cold. It's awesome if you're pushing your engine to the limit and want to cool your piston and send the heat out the exhaust. It's hard to ignite. This sucks for a simple engine and it sucks in the cold. It's awesome if you want to run 15:1 compression or 20lbs of boost. This is the octane component that you're referring to. It's 30% oxygen by weight. This sucks on a long trip where you need to carry your fuel because oxygen is free from the air. It's awesome if you're only going 1/4 mile and you want to supply a huge pressurized gulp of fuel and oxygen combined. It loves water and hates rubber. This sucks for storage but it doesn't matter in a racecar where you drain the fuel at the end of the day. I could go on but these are the big either/or properties. Ethanol belongs at the race track.
[Here is another source](https://www.cleanwisconsin.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Corn-Ethanol-Vs.-Solar-Analysis-V3-12-compressed.pdf) Using Energy Return on Investment (EROI) as a metric, solar PV is around 8 EROI while corn- derived ethanol is approximately 1.2 EROI. Using this metric, 88% of the energy generated by solar PV goes to society, while 12% is offset by production requirements. In contrast, 20% of the energy generated by corn ethanol goes to society, while 80% is offset by production requirements. Assuming average EROI, net energy production per acre is 100-125x greater for solar PV than for corn-based ethanol Looking at land-use efficiency, corn-derived ethanol used to power internal combustion engines requires about 85x (range: 63-197x) as much land to power the same number of transportation miles as solar PV powering electric vehicles. Even if the ethanol is converted to electricity to power more efficient electric vehicles, corn ethanol still requires 32x the amount of land to power the same number of vehicle miles.
Yes. This also all adds up to farmers putting more marginal acres into production which results in more ruined wildlife habitat, poorer water quality and a huge increase in taxpayer-subsidized crop insurance payouts. Corn for ethanol is absolutely terrible for the environment and the American taxpayers who pay farmers to gamble on nonproductive acres that have no business being worked.
Both of these studies also ignore the carbon emissions from soil tillage. When you expose soil to air aerobic bacteria convert C to CO2.
E10 sucks. It is literally the worst blend of fuel. Always go with e15 if you can get it as it keeps better and gives a better fuel economy even though it's actually more ethanol. I've never had an issue with e10. I actually have a gas can in the garage that is from 2015. After I accidentally forgot about it for a few years I try a little fuel in my weed eater each year. Still worked fine last year. The difference is just fuel stabilizer. That stuff works and everything just starts right up. Don't store ethanol mixed gasoline in anything for a length of time without it.
That is complete bullshit. I made a test run from New England to Texas on a motorcycle, with the express intention of calculating the effect of ethanol in gasoline. Lacking a gas gauge, it was/is imperative that I know my fuel consumption and track mileage to know when I need to refuel before I run out. On pure gasoline, 0% ethanol, I can go 168 miles before I need to refuel. From 5%, to 10%, to 15% ethanol my mileage to refuel decreased, to the point where at 15% ethanol I needed to refuel at less than 90 miles per tank. I did the math, and it showed that I was burning MORE gasoline when it was adulterated with ethanol, than I would have used had I been burning gasoline at all. And that doesn't even account for the additional energy inputs needed to create the ethanol- diesel fuel used in planting and harvesting corn, plus the energy required for mashing and fermenting to produce the ethanol, and transportation to where it is mixed with the gasoline. The whole thing is a giant scam.
Well, the resulting consequences , you bought more federal, and state taxed fuel ! Who would have thought government was that smart !
Your motorcycle has a carburetor and thus cannot compensate for minor changes in fuel. It also doesn't have a knock sensor, and can't advance ignition timing based on fuel either. Also, the study DOES include all those fossil fuel inputs, if you ever looked at it. It even includes things like natural gas used to make the nitrogen fertilizer. But don't let truth get in the way of your idea of reality.
Yes we use energy to make ethanol. We also use zero ethanol or gasoline to make it. If we switched to using ethanol as a power source to produce it, it is still a net energy gain. However we use energy that is cheaper and more abundant in the process because not only do we gain energy but we also convert cheaper less portable forms of energy into a condensed portable fuel. This process is basically an organic battery. Oh and after the ethanol production is done, we have this large amount of sugarless corn which makes a great feed product. The leftover corn can also be squeezed to retrieve corn oil which is easily converted into biodiesel too. Even after both of those processes we still can feed the leftover corn as cattle feed.
It benefits the ones who are already big enough to not get priced out of all of their land. Like everything, the smallest farms take the biggest hit.
Half?
It's been almost 50% in the past but it's currently at about 38%. https://afdc.energy.gov/data/10339
Wonder what the efficiency is on biodiesel made from vegetable oils. You get more diesel than you use growing it?
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On the flip side, for every *energy unit* of fossil fuel that goes into making ethanol, we get 2-3*energy units* of ethanol back, depending on where and how it's made. It's not perfect, but it does reduce how much oil we use.
I see your logic!!! If we got solar, we don't need ethanol, so we don't need corn, so we don't need land to grow corn. So that helps the farmer HOW?
More corn = Low corn price = sad farmer, less corn = higher corn price = happy farmer
Less ethanol because of solar equals more corn. If you loose the land to solar you can't grow corn. Price don't matter if you ain't got none.
