Fighting 'Solar Farm' Installation

[newbury]

This would piss me off but the land isn't mine so I couldn't complain.

Why not? It seems the American way to complain about things one has no say in.

 

[riptides]

Glad you feel like you have say so over someone else's property. Individual property rights. If you don't want anything there, you should have bought the property. But, you didn't, and now are belly aching about what they are going to do with it. That's real American of you.

Except when they come to hookup infrastructure and put towers through your yard because of you know - Eminent domain.

It pays to be heard and informed in your community.

 

[Mtsoxfan]

I have seen some large solar installations in my area and state and they are ugly. No argument there.

One in my county is along a busy rural road that is slowly sprouting subdivisions. The land is not great for farming and once tobacco went away was pretty useless though they would try to grow some corn which I think was for tax purposes. A fence was put around the solar panel installation which looked worse than the panels. They put up one of those chained link fences with green slats inserted in the fence. Really is ugly and I am not picky about such things. If a row of shrubs had been planted, eventually, no one would know that installation was there but that ugly fence just draws the eye.

Wind mills are problematic from a visual and sound perspective. They can make noise and the flickering affect that can happen is pretty bad. There is a move to put windmills miles out to see off of Cape Fear. People with beach property are not happy nor are fishermen. The government and windmill people are being iffy about the distance and height of the installations. It is simple math based on those two numbers if the windmills can be seen from shore but they are not nailing down those simple numbers. Can't imagine putting windmills off one of the most dangerous capes in the world and expect that to make money.

I have done the math for a solar power installation and it does not work out even with subsidies if one considers how much money one would make if the money was invested in the market vs spent on solar panels. Having said that, since the governments are removing reliable sources of power generation, and replacing with intermittent sources of power, with less generation capacity, blackouts are now in our future. We almost had them last December. Never in my life did we have to think about power outages due to lack of generation capability but it is our future due to government policies. So we might have to install solar and batteries to deal with blackouts. I designed our house so the roof pitch and alignment will maximize solar production but we could never afford the cost of installation, even with government subsidies.

Not the best aurgument you have there, you can make more money with investing. I'm sure you can. That is not what having solar is about. It is about controling the rising price of electricity, no matter how it is produced. I imagine it could be argued that the price of electricity could easily outpace most investments. Are you using investment data from a bull or bear market?
When I lived in CT, people were posting their electric bills, with distribution costs being 3 to 4 times the cost of the power itself. That's a whole different conversation though...

 

[MAX-24-Dean]

Glad you feel like you have say so over someone else's property. Individual property rights. If you don't want anything there, you should have bought the property. But, you didn't, and now are belly aching about what they are going to do with it. That's real American of you.

I am one of those that bought property next to me so I wouldn't have to deal with new land use issues. It's in CRP, makes me a farmer?

 

[MAX-24-Dean]

When we bought, I looked at multiple companies, and lease vs. own. Lease was nothing more than a discount, like .06 per kwh, and only during daylight. After that, it was full price. It wasn't explained to me that way, but my research showed me that it was true. I dodged that bullet, but many people, not so much. I'm sure things have changed in the last 10-15 years. Owning has some drawbacks, like initial costs, and out of warantee costs, but I had only one issue, easily resolved. Panels waranteed 25 years, inverters I think 10.

If you buy Tier 1 equipment the inverters are good for 20 years.

 

[Cougsfan]

People continually want to maintain a high standard of living but always want someone else to pay the price. The "not in my backyard" mentality really means one feels they should be considered privileged. If it really bothers them that much they should sell just their property and move elsewhere.

 

[turbo36]

Aren’t these called solar farms? If so, shouldn’t they have the same farming rights that other farms have?

 

[MAX-24-Dean]

What happens when a tornado hits a large solar panel field?

All installations I have been involved with are structurally engineered to meet wind loading and snow loading for the region they are installed. More secure than most structures built in prior years.

Wind ratings on the panels themselves vary from 130 to 160 mph depending on the brand. If panels are installed to local codes they are going to stay on thier mounts.
In Florida they are required to be rated for hurricane force winds in some juristictions

Only in 1.1 % of tornados (EF4 to EF5) would you need to be concerned with panels leaving thier mounting brackets, well unless they are not installed to code.

information below was copied and pasted from the attached link.
Across all of history, weak F/EF0 and F/EF1 tornadoes have comprised about 80 percent of all twisters. F/EF2 make up about 14 percent, F/EF3 roughly four percent, F/EF4 nearly one percent, and F/EF5 a miniscule 0.1 percent. As we saw in an examination of violent tornadoes, 63 percent of all fatalities have been caused by that one percent of F/EF4 and F/EF5 events.

Annual Tornadoes - ustornadoes.com

Well over 1,000 tornadoes of all sizes and strengths touch down across the country each year.

www.ustornadoes.com

Not playing down the danger of a tornado as the destruction can be devastating.

 

[5030]

Is it taking the acreage out of production or simply producing an alternate crop (sunlight/energy)? Do we really want to regulate exactly which crops can be grown or what a person can do on his own land?

