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American solar farms

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Re: American solar farms

#61

Post by jtr1 »

FrustratedMonky wrote: post #47
rapind wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

What is the argument against it? I've never heard any logical reasons beyond hating the Left. It's like hating bikers, why? The same people that have pickup trucks and swerve to intimidate bikers, seem to hate solar energy. But why?

I think you'll have a difficult time comprehending the phenomenon if you look for reasoned arguments. A much more productive framework, IMO, is to see it in terms of a feedback loop between funding sources and the aggregate valence of speech on a particular topic.

The energy industry is one of the largest in the world, with trillions of revenue on the line. The FF component of that industry has every incentive to turn sentiment against upstart competitors, but you do that at scale less by reasoned arguments and more by gut level appeals: "the people who want renewable energy hate your culture and way of life", "renewal installations are ugly and a blight on the landscape of your home", etc.

Re: American solar farms

#62

Post by tecleandor »

ben_w wrote: post #17
tecleandor wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like monthly? Yearly?

I'm not the person you're replying to, but if I read the following link correctly, the USA average price to purchase is only $5.5k/acre, and any part of the US cheaper than or including the average price in Nebraska (ranked 17th at $3,884/acre) could well be trading food farmland for solar farm land at that price: https://acretrader.com/resources/farmland-values/farmland-pr...

Well thanks. Now I reviewed what I had in mind for the size of an acre, and it's way smaller than I though (I don't know why I was thinking it was way bigger than an hectare). Also, I always forget the size differences of unused land between continental Europe and the US. :D

Re: American solar farms

#63

Post by bluGill »

jstanley wrote: post #27
cainxinth wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who enjoys living next to a power plant of any kind?

Of all the kinds of power plant, a solar farm has to be the least intrusive.

Nuclear is a good candidate - they take up a lot less land mass for the amount of power generated. I used to leave near one, and when my neighbors where asked where it was most pointed instead to a coal power plant many miles away.

Re: American solar farms

#64

Post by VoodooJuJu »

paulnpace wrote: post #8

My experience has been that people living next to newly constructed solar farms are unhappy about living next to a solar farm. It is also my experience that this is a fringe opinion because a very low percentage of people live next to solar farms.

[dead]

Re: American solar farms

#65

Post by fhdkweig »

ourmandave wrote: post #20
UltraSane wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can understand not wanting to live close to wind turbines but I don't understand the issue with living next to a solar farm since the panels just sit there silently.

Maybe the guy who cleans them complains loudly, or the squeak of his 4' squeegee is annoying.

You say that in jest, but it happens.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2987251/Charges-aga...

https://www.theroot.com/atlanta-garbage-man-sentenced-to-jai...

Re: American solar farms

#66

Post by marcusb »

AlfeG wrote: post #18
UltraSane wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can understand not wanting to live close to wind turbines but I don't understand the issue with living next to a solar farm since the panels just sit there silently.

Because they are not silent. Or sometimes are not. Inverters do have quite large fans.

This is a very frivolous argument against solar farms given the amount of noise and other pollution emanating from regular farms.

Farm-scale irrigation is not silent.

Crop Dusters are not silent.

Combines and other tractors are not silent.

Burning fields are both not silent and release a tremendous amount of sooty smoke that spreads far beyond the boundaries of a farm.

Farms make a lot of noise.

Re: American solar farms

#67

Post by bongodongobob »

dzonga wrote: post #45

the sad thing about this data is how politicized clean energy has become. the blue states have a lot of energy solar - while the red ones are sparse. the red ones get a lot of sun while the blue ones don't.

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 recycle fiberglass so it's bad", etc.

Re: American solar farms

#68

Post by ellisv »

IAmBroom wrote: post #28
paulnpace wrote: post #8

My experience has been that people living next to newly constructed solar farms are unhappy about living next to a solar farm. It is also my experience that this is a fringe opinion because a very low percentage of people live next to solar farms.

Having farmers in the family, I can confirm they are unhappy about living next to anything other than what they grew up next to. Also, the rainfall. Some farmers go from morning to night never saying a word that isn't a complaint about the rainfall being wrong.

> Also, the rainfall. Some farmers go from morning to night never saying a word that isn't a complaint about the rainfall being wrong.

Yes. Some of them use proper rain gauges but some just complain about it. Basically none of them understand the difference between a point measurement and an areal average estimate.

Re: American solar farms

#69

Post by mauvehaus »

Forgeties79 wrote: post #33
AlfeG wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because they are not silent. Or sometimes are not. Inverters do have quite large fans.

Compared to literally every other way of generating power, they are relatively silent and unobtrusive. They also don’t poison the air around them which is pretty neat.

Yes, but the relevant comparison for the residents isn't to a coal plant, it's to the undeveloped field that the solar arrays replaced.

Depending upon their other priorities, they may be upset about the loss of hunting access as well. Understandably, people putting up solar arrays don't want people firing guns in the middle of their arrays.

Re: American solar farms

#70

Post by bluGill »

FrustratedMonky wrote: post #49
ishtanbul wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work in the industry. Removing the tax breaks is having a material impact because we look at after tax cash flow. Next year installations are going to reduce meaningfully.

The articles about Solar cost reaching parity with Fossil. Is that before or after taxes?

Taxes are far too complex to figure that our. In the case of other there are a lot of different players and most do things other than oil and so it isn't possible to figure out what tax/subsidy is from oil.
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