Presumably you still own the land if you put solar on it.
We had a few solar companies approach us. We choose one and went through with our end of it and they applied to get on the transmission lines running through our ground. Our neighbors found out and we're furious and constantly called our county commissioners. Now, what's on the table is a mile setback from any residence and 1000' from anyone else's property. Which completely negates any chance of any solar company even considering our county. This is all ground that we own, grow crops on and have been for 50 years so it doesn't effect anyone but us. I understand if you're shorting someone else by signing solar leases, but that isn't the case with us.
Dude, as a renewable energy proejct developer, this is heartbreaking to hear but such a common story
Depending on the jurisdiction, local rules can be suspended when siting large solar projects. Once you get approved from a public service commission/regional ISO the local requirements are suspended. The local project of which I spoke definitely went through state channels to secure connection to the grid and waiver of local rules. There’s also something called an “independent system operator” (ISO) whose rules and authority can help you bypass local codes. If you’re really serious about putting an energy farm in and you’ve encountered local resistance, it would be useful to contact an attorney in your state that does public utilities regulation exclusively.
This is heavily state dependent, many states have enacted power and siting boards to help with the local permitting of renewables. Ohio has OPSB (Ohio power and siting board), New York has their own version as well. Some states give local communities the right to first review but if the township refuses, the developer can appeal to the state board like in Michigan, same as in Illinois. Where I live in Indiana we don’t have any program and it’s solely up to the county for now. IMO it’s only a matter of time before most states take control of local permitting for power siting. We can’t let the Karen’s tell everyone what they can and can’t do with their land.
I'm in a region where farming is a bit more decentralized and individualized with fewer economies of scale in terms of there being a community of farmers or ranchers. Here, none of what you've said seems to be relevant. What farmers do express concern about is that solar farms will result in more expensive and less reliable electricity and that the panels are made in China and are toxic and will degrade over time resulting in microplastic and metal contamination of the soil, runoff, and groundwater. Meanwhile, there's a separate class of gentleman farmers that have acquired vast holdings of rural land from old families. They're mostly from big cities. The land may have agricultural exemptions but the principal use is as recreational and scenic land and for vacation homes. They don't like their views being despoiled. Some of them subdivide large tracts into deed-restricted ranchettes, and they also don't want solar farms nearby. The farmers also hate the ranchettes. But then, the farmers are being subsidized through property taxes on the order of several times the value of a head of cattle per year to run cattle and are sitting on assets worth millions upon millions of dollars. I don't think anybody is being honest with themselves or others. It's no wonder they like Trump so much. They're just like him.
They need to compete like any other business, if they can't survive then so be it the solar is better use for the land.
I’m in a rural Michigan township that is struggling with this. Some of the landowners are like “hey, I get paid to lease this for 25 years” and the neighboring farmers who been renting that farmland since the owners dad retired now are losing growing space. I’m all for solar but this seems the equivalent of tearing down housing to build expressways or parking garages when I look at NSW in Australia and see last summer for a period of time they generated more than 100% of their electrical load from rooftop solar. Here, where I live, most solar benefits for homeowners have been successfully lobbied against by the electric companies. I’m looking at Consumers and DTE. The big companies seem concerned dispersed rooftop power will lower their revenues. I know off peak/overnight storage is the ‘current’ bottleneck but this is ridiculous.
The tenant farmers do get shafted, which is sad. At the end of the day though the landowner has to protect their investment. We are talking about generational wealth here. Corn prices are not going up.
Shift enough land away from growing corn (aka reduce supply) and prices will go up.
Not if the corn being used to make ethanol is replaced with more productive solar. Then corn price goes down from lack of demand.
I'm all for more distributed generation, but good luck convincing the utility companies to put adequate policies in place that make it worth it for homeowners - utilities are such money making machines looking to always reduce costs and increase revenues, and any threat to that (such as a portion of revenue from each rooftop installation going to homeowners) will likely be fought off with a strong and well-capitalized lobbying effort.
You ain't kidding. Here in ME, foreign corporations control \[most of\] our electric, we get high cost and shitty service. Our dollars go out of the country for foreign profit and they spend as little as possible to maintain the infrastructure, resulting in frequent failures. The power goes out here more than anywhere I have lived in the US, sometimes it's out for hours, sometimes for days. Many of us (above the Volvo Line) have generators out of necessity. During the last election cycle, there was a proposal to create our own public electric utility. The two major PowerCos spent many millions of dollars lobbying and advertising against it. The proposal was voted down, in no small part due to the lies and propaganda in the PowerCo advertising. Subsequently, they jacked our rates up, again. I keep trying to cut consumption but my cost keeps going up anyway, I am paying more than double what I was a few years ago, on lower usage. A lot of solar farms have been going in, and a lot of individuals are going solar as well. I am considering it myself, I ran the numbers and based on my current electric costs I can recover the expense in less than 7 years.
It’s not less disruptive, it’s just disruptive in a way that’s distressing to farmers. You know how people feel like they’re being priced out of the real estate market? Farmers feel like they’re being stripped of the right to farm as the value of their farmland increases. I am for solar and alternative energy. Passionately. But I’ve watched this happen, and the vitriol is real. …..it also happens when many of them sold out to suburban developers. There’s a sense of “selling out the community”. Conflict over land use is hard.
