Sounds like America... I could see panels being thought to take up farmland and not look that great but if it could use other lands and be out of the way idk what the remaining objections are
In Denmark, the spread of solar panels has become a divisive issue
131–140 of 228 posts
Re: In Denmark, the spread of solar panels has become a divisive issue
#132I took a stroll recently through the countryside around Swindon, UK, where there’s a massive new solar farm on formerly arable land. One thing I only just realised was how the view from the ground is so badly affected when you’re down amidst the endless rows of panels - they reach well above head height. It’s basically like walking through a industrial estate, just with more grass in between. Really very bleak. Give…
Ok, but why are you down among the panels? We have solar farms near my house and I don't hang out in them. You only see it when you drive by the place. I would much less prefer a giant windmill obstructing an otherwise scenic view.
Re: In Denmark, the spread of solar panels has become a divisive issue
#133Earlier quoted context omitted.
Climate change is an existential threat, it's switch to green power asap or burn the world our kids will live in
Would be nice if we started with the actual marginal land and not the marginal land in real estate terms. Roofs for a start. Parking lots next. Really no reason why any and all industrial land shouldn't look like a pure sea of solar from orbit. Every square inch is low hanging fruit no one would complain about a solar panel going in there.
But it's literally not low, it's up on a roof. The ground installs are preferable because they are low and easily accessible.
Re: In Denmark, the spread of solar panels has become a divisive issue
#134Earlier quoted context omitted.
> You're naive if you think your storage solution can handle the massive reserves required The Scandinavian grid which Denmark is part of has 120 TWh of storage capacity (hydro in Norway and Sweden) which is literally 4 months of electricity consumption.
Yes but (deja vu here) pumped hydro storage benefits from geography, so it's only a solution for Norway and Sweden and other bumpy places.
This thread was about Denmark, but obviously the solution will be different everywhere. Some places have suitable geography, others have more sun and milder winters where overbuild+batteries are easier, some have existing Nuclear that can be kept running affordably, maybe you even have politically stable neighbors where a HVDC grid can smooth out differences in weather, there are no generic answers.
Re: In Denmark, the spread of solar panels has become a divisive issue
#135Regardless of your political beliefs I would hope you could agree that using arable land for solar power is dumb. Denmark is almost entirely arable land and relatively small to boot so they should be using more compact power sources.
Why would I agree to such a stupid position? Here in the us we could swap acres of corn used only for ethanol production for acres of solar panels that produce a 100x more power annually.
Yes, but the reason we incentivized ethanol production is to not lose the productive capacity for corn in case we need it to feed people. Having a significant excess of food production capability is incredibly important to long term stability. You really can't overstate the importance of food production capacity.
Re: In Denmark, the spread of solar panels has become a divisive issue
#136We currently use vast amounts of land growing corn and other crops specifically for biodiesel. Solar panels produce over 100x more energy per hectare than corn ethanol, even in countries like Denmark with limited sunlight. It makes perfect sense to repurpose some biofuel farmland for solar panels. That's just efficient land use, not an attack on agriculture.
Don't forget all the pesticides and fertilizer that they have been pumping into the ground for the last 100 years.
Farms are industrial estates.
Re: In Denmark, the spread of solar panels has become a divisive issue
#137Earlier quoted context omitted.
> that thing has 90% of his electricity usage How is that supposed to work with cloudy days with barely 7 hours of daylight in winter?
Solar has always been a part of a wholistic strategy. We’ve known this ever since the sun went down at night and we had to compensate for it.
> strategy
Umm, so we still have to build enough traditional (and, ideally, dispatchable) generation capacity to make sure we can cover our electricity needs during those periods in winter where it's very cloudy and it's not windy?
eg Jan 2025
https://www.theguardian.com/money/2025/jan/22/weather-bomb-e...
"Cloudy and still weather has caused Great Britain’s renewable energy output to fall to near zero this week"
"Britain’s wind power output fell to just above zero on Wednesday, which, combined with the cold, dark weather, caused the market price for electricity to climb to almost £250 per megawatt-hour at auction, or almost seven times the average price before the pandemic"
"The sudden drop-off in renewable energy due to dull windless winter weather, known as dunkelflaute in German, has also forced the system operator to pay gas power stations more than £500/MWh to run on Wednesday evening when household demand is expected to reach its peak.
The weather conditions – the third dunkelflaute of the winter so far – left Britain’s electricity grid reliant on gas-fired power stations. They accounted for more than 70% of power generation at points on Wednesday."
Re: In Denmark, the spread of solar panels has become a divisive issue
#138Earlier quoted context omitted.
Except for Texas, which decided as a state that avoiding federal regulation was worth people dying every winter from power outages.
I'm not a fan of Texan electrical isolationism, but "people dying every winter from power outages" is stretching it a bit...
Ya, it was just one winter where people actually died, it was recent though.
Re: In Denmark, the spread of solar panels has become a divisive issue
#139Denmark is a poor location for solar. They are pretty far north and don't have a lot of sunny days that are good for solar generation. When they do, those peaks drive energy prices negative. From the article: Over the next 10 years, the official expectation is a very large rise in the amount of solar produced. But that kind of clashes with the reality on the ground – they can’t make money
I don't understand why energy production must be profitable.
Re: In Denmark, the spread of solar panels has become a divisive issue
#140Earlier quoted context omitted.
Climate change is an existential threat, it's switch to green power asap or burn the world our kids will live in
Would be nice if we started with the actual marginal land and not the marginal land in real estate terms. Roofs for a start. Parking lots next. Really no reason why any and all industrial land shouldn't look like a pure sea of solar from orbit. Every square inch is low hanging fruit no one would complain about a solar panel going in there.
The best land for solar farms tends to be in the desert where there isn’t enough water for industrial use.