There are interesting things in the article, but I think it was never about available land use, but just another knee jerk argument against solar panels.
Example: Disneyland Europe will generate over 30 GWh per year from just covering a part of its parking lot. And if France makes it mandatory to cover all "substantial" parking lots it will generate as much electricity from just that as 10 nuclear power plants [1].
And that's France. Countries like the US have a lot more space, especially parking lots. There's enough space for solar panels.
As someone in Texas I'd really love is more parking lots had even partial covered parking with solar above. Please. It gets dang hot out here, I'd love the shade.
And another reason why I think residential solar is so key, right now it takes a backseat in policy to gridscale, which ... ok the US has a lot of land (allegedly), but using commercial roofs and parking lots is a lot closer to residential solar issues than gridscale in the middle of nowhere: there's a lot of variety in geometry, installation headaches, hookups, distributed management, repair.
Ultimately it means more jobs, more civilization resiliency in disasters, and a "democraticization" of energy generation, which I think the elite REALLY don't want.
It's a thing that economic development basically follows energy production. Central control of economic development (which is what we have with cartel megacorps) wants centralized control of energy production.
Solar isn't just a good carbon policy, or a path to cheaper better energy, or better insurance/life in unstable grids. Home solar is an improvement to individual or small-group liberty.
> And if France makes it mandatory to cover all "substantial" parking lots it will generate as much electricity from just that as 10 nuclear power plants [1].
It will not, not even close to that. You are being deceived. This deception is willful, because it is obvious to anyone who has any idea about realities of energy generation. The linked article, however, while not literally lying, omits some obvious facts, the goal of which is to make you believe falsehoods.
The article talks about "installed capacity", and compares installed capacity of photovoltaics vs. nuclear power plants. It is extremely deceptive to make such comparison without taking into account the notion of capacity factor, and the proof of this is that you have successfully been deceived.
The nuclear power plants typically generate north of 90% of their installed capacity, averaged over the entire year. The photovoltaics in Europe, on the other hand, typically generate 10-15% of their installed capacity, averaged over the entire year. This is caused by the unfortunate fact which is that the sun doesn't shine at all for at least half of the year, and for the significant part of the remainder, it is occluded by clouds, or shines at suboptimal angle, preventing the panels from reaching their maximum generating capacity.
This means that 1 GW of installed nuclear power capacity is worth at best something like 6-9 GW of installed photovoltaic capacity. At best, because photovoltaic generation will mostly happen on summer days, resulting in excess supply and so low value of generated energy. In winter, when photovoltaics generate relatively little energy, and the energy demand is high due to heating needs (especially during the night), the value of 1 GW of produced nuclear power will be higher than value of 1 GW of produced photovoltaic in summer.
The result of this is that covering half of all parking lots in France with photovoltaics is effectively worth less than a single nuclear reactor. This is obvious to anyone who pays even minimum attention to the economics of energy production, but the activist-media complex works very hard to deceive the public, leading them to believe that photovoltaics are already cheaper than fossil fuels and nuclear power. They are not, not even close, and this is even ignoring how nuclear power in France subsidizes solar/wind in a deliberate, systemic way.
I’m no farmer but wouldn’t putting a whole bunch of stuff in a field make it difficult to drive a tractor through it? Like have you seen the size of modern tractors? These panels will need to be 20ft in the air with support posts really far apart to accommodate seed drills and sprayers and other equipment that the tractor pulls behind it.
To some extent that falls into the category of "fiddly details." Solar panels are probably not the best choice for use alongside bulk harvested crops like corn, wheat, soybeans and even potatoes, but an awful lot of "produce" crops are harvested by hand.
The reason I say "fiddly details" is because questions like "what's the best spacing between rows of panels" and "do I plant under the panels or just between rows" can be decided as people look into available equipment, land prices, crop variation and flexibility, etc.
Note the room to drive between panel rows and for "boom mowers" to spread out behind a medium tractor and reach under the panels.
