Fighting 'Solar Farm' Installation

[RB5]

I have not read this entire thread. I saw the 1000 acre solar farm they installed in Kaufman County in one of the remote areas of the county. I would not have wanted to live next to it. One thing I rarely see mentioned is how much the panels raise the tempurature as they collect this "free" energy. Any time you have a dark surface in the sun it heats up much more than the natural landscape. There is also less vegetation and tress, which reduces oxygen levels. So how green is solar really? I think solar is great when used on existing roof tops and large buildings, but not so much when you degrade the land to install it. Something else I have been told but not looked into. My tax guy told me that putting solar panels on your roof can raise you homeowners insurance rates. What would a good hail storm do to the panels? In Texas we sometimes see baseball size hail. That would make me very nervous every time there was a potential hail threat. Just a few thoughts...

 

[bvanek]

What would a good hail storm do to the panels? In Texas we sometimes see baseball size hail. That would make me very nervous every time there was a potential hail threat. Just a few thoughts...

Could be plenty of pitfalls yet discovered? Infrastructure the big one and land mass used is #2. See some untouched land, fill it up with metal and plastic.

So if you live in the north, less sunlight for longer periods and more cloudy days and with snow accumulation, when the sun comes out, quite reflective .....so I guess you could send the heat back out into the atmosphere? but then maybe your butt would get cold?.... I shoveled snow off my roof three times this year about a foot each time. Would have been impossible with solar panels. But then again I wouldn't have them in the first place.

They like to put these in remote areas out of their sight not caring too much about our view. I like remote living with trees and natural landscape all around.

How about lining the LA freeway with panels so all the electric cars can just pull over and hook up for free. May take them 3 or 4 days but they weren't going far anyway. With all those EV cars out of the way, ICE's will be king of the road (to go someplace else) and trucks will have the fast track to the stores so that the mob will never run out of things to steal.

 

[edgarrian]

I'm not telling you its doomsday. Assuming the words of a few represent all is not the way to go.

If they are not being good stewards of the land, that's because they are a bad company. It doesn't have anything to do with the panels or the turbines. Some coal and some Oil and Gas companies can be (and have been) bad stewards as well. They failed at preventing leaks and spills. They didn't prevent mining accidents.

I personally, have not made any of my statements based on wanting to reduce CO2 levels. I personally believe, along with some models, that our hard switch to NG from coal may have done enough to lower America's contribution to greenhouse gas levels. But having a variety of energy options, encouraging new industry, lowering energy dependence are all good reasons.

An EV isn't a good option for you, and not for many people. It isn't for me. But it is for a lot of people, especially fleet companies. I do disagree with how the EV industry has been marketed in the past and to who it has been marketed too. That is changing.

Well for the most part I agree although im still of the belief that climate change is irrelevant when it comes to humans doing it. Do i think anything catastrophic will come about. Absolutely not. We will still experience all that mother nature has to offer.

U are right about having a variety of energy is good but not in the way we are going about it. Its absurd what's taking place.

An EV could be a good option but not at that rate to charge at a charging station. Fleet companies will have to keep them local. Batteries are too expensive to replace. Cobalt is mined by children. Most of the precious metals are not in America. The countries that do have these precious metals for EVs, panels and so on are in fact already talking about forming a cartel. Just like OPEC has with Oil. So the theory of not using foreign energy is misguided.

Companies and Industries have had leaks, mistakes, outright neglect for profit. Its not just Oil and Gas Companies. I could go on and on about this little remark but I dont need to b/c you seem like you understand that its problem everywhere.

Green Energy is a problem thats burdening the tax payer along with other industries. The DOE is handing out billions to green energy with failures already stacking up

 

[OzarkChris]

... One thing I rarely see mentioned is how much the panels raise the tempurature as they collect this "free" energy.

Are you suggesting that Solar Panels are contributing to "Climate Change" and the poles melting? That's, that's Heresy! Climate denier!

 

[KilroyJC]

Are you suggesting that Solar Panels are contributing to "Climate Change" and the poles melting? That's, that's Heresy! Climate denier!

You forgot to add:

>clutches pearls<

 

[walhondingMF]

Ford‘s EV unit lost $772 million in the first quarter on Electric vehicles.

