[HN Gopher] Colorado 'solar garden' is a farm under solar panels ___________________________________________________________________ Colorado 'solar garden' is a farm under solar panels Author : akeck Score : 178 points Date : 2021-11-14 15:55 UTC (7 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.npr.org) (TXT) w3m dump (www.npr.org) | Ericson2314 wrote: | The key part is: | | > But he soon discovered that the shade from the towering panels | above the soil actually helped the plants thrive. That | intermittent shade also meant a lot less evaporation of coveted | irrigation water. And in turn the evaporation actually helped | keep the sun-baked solar panels cooler, making them more | efficient. | | Solar panels are still way over hyped in a stupid marginalist | way, but polyculture has always been a good idea :). | poulsbohemian wrote: | > Solar panels are still way over hyped in a stupid marginalist | way | | Talk more about this, I'd be very interested to understand your | thoughts | cedilla wrote: | Solar is hardly over-hyped. It has always over-delivered since | the first panels were built in the 19th century. No one | predicted such a success and so incredibly low prices even 20 | years ago. | | Could you explain what you mean by "hyped in a marginalist | way"? | amelius wrote: | Building and shipping solar panels costs energy and material | resources. | ben_w wrote: | And in a 100% solar economy, the energy to build and ship | the panels would be solar. This is fine, as they output | enough energy to make themselves in 1-4 years depending on | which study you look at. | amelius wrote: | Using energy still generates heat, as per the laws of | thermodynamics. | PeterisP wrote: | Converting sunlight to electric energy and then using | that energy generates the exact same amount of heat as if | that sunlight was simply absorbed by the ground without | the solar panel being in the way, as per the laws of | thermodynamics. | amelius wrote: | That depends on albedo. | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albedo | drdeca wrote: | Though, if the solar panels absorb more energy than the | ground, due to the ground reflecting more of the light, | that's still a little bit of difference, right? | | (Not a knock on solar panels, I'm just being pedantic) | ben_w wrote: | Yes, and? | drdeca wrote: | Perhaps they are mixing up the "there is therefore a | maximum safe rate of worldwide energy use (however far | away we are from that)" point with the "CO2 emissions | from fossil fuels contribute to greenhouse effect" point, | and... | | ok, I'm not sure either | Lio wrote: | That's true but it's also true for fossil and nuclear | fuels. | tsol wrote: | Doesn't everything? It's not an issue so long as across | it's life it results in less carbon production than | alternative sources do per kW | legulere wrote: | Which is accounted for by the energy payback time, which is | generally less than 5 years since the nineties: https://www | .bnl.gov/pv/files/pdf/PE_Magazine_Fthenakis_2_10_... | | Current estimates are around 1 year for southern Europe and | 1.2 years for northern Europe: https://www.ise.fraunhofer.d | e/content/dam/ise/de/documents/p... | glogla wrote: | I've seen a lot of suggestions that solar can be used as the | only energy source for humanity, that we don't need anything | else, just build more solar! | | That's not realistic. Of course, the limitations that solar | has are very much solvable, and having solar is better than | not having it. Solar is important, and it is our future. | | But the solutions to solar's limitations seem to be in their | infancy (new types of storage), hard to scale (battery | storage), not really helpful (just build more coal and gas | peakers!) or not considered at all. Which does not inspire | confidence. | photochemsyn wrote: | Yes, you could run a civilization entirely on solar if you | had a robust storage, conversion and distribution system. | | After all, the entire fossil fuel reserves of planet Earth | were generated over time by photosynthesis, i.e. the solar- | powered capture of atmospheric carbon and its reduction to | the hydrocarbon state from the carbon dioxide state. | | The problem is the scale of the effort needed to replace | current generation with solar generatioin. Practically, it | would take decades and a vast amount of work. However, | there are no technological barriers, and if the world had | exhausted its fossil fuel reserves in say, 1970 then we'd | already have much of the solar infrastructure in place. | | As far as storage solutions, you can find dozens of | strategies. My favorite is using solar energy to capture | carbon for carbon fiber building materials, 'aerochemical' | products (as opposed to petrochemical) for industrial needs | (dyes, solvents, etc.) and of course RP1 jet/rocket | production. Clearly such an approach will be needed for | interplanetary travel as well (Mars seems to have enough | CO2 and H2O to make this viable). | | It's not surprising that people are so poorly informed, | however, as the fossil fuel sector runs massive propaganda | operations targeting childhood education onwards. | Robotbeat wrote: | Not true. Check out https://model.energy | jluxenberg wrote: | Storage will be a solved problem once everyone has an | electric vehicle with a 65kWh battery sitting in their | garage. Power your home overnight from your car, then | recharge during the day when the sun comes out. | | If you have a large home or need to always have a fully | charged car, spend $15k on a home battery. | | We need to get out of this mindset that electric utilities | will provide unlimited power at a fixed price. With some | investment from individual homeowners we can reduce peak to | average ratios for utilities and make it much cheaper and | possible to use intermittent green energy sources like wind | and solar. | Robotbeat wrote: | The real idea is not using cars for storage but end of | life car batteries AND simply using the same factories | that make car batteries to make grid batteries. AND, | since vehicles will be a significant source of