Fighting 'Solar Farm' Installation

[JJT]

Just caught this thread- there are 5 proposed solar farms in my township at the moment. A company approaches the landowner to lease the land for X number of years with an attractive return per acre. I sit on the twp. planning commission and two of us have had phone calls from these companies, or representatives of them. I was promised "in the neighborhood" of $1,000/acre/year to lease. I don't believe it for a second. We had no code for solar installations, so we are in the midst of developing some. For instance, who or what will manage the vegetation around the panels? Is there enough room to maneuver fire equipment inside? There must be an 8 foot chain link fence surrounding the panel area. There's setback requirements, gate size, green plantings around the perimeter of at least 8 feet for aesthetics and so on. There is requirements as to dissolving the site and disposal of the panels and service lines when they are out of service, and reclaiming the land. That being said, our area is being developed at an alarming rate. There isn't much money in farming these days. A solar farm utilizes the land without pressure on our utilities and infrastructure, which is taxed already. It lets the landowner hold on to his land and maybe make a buck (I doubt $1,000 per acre). While I'm not very excited about solar farms, for our area it beats housing developments. We have 6 developments on 3 sides of our farm, including 182 lot development in progress. I guess I'd rather have panels for neighbors. At least they wouldn't make it dangerous to get from one end of the farm to the other.

I can confirm well over $1,000 per acre for solar around me. The development company needed 1500 acres and they had to turn land owners away. I'm certain there will be a phase two, with so many people wanting to lease their land.

 

[Sigarms]

If a solar farm goes next door, just claim you're middle eastern, and to celebrate a wedding, you fired your guns into the air. Your bad.

If you're Billy Bob, you didn't realize that those solar panels were situated behind your back stop. Your bad.

 

[bnold]

But, I bet these plants will work in a storm and freezing conditions. Have people not learned from the Texas fiasco or what is going on energy wise in Europe yet.View attachment 797862

Solar/Wind wasn’t the primary issue with Texas power in the freeze, it was NG.

Solar/Wind production expectations are factored in the winter months by ERCOT.

I know it doesn’t make good Facebook posts, but had NG stayed alive. Tx would have been fine.

 

[bnold]

https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2023/0...3-gw-solar-panel-and-cell-factory-in-the-u-s/

I heard about this project recently.

 

[bnold]

https://dallasinnovates.com/kdc-br...ustainable-wells-fargo-campus-in-las-colinas/

Net positive energy production on new Wells Fargo campus.

 

[Frxdy]

This happened in my town. A landowner was upset that he was losing his view and his property would lose value. The town said.... "Your property values going down is not fact, it's your opinion." They then showed study after study that showed less than 2% of properties lost value. The other 98% stayed the same or increased in value. As for losing his view, the town quite politely (and in other words) said, "If you don't own it, it's not your view".

 

[BryceSteiner]

We have a 1200 acre solar farm going in and many of the residents don't want it for various reasons. I don't blame them. It practically destroys tiling.
I don't understand why not put them above the highways and interstates. with a 300' width road way you could easily put the panels where the power will be most used. It would also keep the sun off the asphalt for extended life. It would lessen the need of salt on those areas, preserving the roads and the electrical infrastructure is already along the highways. You also wouldn't need to snow plow near as much and you could direct power into the road for melting.

 

[johnbell47]

I have been a licensed real estate broker for almost 50 years. I testified in a court case once where a small city ran a sewer line across a lady's farm without her permission. She found out about it AFTER the fact and sued. Did she win? nope. Turns out you have to prove damages and she could not. Turns out that the value of her property was actually enhanced due to now she had access to the sewer utility. A Solar farm is probably not going to damage the value of your daughter's land. In fact it would most likely enhance the value. No noisy, stinky neighbors, no hog farms, dairy farms, escaping cows and on and on. The integrity of the power grid she is on is probably made more stable also. I have one across the road from me. Makes for quiet neighbors that mow their lawn.

 

[JJT]

We have a 1200 acre solar farm going in and many of the residents don't want it for various reasons. I don't blame them. It practically destroys tiling.
I don't understand why not put them above the highways and interstates. with a 300' width road way you could easily put the panels where the power will be most used. It would also keep the sun off the asphalt for extended life. It would lessen the need of salt on those areas, preserving the roads and the electrical infrastructure is already along the highways. You also wouldn't need to snow plow near as much and you could direct power into the road for melting.

Solar farms and wind turbines must go where the electrical grid has the capacity to take the power produced. And miles of panels 300' wide would require many transformer farms to support the many interconnects. The ideal - one concentrated solar/wind farm and only one interconnect/transformer farm.

A side note - Every big box store and warehouse could have a roof full of solar panels and they could cover their parking lot with more panels. Planning Boards need to get educated.

 

[sunandsand]

Long term game plan:

Buy land in the path of development (say ten or twenty years off), rent/lease out to solar farm. This covers your holding costs, pays the taxes and makes a nice profit. Solar farm lease is up in 20 years and you have a couple of options - renew the lease for more money, or don't renew the lease and sell the appreciated land for development (remember, it was in the path of development). Nice gift to your kiddies! Multiple acres of appreciated prime development land.

Of course, there are no guarantees. If fusion starts working, there will be little to no need for solar panels or windmills. The wiring and distribution infrastructure will be swapped over from solar to fusion without major changes. Then there will be money in recycling/scrapping solar panels - and there are going to be a LOT of them available! (Maybe export used panels to places that don't have fusion power for some reason?)

Big growth industry - electricians. Article in New Yorker Magazine (of all places - yeah, I read all kinds of viewpoints) says 800,000 electricians needed. Somebody has to wire all this stuff . . . car chargers, high tension lines, local feeders.

Also, barring development of room temperature superconductivity, invest in copper mining stocks and futures. The demand for copper is already way up - and guess what wires are made of? (Aluminum wiring was tried a few years back - results were less than impressive. If you have aluminum wiring in your home, you've already redone it with copper or you will soon.)

News and media sources - OilPrice (com) very down on solar, can't imagine why? WSJ doesn't like it either, Murdoch owns it, along with NYPost, Fox News and DailyNews in UK - same attitude, electric cars are a waste, you won't like them, they go on and on about how disastrous they are and will always be, but people are buying more and more of them. They are voting with their wallets.

Kentucky and WV "officially" hate solar because they have historically depended on coal mining for their economies. Demand for coal is falling significantly, politicians can rant and rave all they want, when natural gas and solar have a lower cost per KWH (or MWH), the companies will listen to their accountants, not some elected official whose only knowledge about electricity was from when he stuck his fingers into an outlet when he was six years old.

Accounting has no politics - it is numbers, and if the numbers say one thing and the politicians say another, guess who wins?

Lots of big companies with very sharp accountants are going solar because the numbers work. Home Depot is putting solar on the roofs of several hundred stores, so is WalMart, Wells Fargo is doing it, and this is nothing new, either. They are voting with their checkbooks, and some of those are very healthy checkbooks indeed. If it didn't make economic sense to them, they simply wouldn't do it.

Orange County Convention Center has the largest solar array in Florida (or did, until FPL started putting in acres and acres of solar farms) and they use it to run the A/C on their HUGE buildings - and oh boy does it ever get cold inside! Ask me how I know.

People don't like change, and the more rapid that change is, the less they like it. Right now, all kinds of things are changing in our world, and they are changing fast, much more rapidly than we are "used to". Watch it carefully, and try to figure out a way to use it to your advantage because when things change, you have two choices - stand in the way and get flattened, or figure out a way to ride and profit from the wave.

Gonna be a heckuva ride - hold on tight!

Best Regards,

Mike/Florida