Why not both?
I’m a farmer, rancher, and dairyman. This shit pisses me off. You can get dual use out of land. I can grow crops and graze cattle around and often under solar panels. The limiting factor is what the power company will allow me to sell to them. And they don’t want that because bottom lines.
Seriously. The oil industry has been extracting petrochemicals from the earth while we utilize the land above for animals and crops for over a hundred years. Its not difficult. Saying that renewables are using up our land and not allowing dual utilization for other commodities is a lazy and piss poor lie that will not stop and I’m tired of it.
Stop this nonsense bullshit petro propaganda now. Alternative energy can and already does coexist with modern land management and modern farming practices. Full stop.
Farming under the panels can be beneficial in drought conditions.
Putting solar panels above parking lots is still an excellent idea.
It’s the top photo AI? You aren’t supposed to put panels on flammable material like that.
Which here is the flammable material?
Dried grass.
The grass won’t go dry under these panels if mowed regularly
Mowed regularly beneath the shallow panels themselves?
You won’t believe what I’m about to show you
spoiler
I actually cannot believe it, they are so small! How the hell do they store cut grass?
Carport solar is a terrible idea.
-
Increased height for structure, likely increased weight as well since you need to make super-duper sure they don’t pancake somebody’s car. This leads to;
-
MUCH greater chance of property damage and resulting payouts (not to mention the risk of somebody’s Timmy managing to shock themselves)
-
Harder to build and maintain due to number 1, as well as having a bunch of cars around, needing to schedule lot closures, etc.
-
Number 3 gets in the way of actually using the parking lot as a parking lot, which is probably going to be pretty unpopular with the property owner and/or lose them money from decreased business.
-
Oh yah, harder to angle due to the constraints you’re under, so less efficient.
All this adds up to making it a lot more expensive than just putting them on the ground. We have TONS of abandoned malls and supermarkets all over the country, just use that smh.
-
It’s either a roof structure by itself or adds another ~3cm of height to an existing roof.
-
You vastly overestimate the weight of solar panels. The ones shown probably weigh ~20kg, and probably ~35kg with framing etc. Most car roofs are rated to 30-150kg of dynamic weight. In the statistically highly improbable event where the structure completely collapsed it certainly will not “pancake” anything and will likely just be cosmetic damage.
“somebody’s Timmy managing to shock themselves”
No more dangerous than any of the wires that are, probably, within a few meters of you as you read this.
-
“Harder to build and maintain” sure, but not by much and nothing requiring the full lot closures you’re imagining.
-
“harder to angle” Sort of, there might be instances where a suboptimal angle results in better aesthetics, cheaper materials, snow clearing, etc. but we’re talking ~10-15% efficiency loss.
Based on the shoddy logic and non-existent research I’m guessing this isn’t really about the solar panels. You wanna share what the deeper concern/peeve is?
-
What insanity is this, have you ever been in a parking garage where most are like 8ft ceilings. Most solar car parks are well over 12ft and no issue with building them. Yeah it’s more expensive to build solar car ports vs ground based but you don’t need to build big transmission lines which delay or prevent many large solar fields. Then hopefully you can have EV charging stations right there power cars off the sun.
-
Can we stop this shit
Dont cover our car parks. Cover our public transit stations…oh wait. There are none. (USA)
THIS !!!
As a solar engineer myself that started in utility scale solar and just left their first Commercial & Industrial (C&I) solar job, residential, commercial, and industrial solar is the best use.
-
you center generation as close as possible to utilization, minimizing transmission and distribution.
-
land is re-used, allowing other lands for other uses like rewilding, reforesting, and conservation.
You still have other problems like large power users, but you cannot ignore the benefits.
I hate that this even came to my mind, but I bet a significant percentage of people would actually be discouraged by point 2. I’m all in on it, go team save (and restore) the environment, but it seems like so many people sneer and get turned off just by hearing words such as “rewilding” as if it’s somehow working against their best interests
To the capitalist, everything is an asset that can make money, including land. No money making in returning land to nature, unless a positive externality is introduced by a tax credit or something. Not a perfect solution by far, but rewilding is a necessary pill to swallow because we’re in the sixth mass extinction and are using land for things like cows and pigs which is super water and fertilizer intensive.
