counterpoint - get rid of car parks and cars
this is the synergy the middle managers were looking for
- yes, absolutely, we should be putting solar in car parks
- you deploy agricultural solar panels in grazing lands where the panels act as shade for grazing animals
I’m a farmer, rancher, and dairyman. This shit pisses me off. You can get dual use out of land. I can grow crops and graze cattle around and often under solar panels. The limiting factor is what the power company will allow me to sell to them. And they don’t want that because bottom lines.
Seriously. The oil industry has been extracting petrochemicals from the earth while we utilize the land above for animals and crops for over a hundred years. Its not difficult. Saying that renewables are using up our land and not allowing dual utilization for other commodities is a lazy and piss poor lie that will not stop and I’m tired of it.
Stop this nonsense bullshit petro propaganda now. Alternative energy can and already does coexist with modern land management and modern farming practices. Full stop.
Farming under the panels can be beneficial in drought conditions.
Putting solar panels above parking lots is still an excellent idea.
Cover every dead roof that has sunshine beating down on it, yes.
But there’s an actual benefit to covering fields. Livestock can get shade and keep the grass in check for one thing.
Why not both?
Panels on grazing areas and some fields has repeatedly been proven beneficial
Some plants are shade loving and would do great under properly spaced panels
That’s call Agrivoltaics. Strawberries are a prime example.
Solar farms in desert areas contribute to China’s renewable energy capacity while also helping to stabilize the landscape. The shade provided by the solar panels reduces the harsh impact of the sun on the soil, creating more favorable conditions for vegetation to grow. In some instances, grass has started to grow beneath the panels, which aids in reducing soil erosion and supporting the local ecosystem.
It’s good for the animals too, since they have a shelter for weather.
Cover the corn fields that are 95% being used to produce ethanol for fuel mixture into gasoline. Replace a one-time-use fuel that takes a ton of water to produce, contributes to pesticide usage, and requires a bunch more energy for processing (and makes your car run less efficiently anyway) with energy that can power homes, vehicles, industry, etc. starting now and lasting for decades with a one time investment into fully recyclable materials that is already pretty low cost and lowering all the time.
It’s actually only 25% to 45%, that is turned into ethanol, depending on the source. Most of the rest of the corn is animal feed. You are correct that humans only eat about 5% of the corn we grow.
Fair, but that’s still plenty of land for massive amounts of solar without losing much at all
Oh, absolutely. I wasn’t disagreeing, in fact I’m working with my brother to try and get him a loan to buy a corn farm that he would convert into a solar farm.
Subscribe! That would be quite interesting to follow along in future updates, if you don’t mind sharing
Fuck it let’s go all the way. Replace the cars entirely
Just cover all fields used to grow biofuel crops with solar panels, it’s an insane number used for biofuels - like enough to power the whole US twice over if they were all covered in solar.
Its is nearly always a transmission bottlenecks that hinders these. How to get all tbat power out of rural areas.
Repurpose combines to drive over the solar panels and harvest the energy. Then pile it up in giant piles near rail roads. From there train it to depots for distribution. Infrastructure is already there!
This guy solar farms!
What if - now hear me out - we built more power lines?
Yeah absolutely, no one is saying that isnt an option. But when you capture the production as a single build or consideration simply needing the effort you dont account for the costs of infrastructure to hundreds and thousands of sites and quickly you will see that a lot of these sites are not going to produce enough for it to be a viable option.
There is load of oil in the ground that we dont take out because it isnt a good investment. This is the same.
THIS !!!
As a solar engineer myself that started in utility scale solar and just left their first Commercial & Industrial (C&I) solar job, residential, commercial, and industrial solar is the best use.
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you center generation as close as possible to utilization, minimizing transmission and distribution.
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land is re-used, allowing other lands for other uses like rewilding, reforesting, and conservation.
You still have other problems like large power users, but you cannot ignore the benefits.
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I won’t lie, my thought is, can’t we just have both?
There has been research into the benefits of solar panels over farmland, and also are benefits of solar panels over parking lots.
Call me an insane idealist, I would love the idea of implementing over both.
Could we just abolish parking lots?
I would rather see them repurposed than simply dedicate the amount of energy to destruction, personally.
But that is just how my brain works. I admit I am not the best Solarpunk.