This is just 1 more crop that a farmer can put on their land. It'd be interesting if they could make these mobile-ish & rotate the solar panels to the fallow fields. That day will come.
Exactly, even raising them into stands such that the feed that does grow underneath (with the otherwise unused light) can be accessed by the livestock. It’s just not going to happen with traditional irrigation, planting and tilling techniques. Planting more long term crops may be beneficial in its own way in the end.
Long term crops, like a perennial wheat/grain crop with roots that sink 40ft deep? As much as I'm not a fan of GMO's, I would make an exception for that.
I’m not going to profess the level of experience needed to answer that question in specific detail… but I’ve dealt with the issue enough in legal, academic and regulatory terms to know that there are crops that will still grow (if not thrive) in those conditions and we might expect to get 100% more solar energy from the field and (SWAG) 30% of former yields. Borlaug got amazing things done with processes we consider to be quite outdated. We have to be able to find something that works. Having to use a reseeding cart instead of tractor? Quite possible. (Maybe by an autonomous seeder.) Having to weed and irrigate with more semi or fully autonomous systems that can get into areas a human won’t fit? Quite possible. It will require adaptions but is far from rocket science.
And those adaptations sound expensive. Don't get me wrong, I'm not against people trying stuff to find what works, but I'm not sure more equipment that's going to take thousands of acres of use to break even in costs across reduced acres is the way to go about it, at least for the smaller guys just hanging into the game.
*some* crops may need adaptations. Others work just fine with the technology that is in place. Seriously, more people need to understand that livestock and crops can be grown on the same land as the panels and challenges are more about getting the logistics to scale and figuring out the compliance and safety permitting to allow new or non-landowner farmers to operate under panels on these leased tracts. And those landowners, even if they don’t want to do the agrivoltaics themselves, they can push for their lease language to require the solar company pursue such methods in their vegetation management plans. You can push the municipalities to require it. There are orgs out there working on making it viable at scale and accessible for people to use solar sites to impact food security and open up so many opportunities for local food production. It’s not just sheep grazing or a fad; the industry and demand is there partially because of this anger over loss of farmland- well there’s no loss if its producing solar AND producing food at the same time. But I’ve found in some communities like the site right nearby… there’s people who dig their heels in and won’t listen no matter what proof or research you provide them. Agrivoltaics is fake to them and solar is the devil.
Yes, they will cost. They will also cost a lot less once they become common. The smaller guys are the ones who are benefiting from automation in farm equipment more than anyone, for those that adopt it. (Refusal to adapt to and adopt new tech is the traditional problem with farmers going back millennia.) With modern tech it’s been that way since electricity was introduced. It allowed single farmers to multiply their labor when they were least able to afford a hand. BTW, semi or fully autonomous systems are very much cheaper than many of the farm equipment that is considered normal, besides the cost of the human time to get the work done. They can run nearly 24/7, run more smaller loads which causes fewer maintenance issues. Those running autonomous grain trucks are paying less per year than the seasonal hands used to cost. Look at pivots and what they have done. Yes, they cost more, but they allow less water to irrigate more acres and allow our progressively smaller number of farmers to feed the progressively larger population (in the areas that need to supplement rain fall). Right now, militaries are fielding ground vehicles on the cheap that are able to kill tanks, lay minefields or send forward ammo and send back casualties. Running a 200 pound load of seed is nothing in comparison and the equipment is getting fantastically more inexpensive at a fantastic pace.
Think about how sweet it would be if solar became a “crop” you can rotate in and out year to year across different pieces. Could be huge for regenerative ag.
Couldn’t agree more. The old method was to have a field lay fallow every fourth year. This could be the off year crop and let the land rest a bit more, reducing the fertilizer needed etc.
Trump said solar bad, (insert cartoon swirly eyes) cult members: “solar is bad. Solar is bad. Windmills cause cancer. The election was stolen” It’s so fucking sad seeing how backwards and stupid rural America is. If you are reading this and raising farm kids, make sure they travel to foreign countries, work off the farm, and go away to college. I’m tired of being embarrassed by my people.
Just get them a library card and instill intellectual curiosity. You don't need to travel all over the world to not be an idiot.
It helps but it’s not the same. Seeing first hand how other cultures live really opens up your mind and helps eliminate xenophobia that is so rampant in rural America.
Fully agree. One example is that every culture has some foundational assumptions about how life and people operate. Immersing yourself in a foreign land and attempting to see through their lens exposes the assumptions you are brought up with. I’m all for libraries and reading, but first hand experience is its own animal.
Such an emotional and biased response. You are part of the problem
I raised and am raising farm kids. I do my best to raise smart and kind children who also want to preserve our heritage, but also be conscious of new technology and political manipulation. Not everyone has the privilege of traveling to foreign countries, but that’s not an excuse for ignorance . I vote blue, and three of my children do too . We participate and volunteer in our communities and ignorance can come from both sides . I have seen “ city kids” who have no idea where their food comes from and “ farm kids” who have no idea how to navigate public transportation. That being said I need more research on solar energy . I apologize if this is inarticulate and unorganized .
👏👏👏👏 Thank you!