our | electricity demand, we can use them as "storage" simply | by not charging them at some times. | | I think most people don't realize that V2G tech is old | (Chademo supported it, and older Leafs can already do it | natively, and they're about a decade old), but it's | expensive. You basically need a DC charger for every car | that will be doing V2G. Look up how much a DC charger is, | and you can get something like a dedicated Powerwall for | the same price... | fooker wrote: | > then recharge during the day when the sun comes out. | | Unless you actually need the car during the day.. | Valgrim wrote: | Then you buy a home battery, as he said? | Ma8ee wrote: | Then you get a separate battery. But the vast majority | only drives their car back and forth to work, so most of | the day the cars are just standing there and could be | charged. | PaulDavisThe1st wrote: | > everyone has an electric vehicle with a 65kWh battery | sitting in their garage. | | That's a solution I hope that neither I nor my children | live to see. It's a solution I hope never happens unless | a new battery technology arrives that for a start | eliminates our need to once again fuck over some very | poor countries in order to get our hands on rare | resources. Lithium battery tech is quite miraculous, but | it's also not appropriate as the basis for the entire | electrification of human civilization. | | Also, lots of people will have neither cars nor garages. | Anchor wrote: | > unless a new battery technology arrives that for a | start eliminates our need to once again fuck over some | very poor countries | | It is already here. Google LFP batteries. | adamparsons wrote: | I'm a big fan of LFP don't get me wrong, but it still | requires mining and refining lithium, which indeed does | fuck over the environment quite badly | lanstin wrote: | https://nbcpalmsprings.com/2021/04/29/salton-sea-lithium- | gol... | | I can't vouch for this of my own knowledge but as lithium | is such a light element it is sensible that it would be | easy to find and use. | kwhitefoot wrote: | > We need to get out of this mindset that electric | utilities will provide unlimited power at a fixed price. | | We already pay spot price here in Norway. | DavidPeiffer wrote: | How much variability do you see in spot prices? Are there | any alternatives? | | It looks like 90%+ of electricity produced in Norway is | hydro, with fossil fuels only around 2% [1]. | Hydroelectric plants are very quick to respond to changes | in demand. | | From what I can see, it probably isn't a huge surprise | bill risk to the consumer compared to places like, say, | Texas. | | [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in | _Norway | reaperducer wrote: | And large parts of Texas. | Andrew_nenakhov wrote: | >Storage will be a solved problem once everyone has an | electric vehicle with a 65kWh battery sitting in their | garage. Power your home overnight from your car, then | recharge during the day when the sun comes out. | | Too bad you'll be driving to the office on business days. | Dylan16807 wrote: | When the issue is "how do we generate enough power" it | doesn't really matter where the car is. | | That just complicates distribution a little, but not a | whole lot. | 7952 wrote: | Battery storage seems eminently scalable compared to other | energy developments. A commodity that can be manufactured | in a factory and that we would need anyway for cars. Small | components that can be built into enclosures, and racked in | a container. And the sites are nice and simple. A fence, | some substation gear, a concrete pad. | colechristensen wrote: | You see this quite a lot. There does come a point where | adding more solar ... when a certain percentage of your | production is already solar ... there comes a point where | more solar is a whole lot more expensive and less | reasonable. | | But that's really more of a "80% of our power is solar" | problem and the US isn't even at 3%. The percentage of | usage which could be handled by solar is usually far | underestimated. | | We don't need to care about limitations of solar for a long | long time. | Robotbeat wrote: | I agree, however your point about 3% isn't quite true. | Look at the last 12 months rolling and estimated total | solar and divide by total electricity and you get about | 3.7%: | | https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher | .ph... | youeseh wrote: | > But the solutions to solar's limitations seem to be in | their infancy | | We're further along than you think. | rndgermandude wrote: | >But the solutions to solar's limitations seem to be in | their infancy (new types of storage), hard to scale | (battery storage), not really helpful (just build more coal | and gas peakers!) or not considered at all. Which does not | inspire confidence. | | You're not wrong, but also not right. We have renewables | that run at night (wind, water, geo-thermal heat pumps), we | have some storage solutions/"batteries" as well, such as | pumping stations or water-based heat storage. And even | peakers that burn fuel are not that bad for the environment | if you only run them a limited time. Coal/gas peakers that | only run when needed would not kill the environment if the | main sources of energy production are renewable - a coal | plant burning only some nights is still a lot better than | one burning 24/7 - and peakers can be fueled by renewable | sources as well, not just stuff you dig out of the ground, | making them carbon neutral over the grow-burn circle. | | The problem right now is that switching over to such a | mixed energy production requires a lot of investment and | construction, and we have a lot of infrastructure | (especially housing) that cannot be easily retrofitted. | E.g. right now, be it in the US, be it in Germany where I | live, be it in other places, solar and wind deployment is | severely hampered by the lack of transmission lines. This | isn't a problem of high investment cost either, it's | "locals" fighting tooth and nail against new transmission | lines being build in the vicinity of where they live | because "it