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American solar farms

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Re: American solar farms

#161

Post by blacksmith_tb »

bee_rider wrote: post #144
bongodongobob wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, in Oconto county Wisconsin, residents are all up in arms about a solar farm going up. It's the poorest county in the state and would bring in much needed money. The arguments against it are "this destroys farmland", "who will clean the snow off of it in winter", "I don't like how it looks", "static electricity will kill the crops around it", "it will raise the temperature of the surrounding area", "you can't re…

> "who will clean the snow off of it in winter" This is something I don’t really get. There’s always concern around change of course. But tending to renewables sounds so much nicer than fossil fuel issues. Like clearing snow off the panels doesn’t sound fun exactly, but it is outdoors… realistically for these giant fields of panels it should be a fairly mechanized process, so somewhat low impact… compare to black lun…

PV panels are typically angled to catch the sun better, and they're smooth and dark... snow slides off by itself if the sun is shining (and if the sun isn't shining, you aren't losing much by having the panels covered).

Re: American solar farms

#163

Post by dpe82 »

bluGill wrote: post #131
alnwlsn wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Texas also has a lot of wind power. I was driving though at night one time and there were turbines on either side of the road as far as could be seen. Thing is, they are tall so they have those red airplane warning lights on top - which would all flash at exactly the same time. A rather trippy thing to see.

Depending on which one, most of them don't have airplane warning lights. There have been extensive study, and if done right you can only light up a small number but because the lights are synchronized that is a better stay away indication than having a light one them all. (lights not synchronized is a disaster - too many lights to keep track of)

At first I questioned your assertion, but after reading the most recent FAA AC revision (https://www.faa.gov/documentLibrary/media/Advisory_Circular/...) I found:

13.5.3 In most cases, not all wind turbine units within a wind turbine farm need to be lighted. Obstruction lights should be placed along the perimeter of the wind turbine farm so that there are no unlit separations or gaps more than 1/2 SM (0.80 km) (see Figure A-26). Wind turbines within a grid or cluster should not have an unlighted separation or gap of more than 1 SM (1.61 km) across the interior of a grid or cluster of turbines

Re: American solar farms

#164

Post by blacksmith_tb »

southernplaces7 wrote: post #113
pstuart wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the Left as the same illogical hate against the right Challenge accepted. Receipts please.

Firearms for home and personal defense. Also, not to even dig deeply into the many lunacies that the progressive left became insane about during the pandemic (both sides were guilty here, but it was BOTH sides). Don't get too smug. You really think your entire half of a political spectrum is free of stupidity and irrational thinking?

Oh sure, the Left has plenty of irrational but deeply held beliefs. Anti-firearms though... when they kill more people through suicide than homicide...

1: https://publichealth.jhu.edu/2025/new-report-highlights-us-2...

Re: American solar farms

#165

Post by kitten_mittens_ »

cogman10 wrote: post #129
chasd00 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Texas is about as red as it gets and leads the nation in renewable energy including solar. Red or blue, if the gov can setup a situation where renewable energy is profitable then nature will take its course. https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/texas-tops-us-states...

Yup, my home state of Idaho also has a shockingly green energy portfolio. All of the PNW is like that because it's on a shared grid that has been primarily powered by hydro for as long as I've been alive. And still, we've seen a massive amount of green energy installed here. Both windmills and solar farms.

Idaho Power’s local generation is quite clean. But…during the summer in Idaho, almost a third of energy comes from Wyoming and Utah where coal is still a substantial part of generation.

Re: American solar farms

#166

Post by jfengel »

bee_rider wrote: post #144
bongodongobob wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, in Oconto county Wisconsin, residents are all up in arms about a solar farm going up. It's the poorest county in the state and would bring in much needed money. The arguments against it are "this destroys farmland", "who will clean the snow off of it in winter", "I don't like how it looks", "static electricity will kill the crops around it", "it will raise the temperature of the surrounding area", "you can't re…

> "who will clean the snow off of it in winter" This is something I don’t really get. There’s always concern around change of course. But tending to renewables sounds so much nicer than fossil fuel issues. Like clearing snow off the panels doesn’t sound fun exactly, but it is outdoors… realistically for these giant fields of panels it should be a fairly mechanized process, so somewhat low impact… compare to black lun…

The process really is as simple as "libs want it so it must be bad". Everything else is a rationalization after the fact.

Re: American solar farms

#167

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

JuniperMesos wrote: post #159
adgjlsfhk1 wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Power bills will go down. Solar electricity is by far the cheapest form.

But it's unreliable, and needs a lot of battery tech + overbuilding to make it reliable. Can people be confident that building the array will in and of itself make their electricity bills go down?

Even with those additional costs, it is still arguably the cheapest generation technology.

Re: American solar farms

#168

Post by cogman10 »

kixiQu wrote: post #156
cogman10 wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup, my home state of Idaho also has a shockingly green energy portfolio. All of the PNW is like that because it's on a shared grid that has been primarily powered by hydro for as long as I've been alive. And still, we've seen a massive amount of green energy installed here. Both windmills and solar farms.

For what it's worth Oregon and Washington are pretty much at the bottom of new renewable installs: https://www.propublica.org/article/oregon-washington-green-e...

Yup, Idaho's on that list as well.

But when you look at a grid map you pretty quickly understand why that's the case.

https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/zone/US-NW-IPCO/live/fif...

Right now, about 6% of my power comes from natural gas. That's the only fossil fuel power I'm currently using. Everything else is solar/hydro/wind. Not sure why nuclear isn't listed, I thought we had an active plant here. But you get the picture.

For my grid, new solar or wind is simply not needed so why would we be anywhere near the top of installation? Batteries is what we actually need.

There is a point where it's a bad idea to install more renewables.

Re: American solar farms

#169

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

bongodongobob wrote: post #121
bluedino wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's the poorest county in the state and would bring in much needed money. What money? Power bills won't go down. The solar panel factories aren't in that county. The installers will be brought in from out of state contractors.

The contractors that build it and the jobs to maintain them.

We should be honest and admit that the maintainance jobs are very, very few.

Re: American solar farms

#170

Post by lesuorac »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #147
Scoundreller wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's their argument against interconnects though? Especially as you install more wind and solar, capturing (or sending) generation across a wider geographic area should regress-to-the-mean production and consumption better without turning on peaking plants that may be on for only hours a year. Or get natgas generation from areas where the natgas infra hasn't frozen solid.

Avoiding federal regulatory oversight. https://www.ferc.gov/introductory-guide-electricity-markets-... ("ERCOT is not subject to federal (FERC) jurisdiction because its grid is not connected to those of other states. Thus, power sales in ERCOT are not considered sales in interstate commerce and not subject to federal (FERC) oversight. That said, ERCOT runs some electricity markets that have similarities to those desc…

This has got to be more of FERC doesn't want to regulate ERCOT though no?

> [1] In the 1939 case United States v. Rock Royal Co-op, the Supreme Court had included milk processed and sold entirely within the state of New York within the federal government's purview because the company used a mixture of raw milk from farms within and outside the state of New York.

Like there's no way all of the energy in Texas only comes from Texas supplied materials.

I can't find the court case I want but there's another one about how somebody's local consumption had an effect on the interstate price so growing plants for local use can be federally regulated. And therefore, to me, FERC's existence effects the price of electricity on the rest of the states.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Wrightwood_Da....

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