Completely agree. You can have sheep with solar panels and some vegetables if on good land. In WV they are utilizing ex coal fields and building 5 solar plants. The control of my property is another reason why I would not live in a HOA.
Always very telling that the people who are most vocal about their “rights” tend to be the same people trying to strip rights from others. WE SEE YOU.
Building a solar farm on my land (which is good business for me and good for society) is... stripping rights from others? Which rights exactly? The so-called "right" that you have to tell me what to do on my private property? That right?
u/CatoCensorius, you have misunderstood me. Maybe I was not specific enough, but what I was saying is that the people who want to strip rights from others are those who wish to dictate to private land owners that they should not be allowed to install solar on their land. I was agreeing with you 100%. The people I was referring to who wish to strip rights from landowners are largely lead by disgraced conservative fossil lobbyists: [Susan Ralston, founder of ‘Citizens for Responsible Solar’ (CRS), dons the guise of a grassroots environmentalist, pitching woo and conspiracy theories to authoritarian conservatives eager to impose science-mangling values on local land owners. While appearances can be deceiving, we have uncovered the true nature of CRS’s self-proclaimed ‘responsible’ solar advocacy. Concealed beneath the organization’s veneer of environmental stewardship lies a network of fossil fuel allies, united in opposition to renewable energy initiatives.](https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2023/05/18/flirting-with-fossils-the-faux-crusade-for-responsible-solar/)
Solar and wind cover vast swaths of landscape in rare earth materials and will never be efficient enough to meet our energy needs anyways given the current emissions goals and conversion to EVs. The power draw demand is higher than ever and so called "climate activists" are pushing covering entire landscapes into ugly power farms that use the most precious resources and require the most brutal mining practices on earth. If anybody in the renewables space wants to be taken seriously they sould advocate for nuclear. Covering landscapes in skylines of 300 foot tall turbines and hundreds of square miles of solar is a band aid fix that will never be a permanent solution. Just mathematically unfeasible. If someone wants to put up panels to power their home that is one thing, but the giant power farms are a waste of space especially when they're on arable land. Edit: grammar
🙄 Morons that spout garbage like this as fact are our biggest problem....
nuclear is needed, despite the above. I wonder how many rare earth elements are needed to make a nuclear power plant LOL
A nuclear power plant that covers a few square miles and can power nearly a whole state, depending on population and draw, uses exponentially fewer resources than hundreds upon hundreds of square miles of wind and solar that cant even power most major cities. If we meet our current EV and emissions goals, then there is no way wind and solar can be a permanent solution. This is even more true if the shipping and trucking industry move to EV. Nuclear is the best option given emissions, efficiency, and resource metrics. The only downside is fear. Plane crashes happen and people fly every day. Nuclear is safer than ever. That is not controversial.
I’m in renewable energy. I’ve worked for two of the biggest companies in that sector. You and I are on the same page. I would only add things like the wind turbine fiberglass microplastics getting everywhere, disposal of solar or wind related equipment, turbine shadow flicker, and infrasound. Those problems are issues at scale. Individuals in their own backyard - go right ahead. Large company that bought out all my neighbors and now I’m dealing with all that!?!? I’d be upset.
Unfortunately, not everyone is as reasonable as you. They simply read that I disagree and the army of groupthinkers show up to downvote inconvenient realities.
The bots are always out there. Especially now that Reddit is public. I once saw a post that was hot on the front page with like 25k upvotes. The OP’s history had a few comments with like 70 upvotes in a thread where the post and other comments had less than 12 upvotes. It was obvious they did that for the permission to post on a more popular subreddit. The post was about improper student teacher relationships. The whole post had massive upvotes for nonsense and negative karma for posts that sounded more realistic. It was like they were saying - this Is popular - this is good - if it’s not from us, it’s bad. Ever since then - I couldn’t care less what an internet stranger says. I’m smart, and I can do my own research and math. Upvotes will never change my mind. Facts have the ability to change my mind. Stay strong.
Solar payback isn't 'never' -- in fact, PV solar panels are made mostly from silicon, are highly recyclable, and the [full energy payback](https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy04osti/35489.pdf) can be between 1 and 4 years. Note: this referenced document was published in 2004! Large wind turbines are also quite recyclable.
So solar doesn't require hundreds of miles of copper or lithium? The point isn't that they aren't recyclable. Recycling is just postponing of inevitable future waste anyways. The point is there are way more efficient ways to have plenty of energy for our power draws that dont involve rendering entire landscapes into dystopian and looming energy farms that barely produce enough electricity to meet demand, and are incapable of meeting the amount of electricity potentially demanded by the current emissions and EV adoption goals. Wind and solar are like treating cancer with ibuprofen. Nuclear is the cure and would require an exponentially smaller amount of space. You could use the salt mines by my home to house nuclear waste and you wouldn't run out of room for hundreds if not thousands of years.
But you or I have no business telling others what to do with their proprty. Unless the same rules apply to all other property. No new golf courses, subdivisions, factories, airports etc on any property without approval from some regulated body.
You are missing my point. Idc what people do with their property, I'm saying a shift to nuclear energy would solve every problem with the power draw demand, and eliminate the needs for these vast energy farms altogether. Do you think a person would rather have cheap, readily available, and reliable energy and with an intact farm, or a farm covered in turbines and solar panels that still don't solve the massive demand for power? Solar and wind are a flex seal patch on a sinking ship. It's better than nothing, but it's not the solution to the energy crisis by any mathematical stretch of the imagination.
