Fighting 'Solar Farm' Installation

[turbo36]

Oh I like dogs, too. I've had a few in my life. However, I do not have the time to give them that I think they deserve right now. Cat don't care. I can be gone for a week and they're fine. Dog I'd like to give more attention to. So, once I retire, I plan on getting another dog.

In the mean time, I'm teaching one of our cats to play Bananagrams and drink alcohol.

(click to enlarge).
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Just sitting around waiting for an “E”

 

[Grumpycat]

According to the Real Estate people most of the houses next to or surrounded by the solar farm will loose 20-50% of value.

Real Estate agents will say anything to talk someone into selling their property for less than it is worth so the agent gets the sale.

Also we are on the TVA system with about the lowest energy rates in the country. When TVA was contacted they knew nothing about the solar farm. Who are they selling the power to?

TVA is a government agency where nobody knows anything. If you are on a TVA grid and there is not a factory at the solar field then TVA is buying the power.

About 12 years ago TVA was fully woke and drunk on PV power. They would have given me a 20 year contract to purchase PV power at $0.12 over the rate my local TVA affiliated utility bills to buy the power. Catch-22 is they had a quota, therefore a lottery, and to even get on the list you had to hire one of the few approved "system designers" for your PV system. If you could win the lottery the installed PV system cost 50% to 100% over the cost of the parts if purchased from one of several internet suppliers.

 

[Grumpycat]

I have stayed out of this conversation but feel the need to post this.

I have a 7.5kw solar array on a detached garage that has been producing for 41 months. To build this garage we purchased a 1 acre lot next door to our house. This lot had to be cleared of rubbish and was overgrown with mostly "garbage: trees that were mostly in poor health: intergrown, leaning and hollow and dying. I spent a summer clearing it. (I got my Kubota to get this lot in shape.) About 32 mature trees were removed to clear the lot during this operation.
Later the garage was built and after a time the solar array was completed.

In the 41 month the panels have been making watts it has produced 30 mega-watt-hours of electricity. (Even though this is the middle of the "tundra state" of Minnesota.)
Our electric bill is gone for the year. The 30 MW-Hour figure comes directly from the SolarEdge app that monitors this array.

Here is the important fact:

This production is equivalent to 350 trees planted. (from the app)

So 32 trees were removed and the production equals a small forest.
(We have since planted more trees than we removed.)

Your milage may vary but my math works out for me.

regards to all,

R

How dare you bring facts and experience to the internet!

Al Gore is rolling over in his grave!

 

[MossRoad]

...
I'm a huge proponent of Geothermal for heating and cooling, ...

Local university is adding 1000 geothermal wells right now to the 1300+ they installed a few years ago. They just finished tearing out all the coal steam generation equipment a month ago. Their boilers were converted to natural gas. They're finishing up a hydroelectric plant on the river that will provide 7% of their electricity needs. They're partnered with a medium sized solar farm a couple miles away. And they're installing a small solar farm on campus next year. I drive by it fairly often just to see the progress.

 

[Grumpycat]

I just don’t like 100 acres of taxpayer funded solar panels on nice farmland destroying views when we have perfectly good NG in the ground that could be used.

I have 100 acres. How can I get this "taxpayer funding" to pay for my PV project?

 

[MossRoad]

 

[Elviscaretaker]

Oh, come on, really? I’ve walked around solar farms and they are no different than walking around a cornfield! It all depends on whether you like them or not. It’s a lot like art, either you like it or you don’t. It’s a bit disingenuous when you infer there’s some moral character to whats in that field.
by the way, Elvis has left the building! Ha ha

Art is in the eye of the beholder. But, walking around a solar "farm" is like walking around a corn field? Really? That's like saying walking through a downtown of a major city at night is like walking through the woods. Not equal.
The Elvis I was the caretaker for died about a decade ago, So he has not only left the building... He was a very specially trained dog that is still brought up by those that had met him. I no longer train the pups that way, they tend to scare folks who are already afraid of dogs and can't read them. Then he was a giant for the breed and that didn't help. The photo is a partial picture of him on one of my trips to the east coast.

 

[Elviscaretaker]

With solar 'farms' that size it is usually people renting out their land to the solar company, for extremely good money.
It seems you can successfully grow some crops under them though. For example, tomatoes like the midday shade. Sheep could possibly grze under them. If not, it is a waste of good farmland.

It's really limited to what you can grow under these installations. Is it possible? Yes but the labor goes up tremendously and most plants still need more light so you get slower growth. Grazing maybe for a short time anyways. The install would also cost more if you were to try and bring equipment under the array. A lot of what if and or buts. Honestly though, (even though I'm against it and don't consider these an AG business or proper zoning use)I don't blame those that want to do this with their land, it's a easier way to actually make the land pay. It's not like many of the kids these days want to live the life of a farmer and actually do physical work.

 

[keg99]

It is ironic one can chastise those seeking to use their property in a use they claim destroys the land, yet those same complainers will look upon these power plant installations as though they are a pretty sight? These plants destroyed hundreds of acres from any future farming use. But a solar plant is easily converted back to farmland without the pollution and damage caused by these fossil-fuel based plants!

 

[Elviscaretaker]

It is ironic one can chastise those seeking to use their property in a use they claim destroys the land, yet those same complainers will look upon these power plant installations as though they are a pretty sight? These plants destroyed hundreds of acres from any future farming use. But a solar plant is easily converted back to farmland without the pollution and damage caused by these fossil-fuel based plants!
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So, not much info to really discuss this. How old are these plants? Megawatts produced per acre? One LOOKS to be coal fire and the other natural gas. What generation is the tech in these? The IPCC claims these type of plants put out 2x the CO2 (not a pollutant) than solar but they also do not include the life cycles of each or the degradation while mining for the rare earth needed to produce them.. What you see in the finished product isn't equal as with solar a lot of the damage is done offsite.These plants are not new by any means and were built under different circumstances than we currently have. Depending on the tech used in solar PV systems need 3.5 to 10 acres per MW, CSP systems need 4 to 16.5 acres. Yeah, a big variation there on land requirements but it's all about location. If you read Treehugger, solar is all rainbows and unicorns. If they chose to use old industrial sites, landfills or better yet, as they decommission these site as planned... use them. That may just get rid of some of the opposition. But to take farmland off the roles is just plain stupid. The country isn't as well set food production wise as it used to be. 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. If you want solar, put it on your house, get a hybrid system so you can use it when the grid has a failure and add in some batteries for those times it won't produce. The history of those plants would be interesting, was it actually farm land to start with? Did the emanate domain for the greater good? And so on. Since we are on a tractor forum, who wants an electric tractor? With power supplied by solar to stay on topic Solar has it's place, and it's on your rooftop.