ruins the view". | Ericson2314 wrote: | > low prices | | This is the stupid marginal ism I am talking about. | | Cranking out more solar panels is easy. Actually making the | grids larger or have more storage requires the type of | planning competence and cordination we suck at. | | Solar panels are popular precisely because they don't require | that planning competence and coordination. So if we go full | solar wind, we will slam into a wall we are utterly | unprepared for, despite, yes, getting better at solar and | wind themselves with volume. | 7952 wrote: | If the market rewards battery storage it will get built | quickly. | Tade0 wrote: | Going full solar and wind is going to take some time(20 | year-ish?) and in the meantime energy storage will get | there in terms of scale and cost. | | LiFePO4 packs already started trading below $100/kWh in | 2020: | | https://evilmartians.com/chronicles/a-no-go-fantasy- | writing-... | | CATL is pushing sodium-ion batteries: | | https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/catls-new-sodium- | ion... | | You don't even need a lot of storage to greatly increase | maximum stable solar and wind share. | | Exiting times ahead of us. | zdragnar wrote: | Our electric grids aren't designed for distributed | generation- they are centrally planned and maintained. | | Every person that generates their own electricity stops | paying their fair share of maintaining the grid, forcing | poorer people who cannot afford their own rooftops to | subsidize them. It is actually quite regressive- the | denser the population center, the less electricity per | person can be generated by solar. The electricity might | be free, but the cost of maintaining the grid never goes | away. | djrogers wrote: | > Every person that generates their own electricity stops | paying their fair share of maintaining the grid, | | Nope. Not in California- even if solar covers 100% of | your usage, PG&E is collecting money from you. You don't | pay any energy production costs, but you'll pay 'your | fair share'. | ajbourg wrote: | > Every person that generates their own electricity stops | paying their fair share of maintaining the grid | | This isn't true, at least not in Colorado. I pay a number | of fees for maintaining the grid and these aren't going | away when I have my net meter installed later this week. | (hopefully) | sdenton4 wrote: | That's a policy problem, not a technological problem. It | becomes a political decision: convert grid maintenance to | a progressive tax, subsidize local power generation for | poor families or rental properties, etc. | cronix wrote: | > Every person that generates their own electricity stops | paying their fair share of maintaining the grid | | "their fair share." What exactly is that for something | you don't use? | | This is a bit like saying everyone who walks/bikes to | work stops paying their fair share of gas taxes that | maintain the roads their food arrives on. | giaour wrote: | > This is a bit like saying everyone who walks/bikes to | work stops paying their fair share of gas taxes that | maintain the roads their food arrives on. | | I haven't seen people argue this point for people who | don't own a car, but my state does have a special levy on | electric and high efficiency vehicles to make up for lost | gas tax revenues: | https://www.dmv.virginia.gov/vehicles/#highwayuse_fee.asp | neutronicus wrote: | In this hypothetical, they are still using the Grid to | power their homes at night | gremloni wrote: | I feel like you posted your whole comment just to inject that | last line in. | yardie wrote: | > Solar panels are still way over hyped | | It literally turns abundantly free solar energy into | electricity. Where is the hype? | rozab wrote: | Current solar panels are almost 20% efficient. Even in the | most outrageous sci-fi scenario, they could only hope to be | 5x more efficient than they are currently, and in any case | would require significant land use. Compared to nuclear or | geothermal, the ceiling is so much lower. | | And then we get all the vaporware viral ops like solar | _freaking_ roadways and those water bottles that magically | refill from the air with a tiny solar panel, ignoring the | laws of thermodynamics but making hella kickstarter bux | estaseuropano wrote: | Solar takes much space compared to what? Oil wells and | refineries? Gas wells and processing and pipelines? Coal | mine and power plant? | | Solar can be squeezed into lots of unused spaces, e.g. | where I live all new Lidl and Aldi have solar on their | roofs, an otherwise empty and unused gray space. | ijidak wrote: | When you count for buffer land around nuclear (most don't | want to live too close) land use becomes comparable to | solar | | For example, look at Diablo Canyon site acreage vs the | acreage of the new large-scale solar project in Pahrump, | NV. | Daniel_sk wrote: | That buffer land can be forest and lots of living | creatures. Not a solar panel covered wasteland. | Bootvis wrote: | Did you read the title of the article? | 7952 wrote: | Animals and plants are perfectly happy living under solar | panels. | tsol wrote: | The cool thing about solar is you can fix it on top of | current infrastructure. Sure the solar roadways are a | ridiculous idea, but putting solar panels on roofs actually | makes use of space they can't be used otherwise | lanstin wrote: | And if you have good credit the Sun pays for it. You | borrow money, put up panels, and then pay the loan with | your electricity and gas budget. Still two weeks away | from actual final hook up from the power company but | friends with similar have that experience. | mrfusion wrote: | Like most things, the final answer is probably a mix of | everything. | notatoad wrote: | >would require significant land use | | you're commenting on an article about a solution to that. | JoshCole wrote: | We have a need for ceilings. When you account for that the | amount of space needed provide ceilings, powering our | civilization with solar is a negative number rather than a | positive number. Negative, because we can more then power | our civilization with existing space through dual purpose | structures. An example of this is a solar roof. However, | even if you ignore that potential, the amount of space | needed is only a few square miles. It's not like it would | be the size of a country or even the size of a state. The | amount of space is small enough to place in some remote | desert and for all intents and purposes to then forget | about it. | anonuser123456 wrote: | >Solar panels are still way over hyped in a stupid marginalist | way | | Solar panels are powered by fusion, of course they are hyped. | ruined wrote: | who the fuck is scraeming "AGRIVOLTAICS" at my house. show | yourself, coward. fusion energy will never take off | missinfo wrote: | The hype is going to die down the more we see landscapes and | entire mountains being covered with non-recyclable, toxic | panels: | | https://twitter.com/ScienceIsNew/status/1458512267150966786 | | It strikes me as environmental vandalism. Solar panels make | sense on roofs, not so much on landscapes. Maybe the desert, | but you have transmission loss and still have to deal with the | large amount of toxic landfill they generate. Nuclear makes | much more sense for anything approaching base load. | ben_w wrote: | Putting them in landfill implies is it harder to turn old PV | into new PV than to build new PV _literally out of rock_. | This does not seem plausible in long-term (short term, | sometime has to actually build a factory to do it), and if it | was true then we would've just substituted one polluting non- | renewable (fossils) for another. | starwind wrote: | > When Kominek approached Boulder County regulators about putting | up solar panels, they initially told him no, his land was | designated as historic farmland. | | That's Boulder for you, they're super progressive right up until | progress forces something to change | missinfo wrote: | Bill Maher had a segment on this recently about progressives | that don't acknowledge progress and are afraid of it in | practice. A kind of willful blindness. Steven Pinker calls it | Progressophobia. | | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fB9KVYAdYwg | tuatoru wrote: | Also, _Liberal Hypocrisy is Fueling American Inequality. | Here's How.--NYT Opinion_ [1] | | Has a focus on housing, but it's the same underlying issue. | People love to signal their virtue, but their true values are | revealed by what they _do_. | | 1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hNDgcjVGHIw&t=670s | [deleted] | kilna wrote: | That's rich coming from Maher. | monocasa wrote: | Yeah, Boulder considers it's green belt to be the fence of | their little gated community. They're terrified of the idea of | development around Boulder. The city even owns a bunch of land | in surrounding counties so the perpetually undeveloped land is | some one else's tax burden. | bpodgursky wrote: | I agree that NIMBYism is bad, but I don't see how undeveloped | land incurs a tax burden. | monocasa wrote: | It's sort of backwards when you're talking about | municipalities competing for property tax revenue. Boulder | city wants property tax revenue, so they allow development | in specific places where they reap that. Therefore the city | owns land that isn't land within the city so they can | maximize property tax revenue, but still have a undeveloped | belt. The surrounding counties aren't a big fan of this | relationship, but can't do much about it. | [deleted] | Scoundreller wrote: | Those neighbouring counties don't raise as much property | taxes because there's nothing on the land. | | You could argue that the land doesn't cost those | neighbouring counties anything, so it's a wash. | josephcsible wrote: | The city of Boulder needs to pay property taxes on that | land to the other counties, and that money comes from the | local taxes that Boulder residents have to pay. | [deleted] | teakettle42 wrote: | You have a nice thing. You engage in conservation to preserve | that nice thing. Someone else gets mad that they can't just | pave over your nice thing. | | Help me understand how you're on the side of progressivism, | here. | asguy wrote: | You make it sounds like they're conserving their nice | things, by not letting other people have them. Gate keeping | progress. | | Help me understand how /you're/ on the side of | progressivism, here. | teakettle42 wrote: | You cannot always have your cake and eat it too. If you | pave over open spaces, you no longer have open spaces. | | Is paving over nature what you consider to be progress? | monocasa wrote: | I don't really consider hay farms to be 'nature', any | more than houseplants are. | teakettle42 wrote: | Hay meadows aren't a more natural environment than paving | them over, building a large high-density apartment block, | and placing houseplants in those apartments? | | Do they not host more ecological diversity? Are they not | more environmentally productive? | | Do hay farms introduce parking lots, traffic, roads, | hundreds of housing units, and on average, ~1.5 cars for | every unit? | monocasa wrote: | If Boulder actually cared about all of that, they'd allow | density where the pavement already exists. | | This is all pearl clutching to keep out the poors with a | fence that doesn't make you sad when you look at the | fence. | teakettle42 wrote: | Low-density makes the place nicer to live. | | That's why people want to live in Boulder in the first | place, as opposed to Longmont, Broomfield, or Denver -- | all of which they're free to choose, instead of spending | more to live Boulder. | | Why should the very traits that make Boulder desirable be | destroyed to accommodate everyone that desires to live | there? | poulsbohemian wrote: | I'm not in Colorado, but I can tell you a similar story in | my area... county wouldn't allow the construction of a | Costco, which would have brought desperately needed jobs | and tax revenues, because of zoning. Instead on that same | ground they will allow a mini-storage or a gas station, | because those fit the zoning. This is on a stretch of | highway that the county and state have deemed