Yep. I think the EV situation in our country has been handled incorrectly. EV's have been pushed to and designed for a "higher class" of people (I'm below this level so please, no offense intended to anyone. I just can't come up with a better way to put it). If you want more EVs, there should be a long list of them in a much more affordable range. For the average commuter, an inexpensive EV would be a great option. Instead the closet thing they can get is at a minimum $40,000. Other countries that have numbers of EVs in use have a huge number of Ford Escort and Chevy Cavalier type cars.

I also think the trucks are fantastic for fleet type options. For the average American that owns a truck (assuming a lot of us on here) range and price limit it as an option. But for a company with a lot of trucks that are used in an expected driving range each day, they're great. The factor that can and is slowing this shift, IMO, is that all of these companies already have trucks. It would be bad business to just get rid of them all at once. One of the largest landscaping/mowing companies here has a fleet of trucks. Owner says he love the Ford Lightning as work trucks and will by them...once the trucks he already has are worn out.

 

[Mtsoxfan]

Could be plenty of pitfalls yet discovered? Infrastructure the big one and land mass used is #2. See some untouched land, fill it up with metal and plastic.

So if you live in the north, less sunlight for longer periods and more cloudy days and with snow accumulation, when the sun comes out, quite reflective .....so I guess you could send the heat back out into the atmosphere? but then maybe your butt would get cold?.... I shoveled snow off my roof three times this year about a foot each time. Would have been impossible with solar panels. But then again I wouldn't have them in the first place.

They like to put these in remote areas out of their sight not caring too much about our view. I like remote living with trees and natural landscape all around.

How about lining the LA freeway with panels so all the electric cars can just pull over and hook up for free. May take them 3 or 4 days but they weren't going far anyway. With all those EV cars out of the way, ICE's will be king of the road (to go someplace else) and trucks will have the fast track to the stores so that the mob will never run out of things to steal.

I used a roof rake to clear my roof of snow, not impossible at all for me...

 

[Hay Dude]

Yep. I think the EV situation in our country has been handled incorrectly. EV's have been pushed to and designed for a "higher class" of people (I'm below this level so please, no offense intended to anyone. I just can't come up with a better way to put it). If you want more EVs, there should be a long list of them in a much more affordable range. For the average commuter, an inexpensive EV would be a great option. Instead the closet thing they can get is at a minimum $40,000. Other countries that have numbers of EVs in use have a huge number of Ford Escort and Chevy Cavalier type cars.

I also think the trucks are fantastic for fleet type options. For the average American that owns a truck (assuming a lot of us on here) range and price limit it as an option. But for a company with a lot of trucks that are used in an expected driving range each day, they're great. The factor that can and is slowing this shift, IMO, is that all of these companies already have trucks. It would be bad business to just get rid of them all at once. One of the largest landscaping/mowing companies here has a fleet of trucks. Owner says he love the Ford Lightning as work trucks and will by them...once the trucks he already has are worn out.

50+ years ago entire city truck fleets and delivery truck fleets were electric.
They scrapped them all and went to gas/diesel.

My grandfather had a side hustle of scrapping Philadelphia electric mail trucks. He recycled the batteries and the aluminum bodies.

 

[walhondingMF]

Not sure how many people on here are into listening to podcasts. I am a big podcast guy. I am currently close to the end of listening to one on the Lex Fridman Podcast with a guy named Bjorn Lombrg and Andrew Revkin. Discussing many of the things we have discussed here. Both from semi-different perspectives and a lot experience on the topics. Something in it for everyone that has been involved in this discussion. I don't know how to link something like that but I'm sure it wouldn't be hard to search for. It is long, but well worth the listen.

 

[Hay Dude]

Not sure how many people on here are into listening to podcasts. I am a big podcast guy. I am currently close to the end of listening to one on the Lex Fridman Podcast with a guy named Bjorn Lombrg and Andrew Revkin. Discussing many of the things we have discussed here. Both from semi-different perspectives and a lot experience on the topics. Something in it for everyone that has been involved in this discussion. I don't know how to link something like that but I'm sure it wouldn't be hard to search for. It is long, but well worth the listen.

I listen to that sort of thing a lot. Many are pushing agendas.
However, I have come to trust my eyes and my instincts.
There’s a lot of nefarious activity out there disguised in virtue.