There are also many types of vehicles used in agriculture from two storey high broad acre heavy duty combine harvesting monsters to small narrow self propelled engines that run through tree trunks in orchard with various attachments to mow (sprung mowing rings), shake trees (to make fruit fall), spray leaves, trench (for irrigation, drainage, etc).
Also, see: "Agri-bots" - a revolution not yet complete in small driverless autonomous helpers to run 24/7 weeding, spraying, picking berries, using solar, etc.
Vertical bifacial panels are one approach that doesn't interfere with tractors and equipment, and still have comparable generation (with twice as many panels, so more expensive):
> "For conventional ground-mounted systems, the scientists considered a tilt angle of 20 degrees and an average estimated energy yield 1,020 Wh/W. For the bifacial vertical west-east oriented systems, they assumed a bifaciality factor of 90% and an annual energy yield of 999 Wh/W, while for vertical systems with a north-south orientation the annual energy yield was indicated at 926 Wh/W."
Most of the examples I’ve seen are small scale hand pick farming. But there is nothing about 20’ spans that are outside our technical abilities today. This seems like a rather small obstacle to overcome. Of course this still says nothing about the economic feasibility or impacts.
Thinking more about it, you wouldn’t even need 20’ spans. You’d have articulating struts coming off of a central point between the rows. Panels can be adjusted out of the way of equipment when it needs to pass through if it is interfering.
The crops that are best suited to giant tractors also tend to be less suited to agrivoltaics.
They also include energy crops, so you can go from producing no food on land with unprofitable crops that take subsidies to growing food on the land at a profit and producing energy.
The land taken up by energy crops exceeds the land needed by solar by over an order of magnitude.
I can tell you are no farmer. No tractor is needed in a field maintained by grazing. If tbe panels are mounted high enough sunlight will be cast on the ground for a period each day.
I really don't get why people keep coming up with all these elaborate plans to mix solar panels with other stuff that's in active use, instead of just putting fields of them out in non-endangered desert elevated enough off the ground that they won't actively interfere with local animals.
Long-distance energy transmission may be technically or politically harder, or just someone else's problem.
If you're a farmer and already own the land, that's what you can do. A combination of the two land uses might be more profitable or less financially volatile than either one alone.
Why would we destroy pristine desert, which is rapidly disappearing, when we could cover land that has already been disturbed, like parking lots, building roofs, and farmland? Deserts are important ecosystems regardless of their immediate utility to industrial society
I'm guessing that all these schemes timeshare one resource - people - who then diversify their enterprises by wearing two hats.
Sort of how a convenience store has a storefront, then keeps leveraging it by adding things like moneygrams and lottery ticket sales and utility bill payments and so on...
I also think there must be crops that benefit from shading. Either the crops grow well in indirect sunlight, or the area is too hot/sunny for the direct sunlight crops.
They don't seem they elaborate to me, at least compared to any other engineering project that engages the real world. I'm just wondering what took them so long.
Yeah, but that one solar farm that tried to game farming subsidies by letting goats roam with no change to the panels or racking had 3 panels damaged so that's impossible /s
This is a very CA-centric research topic. In most of the US heartland theres millions and millions and millions of acres of farmland. There’s no need and limited benefit to mixing PV with agriculture.
And the places where it does make sense it makes sense only for running goats around in the PV sites to keep weeds down.
There are solar farms being installed on previously very productive farm land near me. Between the thousands of truckloads of gravel and the steel piles being driven into the ground as far as the eye can see, I doubt the land will productively grow food of any kind for a century or more.
We dedicate 39 million acres to corn ethanol so our gas is 10% ethanol. 15 million acres of panels would supply all of the US energy needs including all current petroleum energy.
1 acre of corn produces 11 million kcal. 1 acre of solar panels produces 300 million kcal.
> I’ve seen solar installations in India overgrown with vegetation.