to be | "protected farm land." I'm as progressive as they come and | completely agree with the sentiment that we need to protect | green spaces, but the way the sausage actually gets made | doesn't achieve any good for _anyone_. | foxhop wrote: | Very cool, if you are into this sort of stuff I have a YouTube | channel on growing food at home. | | https://m.youtube.com/channel/UC1eySW_9TiI5wnvTnIIw2Nw | | A blog post on my solar system I bought outright | https://russell.ballestrini.net/fulfilling-childhood-dreams-... | Cycl0ps wrote: | On the talk of reduced evaporation, can we replicate this at a | fraction of the cost by running some plastic sheeting across a | field? The solar is an investment that may not pay off in all | farms, but reducing water usage is a major concern and stringing | along some barriers could be a big help with that. | tsol wrote: | Good point. While it may make harvesting trickier, installing | covers could be a cheap way to increase water use efficiency | pirate787 wrote: | Solar panels contain heavy metals like cadmium that leech into | the soil and water as the panels age. This is not a safe | approach. | | https://www.discovermagazine.com/environment/solar-panel-was... | weaksauce wrote: | ...in a landfill environment. those aren't leeching into the | ground during their normal lifespan. sure recycling should be | done more in earnest but to say this is unsafe is silly. | jeffbee wrote: | Coal ash contains 100ppm Cd and the USA produces and dumps into | the environment 130 million tons of that annually. PV panels | are glass-encapsulated and only leach metals if you literally | grind them into dust and then submerge the result. | yumraj wrote: | But that seems to only be an issue when they are literally | dumped in a landfill. | | In the case above, where they are mounted, why would it be an | issue? Or, are you saying that they leech, say, when it rains? | But in that case, wouldn't roof mounted solar panels be equally | bad as in leech heavy metals into home soil and I had not heard | that to be an issue. | VygmraMGVl wrote: | This link's reference for "solar panels leach [cadmium] into | the soil and water as the panels age" is a paper that simulated | *landfill conditions* on CdTe solar cells. In the study linked, | the solar panels were ball-milled and then suspended in | anaerobic sludge. | | This is not comparable to suggesting solar panels will leach | cadmium and lead into the soil underneath them during their | normal operation. | | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5607867/ | rcxdude wrote: | Also, most solar panels are not CdTe cells, the vast majority | of the market are silicon cells (CdTe making <10% of the | market). | danielvf wrote: | Is it just me, or do the photos show that only part of a single | row between panels has actually been planted? Looking outside the | plants in the foreground, it just looks like bare grass | everywhere. | mrfusion wrote: | Solar with grazing land could make a ton of sense. Plus you | wouldn't have to pay for mowing. | | And if done right the panels could even be free shelter for the | cows. | justinph wrote: | Apparently sheep are the right thing to graze. Cows and horses | are too big. Goats tend to bite at the cables. Sheep are small | enough to fit in and around the solar panels and won't bite the | wires. | | https://www.startribune.com/pollinator-friendly-landscape-ta... | vvarren wrote: | > But he soon discovered that the shade from the towering panels | above the soil actually helped the plants thrive. That | intermittent shade also meant a lot less evaporation of coveted | irrigation water. And in turn the evaporation actually helped | keep the sun-baked solar panels cooler, making them more | efficient. | | Holy cow! Sounds like a win-win-win to me? | KingMachiavelli wrote: | > Our farm has mainly been hay producing for fifty years | | For those who don't know, Boulder has a bunch of land outside the | city that is designated openspace/'farm' land. Being from the | midwest I always sort of laughed at these land parcels being | called 'farms' since economically it really can't be farmed | outside of selling niche products at affluent farmers markets. I | am glad to see that Boulder is finally letting the land be used | for something more productive. | | And this is a very cool idea. My family grew strawberries in | eastern Colorado for a few years and one of the big problems was | the extreme sun. In order to extend the growing season we used | low tunnels to shield to plants from frost. However, the low | tunnels during the peak summer months would act like a lens | melting irrigation lines and even damaging produce. | sneak wrote: | Is it just me or is not letting the rightful owners of the land | use it for the most productive (and not | damaging/harmful/polluting) thing possible seem insane? | | Why does Boulder get to decide whether these farmers are | allowed to install solar on their own land? | | The fact that they had to fight a battle and take time out of | their life to obtain permission to do this (on unprofitable | farmland) seems tremendously unjust. | | My mind reels. | mountainriver wrote: | Because Boulderites love their open space and spend a ton of | tax dollars protecting it. It makes for a very nice city. | | (I was born and raised in Boulder) | tmp538394722 wrote: | I assume upthread is talking about Boulders "urban growth | boundary". | | I think the most likely "free market" result of removing the | restrictions would be what they call "suburban sprawl". | | There are a lot of reasons to consider suburban sprawl | damaging/harmful/polluting. | | There are a lot of valid critiques to be made of an arguably | NIMBY policy like the urban growth boundary, but it's more | than just "farms are pretty". | reaperducer wrote: | _My mind reels_ | | Then you've never lived in a place with no zoning, where | someone can open a junk yard next to the home you spent 20 | years saving money to buy. | | You can do what you want on your land. But at the same time, | you have to live in a society with neighbors. There is