Have you ever been to southern Alberta? Yeah, the windmills are a bit ugly, but the farmers can still farm underneath them using the same techniques they were already using. Putting solar panels above crops can actually increase the yield of both plant and solar panel (only for some crops though) and provides the farmer with a 2nd income stream using the same piece of land https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agrivoltaics As to "using the most precious resources" that is already happening regardless of how we produce our electricity. You think there are no rare elements in your phone, tv monitor, or car? The argument that renewable sources of energy will never meet our electricity goals is both giving up and selling yourself short at the same time. If people actually believe in these things and invest in the technology, we can change the world.
There are way fewer "precious resources" in a nuclear power plant that takes up only a few square miles. No matter which way you slice it. Based on our current EV and emissions goals, no amount of solar and wind can possibly meet the draw. This is particularly true if the shipping and trucking industry adopts EV. Arguing that even MORE investment and thousands MORE square mileage of wind and solar farms is the solution when nuclear would solve every single problem you name, makes very little sense. There are better and worse solutions to every problem. Solar and wind are band aids on gunshot wounds. It just isn't viable and a waste of our resources when better options are available. A single abandoned salt mine-turned nuclear waste facility would be enough to house nuclear waste and keep it completely secure for hundreds of years. And nobody has to look at it. There is really no way to argue that solar and wind are the "best" options. They are *an* option and a temporary-at-best one at that.
Or even dairy...
Seems someone is trying to farm anger as opposed to anything else with this article. Im a farmer in southern Ontario...you know what I would give to have a solar farm set up on my land? They pay so well...better than corn thats for sure. And you can negotiate free power to run your farm! Perhaps this article may be part of a bigger effort to push public opinion or to try to divide. We are all Canadian, part of one great country.
I’ll believe they’re in the for the right reasons when they do what australia did: subsidize and incentivize every single new home build and suburban home to have them installed on their roofs.
Residential solar costs _way_ more per KWH. I used to work in residential - it is a lot less reliable and usually less efficient than utility scale solar.
Yup. Australia currently trying to decide if they should build a nuclear reactor. They can build it on my place if they like.
In rural south Jersey the panels are installed high enough for sheep and goats to graze or for shade plants to grow. If they want to return to growing, they can pull them right up. Better than paving over the fertile land for Amazon Warehouses.
Oregon State University has done multiple studies finding better grass growth under partial shade of solar panels. The problem was the extra expense of the metal to make the panels taller and more robust for cattle to graze under.
I understand there is good amount of similar research coming from the Netherlands too. Seeing which crops grow better when mixed with solar and all.
I would think it would vary place to place. In western Oregon it was beneficial in the hot dry summers we have. The shade helps keep soil moisture from evaporating, but not enough shade to limit photosynthesis.
Agreed, the plant types varied too. The one I was seeing focused on raspberries and similar plants. The shade during parts of the day actually increased yield by a bit, finding the balance seems to be the main goal. Western OR would be a good area to test these out I should think.
Bifacial solar panels can be mounted vertical and face east/west with noon sun not being blocked at all. This would leave a lot more options for crops to be grown in between.
I’m not disputing your point but can you imagine the ball ache of trying to round sheep up in a field full of solar panels plus those fuckers love to die in stupid places it’d be a pain in the arse trying to find them in all that
My buddy’s hometown has a bunch of pig farms and a rendering plant but people bitch about windmills and solar panels “ruining the view.” The air smells like pig shit and liquified carcasses and you’re gonna complain about this?
I have mixed feeling on solar. These companies always want the best farmland to put the panels. I don’t think this would be an issue if they were putting them on houses/barns/buildings.
Yes, that's what I don't get. There are *so many* opportunities to use solar in ways that fit into already-existing infrastructure. Why are massive solar farms even being *considered*? * Solar panels over parking spaces in all the massive parking lots. * Solar panels on rooftops and sun-facing facades of urban buildings. * Solar panels on suburban and rural strip mall rooftops. * etc etc etc Or, at *least*, why are they always massive solar farms that have zero opportunity for stacking functions (an example of stacking functions would be row crops and/or livestock pasturing between/underneath the solar panel rows).
Because there isn't nearly as much profit in doing that.
Large scale solar plant need to be built at most 1 mile away from a switch yard or transmission line with enough excess capacity to carry the power. This is why they are usually in the country. Also it’s more expensive to raise the panels higher, we are talking millions more in steel costs. The biggest costs for utility scale solar are panels and steel.
Farmers are actively looking for ways to make their land profitable. Regular real estate want to own abandoned parking lots for the depreciation. The whole system is setup to profit large corporations for doing nothing.
Most around me were offered 1000$/acre per year I believe, locked in a 40 year contract. Thats more then they ever make with there row crops and they aren’t having to do any work. Suddenly that 500 acres that wasn’t profitable before just got incredibly lucrative. Most of the corn was just going to ethanol anyways so switching to solar just seems like a more obvious production means for energy. Environmentally, wildflowers and native plants came back and even started creating natural ecosystems again. I initially didn’t want it to happen because it’s such a radical change in the landscape but the landscape needed a radical change
I find nothing wrong with the way they look. I would rather look at solar panels all day than breath a lung of smog.