I wonder what the institutional setup behind that is. Whoever gets power from the solar installation has a clear incentive to keep them from being overgrown, so I assume there must be some horrible corrupt principle-agent conflict style stuff going on in the background. (Very typical of India, alas.)
In many countries it's hostile legislation to make it worse and increase soft costs. Australia was only recently allowed to include batteries on solar.
People pay rent for land use. Solar panel income on marginally productive land which actually increased yield of different crops with reduced sunburn, bolting and watering costs combined with revenue in rent, might be better economics than high yield, high water, high till, high fertiliser crops.
The website blocked my IP from reading the article because it found my uMatrix suspicious. Just tell me to disable it or deny access to the site. No need to lock out people who like to decide where their computer connects to. That is a bit petty.
This could work well for small scale farm lands owned by small families as these farm lands use more manual labors than tractors. The farm lands I am talking about are like the ones in the highlands in South East Asia.
No, it's for the areas with excessive insolation - the idea is to use solar panels to create some shadow, reducing the exposure to sunlight for crops and wildlife, which benefits both.
"So, there's quite a big keep-out zone, and when you factor the keep-out zone into account, the solar panels put on that area would typically generate more power than that nuclear power plant."
This idea is being pushed hard right now. I see it everywhere.
You can't grow most crops under solar panels. And the crops you can grow will probably have a lower yield.
This is an idea that's meant to push replacing farmland with solar arrays. I don't necessarily think that's a bad idea for low yield soils, but in my area they are trying to replace high-yield soils (former orchards, vineyards, market gardens) with solar arrays. It doesn't make sense.
What would make sense is arrays that are semi-portable that can be used for re-establishing topsoil. With the right crops, good topsoil can be reestablished in as little as 5-10 years.
A lot of farming NEEDs sun protection for better yields. Currently farms that don’t have sun protection over compensate by over watering (also could reduce yields).
Not to say every farm should have solar panels but it’s very likely a double digit percentage of farm land would benefit from agrovoltaics.
True, however I think the point is to put more shade tolerant crops under the panels. A lot of the crops we grow are not grown directly for human consumption.
Consider the corn grown for the production of ethanol: why not just harvest the energy directly with solar panels there and grow lettuce or carrots? It would be good to explore other uses for the space as well, like using the panels as shade or cover for livestock.
There are plenty of crops that grow well in or even prefer partially shaded conditions, particularly if there's a significant amount of reflected light as well as there likely would be around a solar array.
I think the idea is to use this on the handful of crops that prefer the shade. Think small artisanal alfalfa farms with minimal mechanization.
But all in all I agree that it adds considerable complication for little gain. At least in the US we are in zero danger of installing so many solar panels that there is not enough acres left for food. That kind of concern is orders of magnitude away from reality. Especially if you start displacing corn-for-ethanol acres with solar panels used to charge electric vehicles. In that case you actually increase the available acreage for food crops because the solar panels are so much more efficient than corn ethanol.
[+] [-] locallost|3 years ago|reply
Example: Disneyland Europe will generate over 30 GWh per year from just covering a part of its parking lot. And if France makes it mandatory to cover all "substantial" parking lots it will generate as much electricity from just that as 10 nuclear power plants [1].
And that's France. Countries like the US have a lot more space, especially parking lots. There's enough space for solar panels.
[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-solutions/2023/02/06/...
[+] [-] vel0city|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] AtlasBarfed|3 years ago|reply
Ultimately it means more jobs, more civilization resiliency in disasters, and a "democraticization" of energy generation, which I think the elite REALLY don't want.
It's a thing that economic development basically follows energy production. Central control of economic development (which is what we have with cartel megacorps) wants centralized control of energy production.
Solar isn't just a good carbon policy, or a path to cheaper better energy, or better insurance/life in unstable grids. Home solar is an improvement to individual or small-group liberty.