give- | and-take. | | If you want to do anything you want on your land without | restriction, feel free to save your money and buy your own | country with no other residents. Until then, you'll have to | learn to get along with other people and understand that what | you want may not always be what is best for everyone. | psd1 wrote: | Yes and... I feel the "it's _my_ land" perspective is | constrained by human lifespan. | [deleted] | someguydave wrote: | In America (land of the free) it is considered normal for all | the surrounding landowners and/or voters to decide how you | may use your own property. Typically you must ask permission | or change local laws to use land in other-than-narrowly- | prescribed ways. | sneak wrote: | Seems to me that "land of the status quo" might be a better | term. | someguydave wrote: | that or "land of I got mine" | wyager wrote: | Since land covenants were legally neutered in the 60s, law | is sort of the only avenue people have left for trying to | make sure the community they live in is the kind of place | they actually want to live, and doesn't turn into a factory | district or a ghetto. | staticautomatic wrote: | You forgot about trusts. And HOAs. Also, CC&Rs are still | a thing. | wyager wrote: | They exist but you can't do much with them anymore, hence | why zoning is such a popular strategy. | ProjectArcturis wrote: | Personally I'm rather glad my neighbor can't turn his | property into an industrial hog farm. | someguydave wrote: | yes but the reason is because of smells that will cross | onto your property. plain tort law will allow you to seek | compensation for that | poulsbohemian wrote: | Did you experiment at all with swapping out different | materials? IE: using a thicker material to shade from the sun | and then something else in the fall to hold in warmth. I'm | debating doing something similar in my garden. In my area we | have a lot of orchards that are now completely under sun | canopies due to our extreme heat / sun. | KennyBlanken wrote: | > Being from the midwest I always sort of laughed at these land | parcels being called 'farms' since economically it really can't | be farmed outside of selling niche products at affluent farmers | markets | | The midwest can't be economically farmed outside of being | propped up by a trillion dollars in government welfare called | "the farm bill." That includes paying farmers to not grow | anything, and to grow food that is shipped to warehouses where | it rots. | | Then there's all the non-farming federal spending in those | states. | | Then there's all the military spending to employ all the | midwest kids coming out of high school with no job prospects. | | Then there's the tariffs and other trade policies to protect | midwestern farm crop prices. | | Then there's the mandated use of ethanol from corn in gasoline. | | Then there's the price fixing on sugar which drives processed | food to use corn syrup. | | Also, he farm was a hay farm for fifty years goes a bit | contrary to the claim about "niche products ad affluent farmers | markets." | pengaru wrote: | > My family grew strawberries in eastern Colorado for a few | years and one of the big problems was the extreme sun. In order | to extend the growing season we used low tunnels to shield to | plants from frost. However, the low tunnels during the peak | summer months would act like a lens melting irrigation lines | and even damaging produce. | | Sounds like problems more ground-coupling of the thermals would | help mitigate. This guy used "Earth Tubes" in combination with | partially buried and appropriately oriented greenhouses: | | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZD_3_gsgsnk | nanomonkey wrote: | I'm surprised they aren't using bifacial solar panels which allow | light through and utilize light from both sides of the panel. | Seems ideal for such a scenario. | PaulDavisThe1st wrote: | I saw a good video on YT about this idea. It made the excellent | point that it has a fundamental problem: 1. It's | excellent for everybody, except... 2. It's a sub-optimal | use of land for the farmer, and ... 3. It's a sub-optimal | use of land for solar PV | | Trying to get something adopted where the two primary parties | both end up with a suboptimal solution, even though the overall | solution is great from a broader perspective, tends to be | difficult. | | And it does generally need both farmers and the solar PV folks to | collaborate; the former have the land and systems for growing, | the latter have the capital and process for solar PV. | | This doesn't mean it cannot work, but it does require some | creative "marketing" to get people to take up the idea even | though it may appear sub-optimal when viewed through a narrow | lens. | 7952 wrote: | It might be optimal in terms of a reliable income to have | different things you can sell. | cannaceo wrote: | Reminds me of http://www.soliculture.com/ | oh_sigh wrote: | Doesn't it make far more sense to just put solar panels in a | field like this, instead of doing custom work putting them on top | of individual homes which may have shade or directionality | issues? Even disregarding the agriculture happening, why don't we | do this more often? | xoa wrote: | > _Doesn 't it make far more sense to just put solar panels in | a field like this, instead of doing custom work putting them on | top of individual homes which may have shade or directionality | issues?