Solar panels open crop lands to farming energy • Hacker News Board

Re: Solar panels open crop lands to farming energy

#51

Post by phil21 » Sat, Dec 17, 2022, 4:12 PM UTC

natelegler wrote: post #48

phil21 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If people in rural areas NIMBY away solar power in these areas This really needs to be talked about more. Solar becoming a religious political topic is tiring at best. I've been looking for property for about half a year now, with the goal of a small house on a large (10 acres+) property with a "large" solar plant in the back. The number of places where this is basically impossible to do (politically) if you are no…

Curious where is here for you? When you say solar plant you mean the plant itself or the panels? What is done around here is panels go up, they have storage and anything extra gets fed back into the grid where they are paid out in the form of credit from the power company.

Here for the most part is semi-rural Minnnesota. Within 45 minutes of MSP airport.

I've also checked out (at a very surface level) areas surrounding Nashville and some places in Idaho.

By "plant" I'm talking mostly about non-rooftop solar. I would ideally like to put up about 200-500kw of panels and various mechanical outbuildings (including batteries) to service said install.

I expected the electric company interconnect problems. I did not expect the political pushback for things no one can see. Ideally I'd like to toss up a small wind turbine or two as well, but that's even more controversial these days.

It's not just legal - it's also I need to live in the area as well.

Edit: I also have a very low tolerance for "administrative bullshit" so take this all with a giant grain of salt. My family is rural and on the local town city council so I am especially exposed to current politics.

Re: Solar panels open crop lands to farming energy

#52

Post by fghorow » Sat, Dec 17, 2022, 4:47 PM UTC

jcampbell1 wrote: post #49

maxerickson wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even with it taking up much more space than a lot of other power sources, the amount of solar needed to run the world will take up a relatively modest amount of space. Tens of thousands of square miles is a lot, but it's pretty manageable if the discussion is optimizing global land use. Also, "unused arable land" is probably true, but there's likely more than 0 land that could be converted to agriculture from some ot…

I came up with 15 million acres of panels would provide all the US energy needs. We currently have 39 million acres of corn dedicated to putting ethanol in our gasoline.

A long time ago -- in a continent far, far away -- I did a back of the envelope calculation for the area of solar PV required to power Australia's total energy consumption (not just electricity, but heat, industry, and transportation too).

It turned out to be something on the order of 20% of the land area in Tasmania (the island state just off the SE shore of Oz, for those of you unfamiliar with Aussie geography).

Now, I am not for a millisecond suggesting that Aussies cover 20% of Tasmania with solar PV. But that area happened to be within about 20% or so of the estimates of roof area in the country.

Food for thought.

Re: Solar panels open crop lands to farming energy

#53

Post by natelegler » Sat, Dec 17, 2022, 4:54 PM UTC

phil21 wrote: post #51

natelegler wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Curious where is here for you? When you say solar plant you mean the plant itself or the panels? What is done around here is panels go up, they have storage and anything extra gets fed back into the grid where they are paid out in the form of credit from the power company.

Here for the most part is semi-rural Minnnesota. Within 45 minutes of MSP airport. I've also checked out (at a very surface level) areas surrounding Nashville and some places in Idaho. By "plant" I'm talking mostly about non-rooftop solar. I would ideally like to put up about 200-500kw of panels and various mechanical outbuildings (including batteries) to service said install. I expected the electric company intercon…

If you are self funding this I find it very discouraging that there would be any sort of pushback about this. The areas you were looking at they were rural correct so there wasn't any sort of weird city restrictions on the land?

Only reason I am asking this is because around here we are seeing more and more solar panels going on rooftops plus there was a local grain elevator expansion that took place that they have 6 rows about 50 yards long of solar panels. Not too far away there is another local elevator with the same setup. As far as I know they do not house any storage ability and are simply hooked to the local power company.

I know we have looked into putting rooftops on a few buildings with our own onsite storage (we currently have our own propane back up generator for our livestock) so that way during weather events we can tap into that source to run a few of our things around the farm while our back up generator powers the house and there was zero pushback by anyone. It was personal property so not much they can do about it anyways.

Can you say more about the pushback? It's funny because one farmer in our group is setup for wide row cropping that sort of have alleyways where he has a housing contraption that holds a bunch of chickens and few pigs. It collects rainwater (he also supplements when needed) for the water source and it has a solar powered and stored system for self moving the housing. So think about it like this it goes down the alleyway that is often planted with various grazing grasses/legumes that are consumed by the animals and their "waste" is used for fertilizer for the following year. He will shift his row crops over onto that path the following year.

Sorry to ramble but always interested in issues that are being had in rural areas and how they can be solved by both parties.

Re: Solar panels open crop lands to farming energy

#54

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Dec 17, 2022, 5:22 PM UTC

phil21 wrote: post #44

reportingsjr wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Farmland in the midwest has been shrinking consistently for decades. Your comments would make sense if the opposite of this were true, and there was demand for additional farmland, but there isn't. Ohio reduced the amount of land it needed for farming by about 800,000 acres from 1997-2017 and in that period increase agricultural output[0], so it's not like the amount of food produced is going down! If people in rural…

> If people in rural areas NIMBY away solar power in these areas This really needs to be talked about more. Solar becoming a religious political topic is tiring at best. I've been looking for property for about half a year now, with the goal of a small house on a large (10 acres+) property with a "large" solar plant in the back. The number of places where this is basically impossible to do (politically) if you are no…

[deleted]

Re: Solar panels open crop lands to farming energy

#55

Post by moloch-hai » Sat, Dec 17, 2022, 6:01 PM UTC

maxerickson wrote: post #22

moloch-hai wrote: post #7

This article promotes false assumptions. Ordinary solar can work fine in fields, because most plants don't use light beyond a few hours' worth, and endure the heat, after. A practical arrangement is bifacial panels in vertical fencerows running north-south, to pick up morning and afternoon sun, spaced widely enough for equipment to run between. Blocking morning sun preserves dew, and blocking afternoon cuts heat stre…

I wonder how often interspersing the panels with crops ends up being better than packing the panels onto the most marginal portion of the land parcel. There's often ridges or whatever to deal with on a field.