[+] [-] xyzzyz|3 years ago|reply
It will not, not even close to that. You are being deceived. This deception is willful, because it is obvious to anyone who has any idea about realities of energy generation. The linked article, however, while not literally lying, omits some obvious facts, the goal of which is to make you believe falsehoods.
The article talks about "installed capacity", and compares installed capacity of photovoltaics vs. nuclear power plants. It is extremely deceptive to make such comparison without taking into account the notion of capacity factor, and the proof of this is that you have successfully been deceived.
The nuclear power plants typically generate north of 90% of their installed capacity, averaged over the entire year. The photovoltaics in Europe, on the other hand, typically generate 10-15% of their installed capacity, averaged over the entire year. This is caused by the unfortunate fact which is that the sun doesn't shine at all for at least half of the year, and for the significant part of the remainder, it is occluded by clouds, or shines at suboptimal angle, preventing the panels from reaching their maximum generating capacity.
This means that 1 GW of installed nuclear power capacity is worth at best something like 6-9 GW of installed photovoltaic capacity. At best, because photovoltaic generation will mostly happen on summer days, resulting in excess supply and so low value of generated energy. In winter, when photovoltaics generate relatively little energy, and the energy demand is high due to heating needs (especially during the night), the value of 1 GW of produced nuclear power will be higher than value of 1 GW of produced photovoltaic in summer.
The result of this is that covering half of all parking lots in France with photovoltaics is effectively worth less than a single nuclear reactor. This is obvious to anyone who pays even minimum attention to the economics of energy production, but the activist-media complex works very hard to deceive the public, leading them to believe that photovoltaics are already cheaper than fossil fuels and nuclear power. They are not, not even close, and this is even ignoring how nuclear power in France subsidizes solar/wind in a deliberate, systemic way.
[+] [-] throwuwu|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fencepost|3 years ago|reply
The reason I say "fiddly details" is because questions like "what's the best spacing between rows of panels" and "do I plant under the panels or just between rows" can be decided as people look into available equipment, land prices, crop variation and flexibility, etc.
[+] [-] defrost|3 years ago|reply
Solar farm trial shows improved fleece on merino sheep grazed under panels
https://www.abc.net.au/news/rural/2022-05-30/solar-farm-graz...
Note the room to drive between panel rows and for "boom mowers" to spread out behind a medium tractor and reach under the panels.
There are also many types of vehicles used in agriculture from two storey high broad acre heavy duty combine harvesting monsters to small narrow self propelled engines that run through tree trunks in orchard with various attachments to mow (sprung mowing rings), shake trees (to make fruit fall), spray leaves, trench (for irrigation, drainage, etc).
Also, see: "Agri-bots" - a revolution not yet complete in small driverless autonomous helpers to run 24/7 weeding, spraying, picking berries, using solar, etc.
[+] [-] photochemsyn|3 years ago|reply
https://www.pv-magazine.com/2023/01/24/vertical-pv-for-clean...
> "For conventional ground-mounted systems, the scientists considered a tilt angle of 20 degrees and an average estimated energy yield 1,020 Wh/W. For the bifacial vertical west-east oriented systems, they assumed a bifaciality factor of 90% and an annual energy yield of 999 Wh/W, while for vertical systems with a north-south orientation the annual energy yield was indicated at 926 Wh/W."
[+] [-] nhumrich|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tstrimple|3 years ago|reply
Thinking more about it, you wouldn’t even need 20’ spans. You’d have articulating struts coming off of a central point between the rows. Panels can be adjusted out of the way of equipment when it needs to pass through if it is interfering.
[+] [-] Schroedingersat|3 years ago|reply
They also include energy crops, so you can go from producing no food on land with unprofitable crops that take subsidies to growing food on the land at a profit and producing energy.
The land taken up by energy crops exceeds the land needed by solar by over an order of magnitude.
[+] [-] unknown|3 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] lost_tourist|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] detourdog|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] crooked-v|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pornel|3 years ago|reply
If you're a farmer and already own the land, that's what you can do. A combination of the two land uses might be more profitable or less financially volatile than either one alone.