_ | | Depends on what you're optimizing for. If you're considering | solar purely from the angle of replacing carbon-thermal | generation on the grid then sure, large arrays are more | efficient, offering more room for amortization of fixed costs, | more optimization for solar gain, and more room for optimal | hybrid usage like this example. | | However, buildings need roofs _anyway_ , and will in turn get | sun exposure. Since solar tech like tiles can take the place of | traditional roofing, there are some double gains to be had | there in that they're both doing the job of protection from the | elements and taking otherwise mostly wasted energy and doing | some work with it. Depending on how one gets into the weeds on | aesthetics (like if they wanted nicer tiling anyway) the | marginal extra capex of tiling may well be worth it as costs | come down further. Building-solar also can help provide | resiliency to grid damage, which by definition grid feeding | cannot. For people in areas where they'd otherwise be running | generators anyway, solar/res-wind+battery (and as BEVs take | over near everyone will have an extremely sizable slab or three | of battery around much of the time) can be compelling. Still | more upfront, but maintenance-free for a decade or more and | constantly providing some ROI (and effectively constant | verification everything is working), whereas hydrocarbon | generators require regular maintenance/testing which cost money | and generate zero return otherwise, they just depreciate. And | local solar/wind/utility resources are going to affect the time | horizons for all this. | | So basically there are a ton of new variables and enormously | more scalability up and down the spectrum for renewables and | batteries. Doing the math is in turn going to be very | individual, but it will often still make sense to do both. | | Also: | | > _why don 't we do this more often?_ | | I mean, we're still in a pretty steep part of an S-curve here. | It's just plain early days. People are still experimenting with | stuff like this and learning what works. Unit costs are | dropping, which in turn changes what projects make sense which | in turn changes demand and thus unit costs. Grids are adapting | and getting smarter. Both storage and opportunistic demand are | doing the same in parallel in a variety of ways. Stories like | this where someone tries some new stuff and it works out well | will make others perk up and take notice. There will also be | things tried that don't work out. Going to be a wild decade. | jeffbee wrote: | Unfortunately second-order effects make rooftop solar less | desirable than you'd think. In urban areas built to adequate | densities (> 100 residents per acre) there's not enough roof | area to power those residences, so you need the off-site | generating resources anyway. Denser development has | significant demand efficiency payback, but it always reduces | the ratio of on-site solar generating resources per capita. | | On the other hand you also have the phenomenon that after a | person puts solar power on top of their little detached | single-family house they start yammering about "solar access | rights" to stop the construction of even slightly taller | buildings nearby. Boulder, Colorado is ground zero for this | kind of stupidity, see their "solar access protection" law | which is as naked an act of NIMBY greenwashing as anyone has | ever seen. | | https://www- | static.bouldercolorado.gov/docs/PDS/forms/815_So... | WJW wrote: | At least in the Netherlands, you don't pay energy taxes on | electricity generated "behind the meter", ie from solar panels | on your own house. Electricity that comes from the grid, no | matter how it is generated, comes with grid fees and energy | tax. Seeing how the price for bulk electricity is currently | ~0.09 EUR/KWh and the taxes+ grid charges come to ~0.15 EUR/KWh | for a total price of 0.24 EUR/KWh, electricity from solar | panels on your own house instantly becomes about 3x cheaper | than if you put the same panels elsewhere in a field. Thus, | many people opt to put the panels on their home since the | installation cost is not that high and the financial benefits | are substantial. | neltnerb wrote: | Disregarding taxes and financial incentives that may bias | things, putting it in a field means you don't need to work on a | roof to maintain it, you aren't limited by roof area, and you | don't need to worry about the roof weight limit or damage | during installation. | | I think there is no question a field is preferable if there are | fields to work with. Of course, in a city that isn't much of an | option and there are significant advantages to point of use | generation (i.e. no need to upgrade power lines from rural | solar fields to a city center). | | I used to live in Boulder, and while I'm not sure exactly which | field they're talking about it was not a long bike ride into | farmland. I can imagine it working much better there than a | bigger city. | xboxnolifes wrote: | I don't know about "more often" but we certainly do it pretty | normally. There are entire businesses built around obtaining | rights to use land, building solar farms, and selling the tax | credits. | pengaru wrote: | Personally the addition of solar panels to my roof has the | added appeal of reducing the wear and tear of my roof. | | The panels _must_ be in the sun, so they 'll always be getting | that UV damage if they exist outside at all. May as well let | them do double duty on my roof in that role. | | It'll also help keep the solar thermal gain out of the house, | reducing cooling costs... | ravenstine wrote: | Presumably because, the further you transport electrical | energy, the more it is prone to be lost as heat. | oh_sigh wrote: | I'm not arguing for a giant solar array in the Sahara, just | using marginal farmland that surrounds many cities to put | solar panels instead of scattered about on roofs in the city. | And with most solar installations it just dumps electricity | back into the grid so I'd think losses would be similar. | handmodel wrote: | From what I understand even at 100 miles the loss of energy | is about 5 percent. You may need to build more transmission | lines at some point - but I would still wager there is no way | that it is energy efficient to build a frame upwards + have | people get on special tools to maintain things 10 feet above | the ground. | | In places like Colorado there is very cheap land that is not | very good for farming about an hour away from Denver and it | certainly seems like it would be cost + energy efficient to | build out there instead of up. | Cycl0ps wrote: | I think the simplest answer is that we put panels wherever it's | easiest. With no existing infrastructure in a random field it | takes more effort