 

[MossRoad]

I live in the pacific NW....hydro plants along the Columbia have very efficient fish ladders that work just fine. In addition to this, the dam also provides, recreation, irrigation, and flood control. Not to mention affordable power..... and with infrastructure already in place, cheaper to get to the customer.....but it is also connected to a grid that moves this power elsewhere.......Originally the dams along the Columbia were all put in place for the benefit of the local population and run by the Army Corps of Engineers. Surplus allowed prices to remain stable but selling that to California has caused prices to go up.
At Bonneville (the first dam on the river) they also have an enormous hatchery that has a spawning pool and egg harvesting facility for Salmon and also brood trout that eventually cycle to the ocean and return as adult steelhead. Most tributaries allow the smaller fish to get into spawning grounds and many also have smaller hatcheries that raise fish to supply to lakes and streams that may get over-fished. Very efficient in most cases, and not a lot of upstream loss. Commercial fishing is heavily regulated but the Indians still get to gill net seasonally. Most loss actually comes from less fish returning to the river. Local commercial fishing and recreational take in some relatively small numbers. But the ocean is vast and there are plenty of super factories out there harvesting most of the fish indiscriminately. The absurd 12 mile limit and fish farming has put most locals out of business....Seems we are too willing to serve other nations more than ourselves? ....but the dams have served most people in this area quite well.

Fish ladders work OK for adult fish. They don't work well for the fry. There's nothing natural about how the fish migrate each direction, and large dams are a huge problem for that. Lower dams are not as bad, because the fry can survive the downstream ride over the dam.

Fish transportation

www.nwcouncil.org

Fish transportation

www.nwcouncil.org

 

[MossRoad]

looks a lot more on blue run states to me. So "almost as bad as" just doesn't fit according to your map. But i guess I shouldn't believe my lying eyes?

Boy, you see what you want to see regardless of facts.

The dams are located where there's water. Plain and simple. Nothing to do with politics over the past 110 years.

 

[MossRoad]

Yep. I think the EV situation in our country has been handled incorrectly. EV's have been pushed to and designed for a "higher class" of people (I'm below this level so please, no offense intended to anyone. I just can't come up with a better way to put it). If you want more EVs, there should be a long list of them in a much more affordable range. For the average commuter, an inexpensive EV would be a great option. Instead the closet thing they can get is at a minimum $40,000. Other countries that have numbers of EVs in use have a huge number of Ford Escort and Chevy Cavalier type cars.

I also think the trucks are fantastic for fleet type options. For the average American that owns a truck (assuming a lot of us on here) range and price limit it as an option. But for a company with a lot of trucks that are used in an expected driving range each day, they're great. The factor that can and is slowing this shift, IMO, is that all of these companies already have trucks. It would be bad business to just get rid of them all at once. One of the largest landscaping/mowing companies here has a fleet of trucks. Owner says he love the Ford Lightning as work trucks and will by them...once the trucks he already has are worn out.

Don't say 'higher class' of people. Say 'higher income'. Plenty of 'recess' rich folks.

And, we've had two Cavaliers.

 

[MossRoad]

I used a roof rake to clear my roof of snow, not impossible at all for me...

In decades past we used a roof rake all winter long. Haven't had to use it but once in the past 5-6 years.

 

[walhondingMF]

I listen to that sort of thing a lot. Many are pushing agendas.
However, I have come to trust my eyes and my instincts.
There’s a lot of nefarious activity out there disguised in virtue.

This is far from that. Just look up the 2 guys names. You would really be interested in what the Lomborg gentleman has to say. His latest book "False Alarm" would really interest you.

 

[bvanek]

I used a roof rake to clear my roof of snow, not impossible at all for me...

so you have solar panels on your roof?

 

[MossRoad]

 

[bvanek]

The dams are located where there's water. Plain and simple. Nothing to do with politics over the past 110 years

I live above the lower Columbia river. Part of the vast Columbia River basin which begins in Canada. Politics is everywhere and that includes hydroelectricity. It took 20 years of negotiation with Canada in 1964 to construct storage reservoirs to improve capacity down stream. Currently this treaty is being negotiated and either side can terminate it in 2024. They are not building new dams and reservoirs have always been controversial (and political.) ...... Government(s)= politics and i can assure you that the current political structure in my State doesn't care about promoting all the advantages that hydro brings and will undermine anything (even the sensible stuff)to promote their agenda......my State has been ruined by outside politics.