There is a hell of a lot of ag land, so you only need to site solar where conditions are ideal. E.g. in hill country, just on southern slopes. But any farm has marginal parts hard to harvest that could take dense paneling.

Much of the appeal of agrivoltaics is its continuous steady income supplementing harvest peaks, reducing debt load. England is just now panicking over farmers removing fields from farm production to pack in solar farms.

Many places will need legislative change to permit agrivoltaics, which can look to regulators like forbidden industrial conversion. England might need to undo panic-induced restrictions. Colorado recently adapted.

Solar will be added incrementally, e.g. first on existing fence lines and shed roofs, expanding opportunistically where it is most profitable to add. Farmers are used making to such choices.

Re: Solar panels open crop lands to farming energy

#56

Post by moloch-hai » Sat, Dec 17, 2022, 6:07 PM UTC

westurner wrote: post #25

moloch-hai wrote: post #7

This article promotes false assumptions. Ordinary solar can work fine in fields, because most plants don't use light beyond a few hours' worth, and endure the heat, after. A practical arrangement is bifacial panels in vertical fencerows running north-south, to pick up morning and afternoon sun, spaced widely enough for equipment to run between. Blocking morning sun preserves dew, and blocking afternoon cuts heat stre…

FWIU, also sheep can graze under the shade of solar panels, thus eliminating the need to robo-mow beneath solar panels.

Livestock production improves from reduced weather stress. Lower evaporation loss cuts irrigation load.

Re: Solar panels open crop lands to farming energy

#57

Post by sitkack » Sat, Dec 17, 2022, 7:59 PM UTC

giantg2 wrote: post #16

moloch-hai wrote: post #7

This article promotes false assumptions. Ordinary solar can work fine in fields, because most plants don't use light beyond a few hours' worth, and endure the heat, after. A practical arrangement is bifacial panels in vertical fencerows running north-south, to pick up morning and afternoon sun, spaced widely enough for equipment to run between. Blocking morning sun preserves dew, and blocking afternoon cuts heat stre…

For many varieties, you want the dew to evaporation of the plant in the morning. It reduces the risk of fungal diseases.

But it sounds being able to control light/heat/moisture with panels can be beneficial, the mixture is site and crop specific.

Re: Solar panels open crop lands to farming energy

#58

Post by jahnu » Sat, Dec 17, 2022, 8:02 PM UTC

mytailorisrich wrote: post #32

jahnu wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are barely more children in the world today than twenty years ago. Increases in population are down to not dying young. In almost all regions of the world people are having fewer children and trending towards lower than replacement levels as the necessity to having enough children that survive to adulthood and can care for you in old age disappears. These are hard facts. Given these facts the suggestion that we…

> implies all sorts of horrible utterly unethical “solutions”. No it doesn't and I am tired of the dishonesty of that claim, which is nothing more than an ad hominem attack aimed at shutting down discussion. Please refrain from this type of behaviour. > There are barely more children in the world today than twenty years ago. Nice tidbit but irrelevant to the point, which is population growth. Anyway, there clearly is…

> there clearly is no discussion possible, so good day.

Eh? I was being completely cordial. At least my intentions were such. If you have a counter argument you have the all the space here you need to present it. I have no power to silence you or anyone else.

Re: Solar panels open crop lands to farming energy

#59

Post by mytailorisrich » Sat, Dec 17, 2022, 8:08 PM UTC

jahnu wrote: post #58

mytailorisrich wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> implies all sorts of horrible utterly unethical “solutions”. No it doesn't and I am tired of the dishonesty of that claim, which is nothing more than an ad hominem attack aimed at shutting down discussion. Please refrain from this type of behaviour. > There are barely more children in the world today than twenty years ago. Nice tidbit but irrelevant to the point, which is population growth. Anyway, there clearly is…

> there clearly is no discussion possible, so good day. Eh? I was being completely cordial. At least my intentions were such. If you have a counter argument you have the all the space here you need to present it. I have no power to silence you or anyone else.

That's the issue isn't it?

I simply wrote that the root cause of our problems is the population level. You replied that I implied the most monstrous policies. And now not only you try to deflect but you ask ME to come up with a counter argument...

F that.

Re: Solar panels open crop lands to farming energy

#60

Post by jahnu » Sat, Dec 17, 2022, 8:44 PM UTC

mytailorisrich wrote: post #59

jahnu wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there clearly is no discussion possible, so good day. Eh? I was being completely cordial. At least my intentions were such. If you have a counter argument you have the all the space here you need to present it. I have no power to silence you or anyone else.

That's the issue isn't it? I simply wrote that the root cause of our problems is the population level. You replied that I implied the most monstrous policies. And now not only you try to deflect but you ask ME to come up with a counter argument... F that.

You are misinterpreting my words. I can assure you I have no intention to imply that you personally are suggesting monstrous policies. I am saying that once we learn certain details and facts all that we all are left with that can change population levels are monstrous policies. I hope the difference is clearer now. To be as clear as possible: I'm presenting an argument with facts that you or any other reader here may or not be aware of (I really have no way to know!) that if we accept them as being true (I think they are but am wide open to evidence to the contrary) that lead to the conclusion that there is nothing we (humanity not you) can ethically do about the projected population of the world for the next century or so.

In summary, chill my friend. I bear you no ill will at all!