to get the panels to function, compared to | mounting on a roof and wiring in to an existing grid. The | upfront cost has always been a barrier to entry, so higher | costs turn the average consumer away. | [deleted] | Dylan16807 wrote: | But you can install a whole lot of panels in a field, which | has a significant amount of labor price advantage. Running a | cable over might not be too bad. | PaulDavisThe1st wrote: | Most of the current PV generation in the 100 miles around where | I live (near Santa Fe, NM) looks exactly like this (but without | the agriculture). | cjlars wrote: | One issue with solar is where we put it all. If it turns out that | a meaningful portion of farmland has an excess of solar energy, | that takes a big bite out of the problem. Powering the US | entirely on solar might take a land mass equivalent to 2% of the | country... Only a small portion of the 40% of US land area used | as farmland. | toomuchtodo wrote: | This is a non issue. Rooftops alone are enough to power the US | with solar, versus prime land. With that said, there is | enormous potential in the roofs yet to have solar installed, | parking lots with solar canopies, marginal land, floating PV | systems at reservoirs, etc. Land is not an issue. At this rate, | we're constrained by pv module costs, deal flow, permitting, | and install labor (a combination of labor and soft costs, | essentially, with a healthy dose of supply chain issues). | | https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2021/10/11/solar-deployed-on-roo... | ZeroGravitas wrote: | Has this ever actually been a problem? | | I think most of the recent progress has been in lowering | prices, while the amount of power you can extract from a square | meter of land presumably hasn't changed much. But I don't | actually remember any serious commenter suggesting that running | out of physical room was ever an actual consideration when it | came to solar. | cjlars wrote: | There has been opposition to greenfield developments on | environmental concerns, much harder to oppose a dual use | installation over farmland. | | https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2021-11-03/the- | mo... | rcxdude wrote: | We're really really far away from having difficulty with where | to put solar. | jillesvangurp wrote: | That would be nearly enough to power the world; not just the | US. Powering the world would take a bit over 115000 square | miles, apparently. About 3% of the US landmass. | iambateman wrote: | $2,000,000 / 300 homes / 20 years = $333/home/year for | electricity. Assuming this is a low-maintenance setup, it seems | like there's lots of room for steady profit. | | At the same time, the article makes it sound like the farming | output was improved too. | | Aside from regulatory concerns, what downsides are there to | installing these on millions of acres? | twalla wrote: | My assumption is they pivoted from hay to growing high margin | stuff (most greens are higher margin, I think) they can sell to | restaurants/farmers markets/co-ops. Being close to Boulder | definitely helps in that regard. The solar panels just provide | the shade that shadecloth used to provide with the upside of | producing income. | | The biggest barrier to scalability is probably how labor | intensive some of the farming is and the target audience for | stuff like kale and collard greens outside of major metro | areas. | sigstoat wrote: | > My assumption is they pivoted from hay to growing high | margin stuff (most greens are higher margin, I think) they | can sell to restaurants/farmers markets/co-ops. | | yes, this is exactly the case. as i understand it, they've | got a single customer they're selling all the produce to, who | is also involved in providing man power for the farming. | | > The biggest barrier to scalability is probably how labor | intensive some of the farming is | | yes, they've got folks out there most days during the growing | season, whereas when it was hay, it could be managed with a | couple of man*days a month. | | (i am more familiar with the operations there than i'm going | to admit, or provide evidence for. don't "sources?" me.) | photochemsyn wrote: | Well, it depends - for a current investor of any scale in the | utility and fossil fuel sectors, this is a disaster. | | 1) Installing solar panels on millions of acres would be done | most likely by utilities for grid-scale power. This means an | accelerated investment in infrastructure, and that means | profits don't go to dividend payments but for solar panel | purchases (from an international manufacturer, as domestic US | solar manufacturing is basically a joke at present). | | 2) Then you have the follow-on losses - investors in utilities | tend to have large holdings in fossil fuels, and one hand | washes the other - power plants buy fracked gas, in other | words, boosting the value of the fossil fuel investments. So | when you switch to solar, and write off the natural gas and | coal plants, there goes the majority of the profits that | investor's portfolio generates. | | There's no way around it: renewable systems are far less | profitable than fossil-fuel systems, because you don't get to | <sell> set up a wind and sun cartel (*orbiting sunscreens | maybe?). This is the source of both Wall Street and fossil fuel | exporter disenchantment with renewables. | | Now, if you're a farmer and can generate your own power while | continuing to enjoy good crop yields, it's all winning. | Although your 401K retirement fund may decrease in value. But | that's OK, as your net savings are greater than that loss. | 567745774 wrote: | It would be cool if you stated your points and evidence | _before_ authoritatively declaring your thesis correct. | mikysco wrote: | I must read too many negative articles... this stands out as a | feel-good, "real" win-win. The science & cost-benefit is clearly | understood even for the non-technical and the implementation | seems straightforward, at least at first glance. Would love to | see solar farms wildly adopted ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-11-14 23:00 UTC)