The map is a snapshot and does have plenty of political history behind it. Where all the final decisions are made?, how funding is allocated and what regulations get put into place, (control of the outcome) .....looks pretty blue around those metropolitan control centers, so I took issue with "almost as much as" which seemed to imply that a particular side was taken and not just a neutral informative map.

i understood the map....maybe I read between the lines a bit too deeply? However I was wrong in the way I worded my response. Probably just angry about the way things are headed.

 

[bvanek]

Fish ladders work OK for adult fish. They don't work well for the fry. There's nothing natural about how the fish migrate each direction, and large dams are a huge problem for that. Lower dams are not as bad, because the fry can survive the downstream ride over the dam.

So they are constantly improving fish survival rate; this from the Pacific NW National Laboratory
"On average, about 96 of 100 young salmon, called smolts, survive the downstream migration through each lower Columbia River and Snake River dam. This means, with several dams on the Columbia River System, the total survival rate drops with each passage. For example, if 96 percent of juvenile salmon survive the first dam, 96 percent of those survive the second dam, and 96 percent of those survive the third dam, the total after three dams is 88 percent survival."

all things considered this is a pretty good survival rate.

"Salmon survival through dams is tied to several factors including: the amount of water in the river, the amount of water spilled, water temperature, fish size, and the route the fish takes through the dam. At most dams of the lower Snake and Columbia Rivers, there are four ways salmon pass: the spillway, a surface weir, the turbines, and the juvenile bypass system. Each route has a different rate of survival, making the math more complex."

Natural processes have always been compromised over history. (developing products useful to man kind). Targeting dams seems a bit out of context given all the benefits.

 

[MossRoad]

I never said I agreed with tearing them out. I was just showing that it's not just the 'left coast' where this is happening. It's been happening all over the country for a century. The structures need costly maintenance after decades of use, and it's cheaper to tear them out and build new power plants than it is to repair/replace dams.

We had a small one about 10 miles north of us that was removed due to several reasons. Maintenance on the dam structure itself was getting expensive and poses an insurance liability to the company that owned it. The minimal amount of electricity it generated made it not worth (to them) the upkeep.

It completely blocked any fish migration, as it had no usable fish ladder as well, but that wasn't the driving force. No one cares about walleye and sucker migration. Now it's open to salmon and trout from Lake Michigan, so it'll be a while before any measurement of economic impact that fishery will have on that stretch of that river.

I thought they should have kept it.

Here in our town, there's a wide dam with only about a 13 foot drop. It drove the local economy for quite awhile with water powered machinery from a raceway on the east side of the river. Then they installed a hydroelectric plant on the west side of the river, and drove the machinery with electricity instead of water power, and filled in the east raceway that powered those industries with water. With electricity, businesses were no longer tied to the riverfront for power. Oliver plow works, Studebaker, Singer Sewing Machines, etc... all located SW of town and used electric power from that river, as well as their own coal powered steam and electric plants.

For that matter, my father worked in that power plant after high school while attending Notre Dame until WWII broke out.

They stopped producing electric power from that dam back in the late 60's or early 70's as I recall, and removed the power house (the implosion was a fiasco).

In the early 80s they dug out the east race, put a dam at the head end, and made a nice whitewater course. The city had plans and a permit to install a hydroelectric plant at those headwaters. They never did it. A few years ago, just before the permit was to expire, the city transferred it to Notre Dame, and they built a pretty unique hydroelectric plant there. The cosmetics are just finishing up this summer, but the plant went operational last year and provides about 7% of the university's electric needs.

From the wiki page on this river...

"There are 190 dams in the St. Joseph River watershed, and 17 on the river mainstem.[7] Most of these dams block fish passage, although fish ladders constructed on the lower dams allow salmonine passage as far as the Twin Branch Dam in Mishawaka, Indiana. But, the fish ladders are not adequate for many native species, such as sturgeon, and the dams tend to be built on the higher gradient portions of the river, which are the most critical river habitats for fish spawning.[8]"

So, there's only 5 functioning fish ladders out of 190 dams on this river system.