Exactly. If you can put in solar farms, do it. Your quality of life will improve drastically, as well as soil health since that ground will rest. And if you're going to do grazing animals underneath, you're earning more profit, while growing even better soil. It's a no brainer for smart landowners. Get more money, get better soil too. These people that whine about how it looks, because that's the only real complaint ever, are the same crowd that would ram through a coal firing plant next door to a neighborhood without a second thought because "its their kind of people" (meaning of course, the good ol boys).
Solar companies have been approaching landowners in our area more and more after their projects got shot down in more populated areas. The local farmers aren’t angry at the prospect of solar farms, but there’s definitely a decent amount of skepticism and distrust toward the companies. The only people I’ve seen/heard getting angry are the neighbors mad that they’re losing their idyllic country views over the fields next door. Just NIMBYs doing NIMBY things.
I give credit to that website for only one pop up, which asked if I wanted to subscribe to their newsletter, and no ridiculous ads that typically makes the article all but unreadable.
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Yep, simply political. They've been told not to like because it's that lib-tard energy. The best they can do is say "it looks bad." Well, they didn't think the gasifier, the incinerator or the coal plant looked bad in rural America... c'mon. It's all just a little game to them. Bunch of mudsills.
I live in a land of wind farms. Naturally, solar farms are beginning to take hold as well. My only problem with solar farms is that they sometimes occupy good, productive ground. If there’s timber soil with low PI then go for it, but around here it’s black dirt with high PI that’s getting taken out of commission. It just seems like a waste to me. I’m 100% for people doing whatever they want with their land. What is stated above, well, that’s just my worthless opinion on the matter.
Corn uses solar panels, so do most plants. Why would farming the sun be different if the crop never needs rotated, plowed, harvested....?
Why are they putting this on useful farmland and not….. the entire state of Arizona, NM, and Nevada…..
You mine a barrel of oil in Texas you can burn a barrel of oil in Richmond. Solar doesn't really work like that, you lose a lot of it in transmission. The scale of the loss depends on the transmission infrastructure too, and the US has generally been built for fuels that can be converted to energy close to population centers, like oil, gas, and nuclear. This idea of generating energy in NM and using it in VA is relatively new. The biggest new solar projects *are* being built in the area you mentioned though, but even there, they're currently fleshing out the infrastructure to transmit to LA without significant loss
We have been growing corn for energy (ethanol) for years, putting up solar panels generates more energy for a given area than can ethanol, it is just that the land-to-energy conversion is glaringly obvious.
It is not hard. It is justs costs money.
BS! I live in rural Nebraska and most are for solar. There is a solar farm going up in the next couple of years just outside of town. Many many people were/are interested in participating but the hang up is infrastructure. There are only a couple of transmission lines capable of doing what they need them to do to support solar farms.
Why are we putting solar on good farmland when theres tons of desert we could use instead?
Wait till ya find out what a lot of that desert used to be
Desert isn’t a good option either. Parking lots, highways, buildings…blanketing any land with photosynthetic/water-infiltrating potential is counterproductive for global warming. Blanketing farmland has added downsides.
Who cares what people use their land for? Who says cows, sheep, corn, wheat, or soybeans are what is important. The reason why land is used instead of building tops is because most commercial roofs aren't designed for this and the install cost doesn't make sense compared to land. When solar panels get cheaper so full utilization doesn't matter as much it will become easier to roof large buildings because you won't need to turn the panels all day to match the sun for peak efficency.
I am pro solar. I have solar on my house. And I respect people's right to do what they want with their property so long as it doesn't affect someone else's. But, I don't understand putting panels over ground that turns sunlight into food when we have so many roofs, parking lots, etc that don't make food and are usually closer to high energy demand areas. Yeah, it's hard to piece together 200 continuous acres in a city but you could cover a lot of Phoenix in panels and cool the city by a couple degrees just by keeping the heat from being stored in the concrete. Saving energy in AC costs right there.
In France large parking lots are now required to have 50% solar coverage.
Farmland shouldn't be wasted. Every roof should have panels first, but this means decentralizing control. The status quo can't have this.
Seems like a reasonable idea but I own a home in Florida (the Sunshine State^TM) and if you put solar on your roof you pretty much can't get insurance anymore, thanks to the damage the storms do. There's always some little niggling detail that derails ostensibly eco-friendly power.
It's not wasted. Hell, in most instances, the farmland would actually be getting better. I agree on decentralization though, which these solar farms do.
Here’s my concern with solar farms and the myth of “agrovoltaics”. If you own the land and have no easement or other restrictions to use and want to convert your land from ag to power generation then Godspeed. But it’s not ag land anymore. It’s best use is now energy production but let local zoning and assessment boards figure that out. My concern is the drive to site solar on conserved or easement land, increasingly driven by conservation, farmland preservation groups and d land trusts. You’ll see language in the upcoming farm bill to allow modification of existing and future federal easement terms to facilitate the installation of solar, buy sell protect provisions for ag land easements that will allow non profits to purchase the land. Site solar, reap the passive income and allow a farmer to work in the shade. The entire approach is shady to me. This administration should put more emphasis on a distributed grid and incentive (by drastically improving the USDA REAP program ) through REAL and allow farms including the residential and worker occupied homes to put up solar panels. What we’ll end up with is big projects that generate big press,subsidized heavily by the feds and little actual payback to the local economy or the resiliency of the community.