Totally, but “abolishing parking lots” just means they don’t get used for cars anymore. I am curious what we could use them for though.
Ahh then, I see your thoughts. Well it depends on what your area needs. I personally would not mind seeing them converted into akin to flea markets or such as an easy one.
I wonder why not every single new warehouse, corporate HQ, supermarket, strip mall, shopping mall and commercial building do not have solar panels on their roofs?
The only reason is cheap electric prices for big corps. If they wouldn’t get subsidiaries, i bet you there is solar everywhere. Also a lot of them started doing this in the eu but there are not enough installation professionals to keep up.
You’ve fallen for the myth of corporate efficiency.
1/3 of the warehouses in my area have solar panels.
The main factor to stick with grid power, I assume, is the electricity is cheap enough. Panels take a decade or more to pay back in savings. Many tenants won’t stay that long. Many landlords won’t give a shit with directly billing the tenant. Even as an individual homeowner, 10 years is a long way away.
A second angle that’s a relatively recent thing here is my utility no longer allows you to connect oversized solar systems to the grid. Annual production must match annual consumption. I’m not exactly sure how that plays out on the corporate level, as my experience is individual. Even though it gets hot here, many warehouses are not air conditioned. Without AC, energy consumption for a warehouse is way below the available solar space. So, many warehouses are only half or 1/3 covered, of those 1/3 or less warehouses that have any solar at all. Nobody wants to sublet their roof to the electric company, so the space remains unused.
Meanwhile, I’d expect mall and especially office consumption to exceed rooftop production capability, so solar is only worth the little green leaf stick you can put on the front door saying “we went solar!”. Somewhat similarly to not wanting to rent space to the utility on a warehouse, these places would need to be incentivised beyond net-zero cost to do some social benefitting on their property.
The utility company says they’re going green, but in reality, they’re taking credit for private home solar installations. The kwh price keeps going up. They keep telling me switching to LEDs and unplugging chargers will make it better.
Solar panels are a classic “it takes money to make money” example. Pretty expensive up front. I feel like that’s the main reason.
I have explanation, but you will not like it.
Parking lots have been built on cheap. Those who have roofs can’t support any added weight, while those who do not have roofs are far away from any serious electrical connection able to give the energy outside.
The whole idea can be done… on new parking lots.
Also - how about instead we build more water-plant power storage? They pump water to the upper reservoir using electricity in the middle of day, and then produce electricity from flowing water at dawn/dusk/night. This would up the demand for electricity when solar panels are overproducing it and push businesses to consider including solar panels in their constructions.
Ones on roofs are easy, a panel can’t weigh more than a car so you lose a few parking spaces on the roof level and bob’s your uncle. The goal is to reduce car usage so it’s fine. And existing ones are too far away to provide electricity? What? They’re literally beside stores which consume power! Yea I don’t like that answer, it’s dumb as hell.
The pumping idea sounds cool, though, and I’m not against it, but dude I’m so tired of “what if we do nothing because we can’t understand the concept of having multiple solutions going at once?”
The benefit of pavement being cheap is it’s not terribly expensive to remove or repair bits of it. Cut a square out, drill down with an auger, chuck a sonotube in and pour a footing. Trenching in conduit for power lines doesn’t seem like much of a deal breaker either.
I’d also image a parking lot is closer to an electrical connection than a farm field out in the country.
Okay, I give on the first part, but not on the second.
Farms consume quite a lot of electricity actually, and often electrical grid must be enforced more for a farm than for a suburbs.
Why are you talking about farms?
not near electrical infra
Unlike the average field
Pumped storage can only be feasibly used on existing suitable terrain, and we used most of the easy location.
There is not much left, and with cheap battery storage and power to gas you can go way cheaper. Hydro power and storage is not the future.
Not at scale at least. In rustic situations where ut still needs to be pumped from a well, a small water tower filled during peak makes perfect sense
It’s really not difficult to dig a trench through an existing parking lot to lay down wire.
You wouldn’t want many carparks in the first place.
True, but if we’re not getting rid of them, let’s at least make them useful
My suburban shopping centre has space for 2.2MW, it’s about 5km from the nearest power substation
But they can only export 30kw into the suburban grid (10kW/phase * 3 phases)
To export the other 2.17MW they would need to run high voltage main lines 5km to the nearest substation
The farm nearest me has 13kW and is right near a main power line