Your views and mine are polar opposite and I'll leave it at that. You cannot eat sunlight or panels either and the only thing you do is perpetuate the Chinese slave economy. I don't play that.

 

[5030]

Aren’t these called solar farms? If so, shouldn’t they have the same farming rights that other farms have?

Read my post #83.

 

[2manyrocks]

There is something about land growing grass, trees, livestock, or crops that's just more appealing than it being covered in asphalt or solar panels.

 

[TN8Man]

All installations I have been involved with are structurally engineered to meet wind loading and snow loading for the region they are installed. More secure than most structures built in prior years.

Wind ratings on the panels themselves vary from 130 to 160 mph depending on the brand. If panels are installed to local codes they are going to stay on thier mounts.
In Florida they are required to be rated for hurricane force winds in some juristictions

Only in 1.1 % of tornados (EF4 to EF5) would you need to be concerned with panels leaving thier mounting brackets, well unless they are not installed to code.

information below was copied and pasted from the attached link.
Across all of history, weak F/EF0 and F/EF1 tornadoes have comprised about 80 percent of all twisters. F/EF2 make up about 14 percent, F/EF3 roughly four percent, F/EF4 nearly one percent, and F/EF5 a miniscule 0.1 percent. As we saw in an examination of violent tornadoes, 63 percent of all fatalities have been caused by that one percent of F/EF4 and F/EF5 events.

Annual Tornadoes - ustornadoes.com

Well over 1,000 tornadoes of all sizes and strengths touch down across the country each year.

www.ustornadoes.com

Not playing down the danger of a tornado as the destruction can be devastating.

Just in the past few weeks we have seen devastating tornado damage across several states. With the increasing number of solar farms we probably will see soon what happens when a tornado rips through one. Looking at the severe damage caused just in the past few weeks I seriously doubt these solar panels will stay put no matter what wind ratings they have. When you have 50-100 acres of solar panels you could be looking at 2000 panels per acre or 100,000 to 200,000 panels.

 

[5030]

Actually around here, they put the panels on elevated metal pilings and the weeds grow under them and when the 'farm' has degraded to a point where it's no longer viable, the land owner is stuck with the remediation and remember, panels are considered hazardous waste under Federal EPA guidelines.

 

[MAX-24-Dean]

Our issue here (and why we successfully fought and won over a massive solar installation was), here in SE Michigan, the farm ground is very fertile and productive and a solar install would take X number of acres out of production. Real simple.

Never like the term 'solar farm' anyway. It's not a farm at all, it's an industrial installation. Companies that do that stuff like to use that term to make them seem palatable. Nothing more.

The Lord ain't making any more farm ground last time I checked.

Its nice to see that prime farm ground was not taken out of production.

The Solar installation near me is going to be about 160 Megawatts on 2000 acres of ground that is not prime farming land. Mostly rocks, sage, and a smaller percentage good tillable ground. One section (640 acres I believe) is DNR non productive/non agricultural land.

 

[ROUSTABOUT]

I am one of those that bought property next to me so I wouldn't have to deal with new land use issues. It's in CRP, makes me a farmer?

Just makes you a landowner.

 

[LD1]

Gotta wonder......the gov't really wants to push solar, and use my tax money to give out to people or companies to do such.....

.....But why is the roof tops of all our big gov't buildings covered in solar panels? Why is the white house, capitol building, pentagon, etc.....why are their roofs not totally blanketed in panels and have windmills on the south lawn?

 

[Mtsoxfan]

I'm seeing more and more towns either adding solar to their rooftops, or building a small "farm" to offset costs. Our former town could have saved even more money by installing heat pumps or geothermal, but townsfolks were afraid over "horror stories" they were reading online. Fear the unknown or uneducated/uninformed.

 

[LouNY]

I love all the different opinions here. The only one's that kind of get to me are NIMBY'ers.
So many of the ones making the most noise about cell phone towers and similar are the same ones that whine the most when their cell phone doesn't work. When I bought my place many years ago on the mountain behind me I could see 5 towers. One of them was an early cell phone tower. Over the years the trees have screened 2 of them put I can still see 3 out my kitchen window, but I don't even really notice them even when I see them, they are just their.
Without all the towers and power lines we sure as heck would not have the standard of life that we do.

 

[kenmbz]

We could use another cell tower here, but the cell companies can't find a good location.
They tried one a few miles away and after a decade, they decommissioned it leaving the base of the tower and most of the equipment shack on the owners property.

Seems they are stuck with it now...

Cleanup clause would be a worry.

As for the solar farm, trees, bushes and berms are really good at hiding them. We had one at a company I contracted with. They surrounded it with berms and put grass on them and bushes in front of them.
Unless you are pretty high up, you would not know whats back there.

 

[MAX-24-Dean]

Gotta wonder......the gov't really wants to push solar, and use my tax money to give out to people or companies to do such.....

.....But why is the roof tops of all our big gov't buildings covered in solar panels? Why is the white house, capitol building, pentagon, etc.....why are their roofs not totally blanketed in panels and have windmills on the south lawn?

As far as the windmills it just not a good location. Hot air is less dense than cold air, so there is less ability to make things move in the right direction.

Its kind of like density altitude on take off with my plane.