-
I would like them on our sidewalks. Obviously, trees would be better but if we aren’t gonna plant trees, then at least provide us shade with solar panels, please.
Why not both?
Panels on grazing areas and some fields has repeatedly been proven beneficial
I totally agree and I’ve been saying this for a little while. But get this, since there are plenty of unused grassy properties out there in America, there’s somewhere they’re making deals with sheep heard owners where the sheep are regularly brought over to the property to eat grass around and under the solar panels. Apparently trying to keep the grass cleaned up and not overgrowing the panels is a problem because of all the little nooks and crannies, getting mowing done under and around them as a pain in the ass. But the sheep can just come in there get a free meal and do the job perfectly well. It’s win-win.
sheep wouldnt exist without humanity. its also -like all other bred animal races with similar situations- serious damage for their bones to carry 10kg’s of extra fur(bred to be wooly).
So no, this is not a win-win
even for non-vegan people the climate impact of sheep farming should be concerning.
Not a win because it’s not vegan? Most people don’t share your beliefs.
Most people are happy to use the animals we have spent thousands of years making useful
I see this as a win/win/win - the sheep farmer gets rent for the land the panels are on, the weeds are kept down by the sheep, we get clean electricity, we get wool
Ed. “Animal races” the word is species, races is for the variation in humans, or in fantasy it’s the humanoid species
I suppose it would be reasonable to talk about races of sheep to talk about all the different types of sheep
Breeds. When is animals they’re different breeds. Interestingly there’s fewer differences between human ethnicities than between different animal breeds
Here in the West they’re just covering up all the desert areas that are not being used anyways. And they also bring in livestock of various kinds to take care of a lot of the weeds and keep it cleaned up as well. I think it’s a great use of space since there is so much of it in such wide abundance of sun. There’s also quite a few of the car parks here that have been installing solar panels over the cars and that’s a great use as well but that’s also quite a huge expense overall.
Desert areas can still have rich ecosystems that get severely affected by solar farms.
Someone said to me yesterday, why don’t we redirect the Ord River (WAus) down to Kalgoorlie (also WA) and irrigate and farm the desert. Some real-life Fremen mind at work there. My eyes rolled so hard, the “its desert, nothing lives there”, is strong with that one.
Why not both?
In the UK we’re getting a lot of large solar projects approved on farmland, and locals are predictably upset.
But at the same time those people didn’t actually support farmers and buy their stuff at a price that meant they would be better off growing crops rather than covering fields in panels.
And 90% of the complaining is oil industry shills, as per usual.
By all means do both! The more solar power the better.
You can (and probably should) cover your fields.
Exactly. People are so angry that they are looking for justification even where there isn’t any. It’s so tiring.
Just cover all fields used to grow biofuel crops with solar panels, it’s an insane number used for biofuels - like enough to power the whole US twice over if they were all covered in solar.
Yes, i’ll mention him (and another trigger after the ~1h mark warning for dipshits).
Its is nearly always a transmission bottlenecks that hinders these. How to get all tbat power out of rural areas.
What if - now hear me out - we built more power lines?
Repurpose combines to drive over the solar panels and harvest the energy. Then pile it up in giant piles near rail roads. From there train it to depots for distribution. Infrastructure is already there!
This guy solar farms!
I’m fine with having them on fields. If they can be placed in car parks too, then cool.
They are a hell of a lot more environmentally friendly to have on fields than crops anyways.
And no, I’m not arguing that there should be no crop fields. Just that no one will get hurt if we have less of them. Besides, it’s not gonna take that much collected space to generate enough solar/wind power to sustain a country. In my country we could technically already be completely self-sustaining with solar and windmill energy if it wasn’t for the fact that Germany pays us to turn off our windmills from time to time because we produce too much energy and therefore drive down energy prices.
The el-net is also not yet built to store the amount of energy we can generate so it’s a nice problem to have and something that will be solved over time when we find ways to store this type of energy better.
Besides, it’s not gonna take that much collected space to generate enough solar/wind power to sustain a country.
Technology Connections agrees (trigger warning for dipshits after the ~1h mark).