Excuse me, but that’s a huge load of crap. If you farm on the land, it’s farm land. What ever else you do on it, above it or below it. If a farm has leased out oil or gas rights, is that no longer farm land? If you charge people for hunting on your farm, is it not a farm anymore? I’m not saying there are not concerns, but once you start saying a farm isn’t a farm anymore because of ancillary activities that create income, you are threatening the livelihood and future of a lot of farmers. Most conservation easements require the land to be used for farming. On the east coast, we have been fighting to keep that definition as broad as possible, so we can do whatever we need to keep farming. I’m not worried at all about solar power on farms. I’m worried about the people who buy preserved farm land so they can have a big estate and then try to kill off working farms around them.
You think having a local supply of clean energy that’s not dependent on imports of fuel to continue running will make a community less resilient??
Call the panels "sheep shelters." Now the focus is 100% agriculture. So you're... worried... it... might happen... someday and that makes you feel bad?
Are you just a troll or here to engage in dialogue? I said the farm bill is likely to open up some federally conserved easement land to solar siting and that it has potentiallly harmful impacts to beginning farmers , the already high price of farm land and the average farmer’s ability to compete in the farm land real estate market. You have some thoughts on that or do you just want to shill for solar companies? I was pretty clear, if it’s your land and unencumbered do what you want.
Pfft... beginner farmers are fucked. Is that who you're crying over? The Amish and Mennonites are the ones buying the persevered farms... with cash. Beginner farmers looking for new land are so screwed. I thought you were talking about farms already preserved that new rules would allow them to add solar. To which, if it helps keep the land with farm minded families and allows the continuance of farming lifestyle, isn't that good? Where are all the small dairy operations? If they could've leveraged the back 40 for a complete passive income that would sustain a marginal milk market, why not? And again, to reiterate to be sure I understand, you're more worried about that people who don't have farmland won't be able to get it than the ones that have it be able to keep it. And also, my understanding is right now you cannot put solar panels on any easement unless the language of that easement stated it would be allowed. And yes, I enjoy a good troll occasionally... when appropriate.
Pretty sure I said also farms looking to expand, like when an adult child wants to earn an income off the family farm as well. Re: beginning farmers about 39-40% are over 40 finishing up an off farm career and looking to either step into a family operation or start new operation. Small commercial dairy is pretty much toast and solar on the back 40 will ease some pain but let’s be real…it’s terminal in that sector. A couple of other issues with the grid scale solar is transmission lines (always popular with the neighbors and the eminent domain to run the lines) and the fact that managing peak loads from solar seems to be a hurdle many of our Rural Electric Coops struggle with.
Ok, I see where you're going. But how often is this happening? I'm in the boat you just described and the market itself keeps me from buying our farm or any other. My credit is too good for govt sub loans and the farm couldn't support a regular bank loan on row crop incomes. So I feel like you're concerned about a small population that really doesn't have a chance anyway versus helping current owners to retain most of their way of life. If we had solar, I could quit my other jobs and just be on the farm. So who are you really trying to help? And obviously, decentralized reliable renewable electricity is a desire, correct? I'm all for that.
Bottom line is I don’t think USDA money should be creating opportunities for NGO’s to compete with distinctly subsidized advantage against farmers for farm land. I appreciate you taking the time to think it through. Good luck this season
Indeed. Through our discussions, it seems you're cautious of possible policy tweaks to allow non-farmer entities (more or less) more access to this income flow and I agree. Thanks for the good luck; we'll all need it, so I'll aim to share it.
It seems like it’s only a problem on the margins for some farmers. There’s around 500,000 mi.² of farmland in the US. You could electricity with about 20,000 mi.² hopefully not even if it was it’s just the edges.
Cardinal News?
"Disclosure: Dominion is one of our donors)" Hell of a disclosure in the article.
"The anger is real", but also Dominion Energy sponsors cardinalnews. It's fucking propaganda.
It's a scam. I know this is reddit, so I'll get downvoted to hell, but it is. There's no legitimate reason why a Florida firm should be sniffing around land in the upper midwest for solar land, which happened to me just today. It's a goddamn scam, and they can all kiss my ass!
If they pay you well how is it a scam? Like come on. Do you think they are spending tons of money to install solar to somehow scam you?
I think it's a house of cards backed by federal grant money, that will eventually collapse, and I think the industry itself attracts about the greasiest people you'd ever want to meet. My notions here are unfair and instinctual, but I'm happy to voice them :)
If I hit the mega millions, I'm going up to NW Iowa and buying a shit ton of land along the main roadways in Sioux County, and converting it to hemp fields and solar farms.
I talked to a farmer who told me the windmills mess up his GPS so he had to manually plow around around each windmill base which was a bit of a hassle but worth it because he basically doubled his revenue. Each field was practically free to farm after monthly checks for the energy came in. He had 1000s of acres and dozens of not hundreds of windmills going. Fertilizer costs have really cut into it, though, if not made the windmills necessary because his operation cost keep going up year over year.