[+] [-] thethethethe|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] m463|3 years ago|reply
Sort of how a convenience store has a storefront, then keeps leveraging it by adding things like moneygrams and lottery ticket sales and utility bill payments and so on...
I also think there must be crops that benefit from shading. Either the crops grow well in indirect sunlight, or the area is too hot/sunny for the direct sunlight crops.
[+] [-] cultofmetatron|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] andrewflnr|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sourcecodeplz|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ed25519FUUU|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Schroedingersat|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] grensley|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hdhrufjdi|3 years ago|reply
It's more that we want cheese
[+] [-] fnordfnordfnord|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ed25519FUUU|3 years ago|reply
And the places where it does make sense it makes sense only for running goats around in the PV sites to keep weeds down.
[+] [-] tengbretson|3 years ago|reply
edit: I apologize if this is difficult to hear.
[+] [-] ceejayoz|3 years ago|reply
We don't yet have enough renewable energy.
[+] [-] jcampbell1|3 years ago|reply
1 acre of corn produces 11 million kcal. 1 acre of solar panels produces 300 million kcal.
[+] [-] gumby|3 years ago|reply
In Germany, power companies are installing turbines in farmers’s fields. Solar is harder (but you could mount it higher — harder to wash though).
I’ve seen solar installations in India overgrown with vegetation.
[+] [-] eru|3 years ago|reply
I wonder what the institutional setup behind that is. Whoever gets power from the solar installation has a clear incentive to keep them from being overgrown, so I assume there must be some horrible corrupt principle-agent conflict style stuff going on in the background. (Very typical of India, alas.)
[+] [-] Schroedingersat|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Jiro|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ggm|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] NathanielBaking|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] eulenteufel|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] adipginting|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] f0ld|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] orbital-decay|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] weinzierl|3 years ago|reply
"So, there's quite a big keep-out zone, and when you factor the keep-out zone into account, the solar panels put on that area would typically generate more power than that nuclear power plant."
I always wondered if that is really true?
[+] [-] aaron695|3 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] openpaycard|3 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] debacle|3 years ago|reply
You can't grow most crops under solar panels. And the crops you can grow will probably have a lower yield.
This is an idea that's meant to push replacing farmland with solar arrays. I don't necessarily think that's a bad idea for low yield soils, but in my area they are trying to replace high-yield soils (former orchards, vineyards, market gardens) with solar arrays. It doesn't make sense.
What would make sense is arrays that are semi-portable that can be used for re-establishing topsoil. With the right crops, good topsoil can be reestablished in as little as 5-10 years.
[+] [-] yazaddaruvala|3 years ago|reply
A lot of farming NEEDs sun protection for better yields. Currently farms that don’t have sun protection over compensate by over watering (also could reduce yields).
Not to say every farm should have solar panels but it’s very likely a double digit percentage of farm land would benefit from agrovoltaics.
[+] [-] seanalltogether|3 years ago|reply
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Ejido
https://www.google.com/maps/@36.7520281,-2.7656489,22159m/da...
[+] [-] hahamrfunnyguy|3 years ago|reply
Consider the corn grown for the production of ethanol: why not just harvest the energy directly with solar panels there and grow lettuce or carrots? It would be good to explore other uses for the space as well, like using the panels as shade or cover for livestock.
[+] [-] fencepost|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] outworlder|3 years ago|reply
What sort of crops and how long are the panels blocking sunlight for?
For some crops there is such a thing as too much sunlight (or too much heat).
[+] [-] jandrese|3 years ago|reply
But all in all I agree that it adds considerable complication for little gain. At least in the US we are in zero danger of installing so many solar panels that there is not enough acres left for food. That kind of concern is orders of magnitude away from reality. Especially if you start displacing corn-for-ethanol acres with solar panels used to charge electric vehicles. In that case you actually increase the available acreage for food crops because the solar panels are so much more efficient than corn ethanol.