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Semi-transparent solar panels allow concurrent production of crops and power

onlinelibrary.wiley.com

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Re: Semi-transparent solar panels allow concurrent production of crops and power

#61

Post by dehrmann »

hirundo wrote: post #7
Grakel wrote: post #2

There's no shortage of open area to put solar panels. If we put a (nearly) continuous strip in every highway median, that would be a huge step forward, and still take up practically zero useable space. Even 1% of the federally owned land in the sun belt would generate an enormous amount of power.

"if the government were to take over the Sahara Desert, there would be a shortage of sand in five year" -- Milton Friedman (exaggerating, somewhat) Better to put them on home roofs, and arrange for them to be owned by the homeowners, designed so that the occupants are (literally) empowered when the grid is mismanaged, as in California. On highway medians control is more centralized, and they would require more mainte…

It's most efficient to put the panels in a centralized location with high amounts of sunlight on mounts that track the sun. You get significantly higher yield because of the tracking and the location, and maintenance is cheaper because it's centralized.

The fact that you see far more home installations than farms means farms aren't economically viable, neither is home PV without subsidies, but people buy into the "empowerment" fantasy.

Re: Semi-transparent solar panels allow concurrent production of crops and power

#62

Post by peter_d_sherman »

This is very interesting!

A few related questions come to mind:

1) What happens when two or more semi-transparent solar panels are stacked one behind the other? Is output power then comparable to the highest efficiency solar panel, do you get more, do you get less, and if so, how much less?

2) Polarization of light and solar panels -- what happens if light is polarized by a filter before going to a solar panel? And then, what happens (in terms of overall energy production) when that polarization filter is turned to an angle? And then the same question, applied to both regular solar panels, and these semi-transparent solar panels.

3) While I'm on the topic, has any researcher out there found a way to get even so much as a single millivolt/milliwatt (microvolt/microwatt?) from solar power coupled with a fully transparent surface, like let's say, glass, or some other crystal? I seem to recall some researcher somewhere that showed that very small charge regions occur at boundaries when sunlight hits plain transparent water -- but I do not recall the details...

Re: Semi-transparent solar panels allow concurrent production of crops and power

#63

Post by cominous »

jameslk wrote: post #22
Grakel wrote: post #2

There's no shortage of open area to put solar panels. If we put a (nearly) continuous strip in every highway median, that would be a huge step forward, and still take up practically zero useable space. Even 1% of the federally owned land in the sun belt would generate an enormous amount of power.

The solar panels on roads idea has been tried. Rotting leaves were a big source of its failure. https://www.businessinsider.com/first-solar-road-france-fail...

It failed because building an efficient solar panel is already hard enough without thousands of cars running over them. Just build a solar-roof instead.

Re: Semi-transparent solar panels allow concurrent production of crops and power

#64

Post by dehrmann »

Grakel wrote: post #2

There's no shortage of open area to put solar panels. If we put a (nearly) continuous strip in every highway median, that would be a huge step forward, and still take up practically zero useable space. Even 1% of the federally owned land in the sun belt would generate an enormous amount of power.

> If we put a (nearly) continuous strip in every highway median

Is there a shortage of land for solar?

Re: Semi-transparent solar panels allow concurrent production of crops and power

#65

Post by dehrmann »

khawkins wrote: post #21

Only people who spend most of their life in densely crowded cities could think that the planet has so little space that you'd need to grow crops underneath solar panels for efficiency's sake.

I do worry somewhat about devastating desert ecosystems by paving over them with PV panels, but we're so far from that being a problem right now.

Re: Semi-transparent solar panels allow concurrent production of crops and power

#67

Post by everybodyknows »

epistasis wrote: post #25
khawkins wrote: post #21

Only people who spend most of their life in densely crowded cities could think that the planet has so little space that you'd need to grow crops underneath solar panels for efficiency's sake.

It's not "need" as much as increasing efficiency and profit. There are at least a few studies now that have shown that multipurpose use for both agriculture and solar will provide greater output than doing only one; for example you may lose 30% of maximum potential solar production and 40% of agricultural output, but it's still not >50% loss for either. These studies were not performed with this type of semi-transpar…

From the abstract:

>up to +2.5% for basil and +35% for spinach

There's a reason for this: Spinach cannot tolerate mid-summer heat, and doesn't need full sunlight. Was told this by local organic farmers here in coastal SoCal -- and because my own backyard plantings turned yellow and died.

Re: Semi-transparent solar panels allow concurrent production of crops and power

#68

Post by foolfoolz »

gdubs wrote: post #46

Our area of Oregon recently banned new solar farms on the grounds that it detracts from the beauty of the landscape – a wine region with lots of tourism. Ironically, that very beauty is threatened by the changing climate, which clean energy could help mitigate.

eh i don’t see anything wrong with this. some areas are beautiful and should remain that way. we have a ton of space in oregon and the us. tons of space that no one is ever going to care about. i think it’s ok for people to protect places that have interest and economic benefits

Re: Semi-transparent solar panels allow concurrent production of crops and power

#69

Post by quotemstr »

gdubs wrote: post #46

Our area of Oregon recently banned new solar farms on the grounds that it detracts from the beauty of the landscape – a wine region with lots of tourism. Ironically, that very beauty is threatened by the changing climate, which clean energy could help mitigate.

Let's be real for a second. Climate change isn't going to destroy Oregon's wine-growing regions within our lifetimes. A solar farm will change it within months. You can support or oppose solar farm bans according to your liking, but you should do so on the basis of facts. The two forces aren't even close to equal in magnitude and timing.

Re: Semi-transparent solar panels allow concurrent production of crops and power

#70

Post by quotemstr »

Besides: nuclear power plants take up very little space. I really can't seriously people pushing solar, wind, and so on while they eschew nuclear power (and increasingly hydropower too).

Fake environmentalists: "We have an existential crisis! We must change our energy strategy to save humanity!"

Engineers: "That's quite a problem. Here's a way to solve it. It's called fission. Here are some power plant designs."

Fake environmentalists: "Nooo! Not that plan! This existential problem can be solved using only those technologies that agree with my aesthetics!"

It gets old after a while. If carbon-induced anthropogenic climate is a problem --- and I think it is --- then we shouldn't disparage good solutions on weak grounds in favor of solutions with serious problems. We don't need to devote swaths of land to solar and wind if we just build nice compact nuclear power stations.

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