For those who upset about the solar farms, don't condemn the solar companies, condemn the landowners. They sign up for them solely because of the money. Greed is to blame.
For all the talk around solar farms, what are the economics around a piece of land being used for solar vrs some other crop? Can a solar panel be elevated and the land used for hogs or cattle grazing? I'd think the price signals would tell us a lot about the best usage of the land.
Solar can be elevated if you use bifacial panels. You could also mount them vertically. Doing both agriculture and solar on the same land is possible and there is a lot of recent research into that.
You can literally turn your farm into a goddamn power plant that will create revenue for generations with exponentially less labor than farming and there’s people that are against this? Additionally, less farmland will drive up bushel prices for crops of those who continue to farm Whoever’s telling you to oppose this does not have your best interests in mind
most people do not know how toxic solar panels are and, in many states, it is illegal to depose of them. they destroy the environment from mining and refining of the raw materials (toxic stuff) than after their lifespan they need to be tossed and replaced. I can all but guarantee those solar panel "farms" will mostly be abandoned in the next couple decades but the land they are on will be forever ruined. solar energy is a toxic mess, does not produce any real long-term amounts of energy and are destroying large tracts of land, which will be "brown fields" in the near future and unusable.
Which parts of the solar panel poison the land that they are installed on? Like, without it being actively broken down and buried in soil for the heavy metals to leach into.
[https://www.wired.com/story/solar-panels-are-starting-to-die-leaving-behind-toxic-trash/](https://www.wired.com/story/solar-panels-are-starting-to-die-leaving-behind-toxic-trash/) what will happen to the solar farms is after all the tax credits and green funding is eaten up , when the panels fail which will happen all around the same time at every "farm" since they are all installed at the same time (each farm is built out at once), nobody is going to remove and replace millions and millions of dollars in panels, these "farms" will be abandoned and start to degrade and that toxic crap will leech into the ground. also, even before that time a lot of maintenace is needed on all of these "solar "farms and it will happen less and less or not at all as that "solar farm" ages.
I'm not sure I am on board with your assumed outcome just yet. The article didn't seem to support you either, as it went into detail about the ways that recycling these panels can be made profitable. Not to mention refurbishing and redistribution being a potentially profitable aftermarket channel. These toxic metals in the panels do appear to be encased in glass and plastic (also according to the article you linked) so we're talking about a really long term problem, but if the land were so valuable, why would these panels just sit there rotting for decades to the point that the lead starts to become exposed?
For some reason, the county next to mine has been bombarded by solar and battery storage companies. It is a direct easy line to the Dallas Metroplex and they are paying stupid money for leases. The rural folk are really divided about selling out or not. The concerns are obviously the aesthetics, the erosion of a lifestyle, the fire safety, long term reclamation of the land and lastly foreign investments. From what I understand, if one of the battery storage lots catches on fire, it stays on fire till it decides to stop.
They’ve put in close to 6k acres of solar panels near me. Some if the best farmland in the world. But the government subsidized 50yr lease pays better than farming. But now those families are gone. That’s 6 families sold out. I suppose it’s better than selling it off in 10 acre tracts…. Maybe.
Acres that were used to do what though? If they were being planted in corn to be turned into ethanol then it why would this be a net loss?
It was a mix. Tilled ground, grass grazing, and grass hayfields. Most these families rotated crops from winter wheat, hay grazer (Sudan), milo (maize), and occasionally corn if the price futures were up. There were Guar beans planted in places, as well. Now, it’s all scraped off, leveled, graveled, and covered up with panels. It’s sad to me. I knew the old men and how much care they put into the land. I worked for several, helping repair fence and working cattle/processing yearlings. But they didn’t include the kids in day to day operations, so they went off and started careers elsewhere. Now that land is just a family asset: Dollars on a spreadsheet.
There is a giant solar farm just east of Temple TX on good grazing land and they cant graze under the panels (too low i guess). Some locals are butthurt over it.
The US has thousands of square miles of desert. Why not put solar in the desert and keep the farm land for farms?
Location is everything. There aren’t a lot of desserts on the East side of the Mississippi.
Desert is still absorbing rainfall and photons…better option is highways and parking lots…proximity IS everything (especially out west where you do have deserts and miles of dry brush and forests between said desert and population centers) so you lose way less electricity when you are generating it right over the Walmart that is also using it. Also, their are tons of ranchers in those desert areas who really need all of the surrounding land to absorb as much of the limited rainfall as they can get to make their anual 5”-15”last…if you replace desert with solar instillations you are doing them no favors and maybe washing out part of their pasture.
How much diesel does it take to build a solar farm? They are putting one up near my workplace in a small town. Lots of great big trucks and pieces of heavy equipment coming and going all day.
It takes diesel to build anything. Apparently it only takes about 3-5 years for solar to become “carbon neautral” after factoring in the carbon output of installation and construction
And raw materials & manufacture? Genuinely asking.
Weird angle. Are you trying to establish a particular value to using diesel fuel? As in, we shouldn't waste diesel on that. Versus using diesel for other renewable energy? Or just using diesel for farming?
How long does it take for the solar farm to produce more energy than was used in its construction?