Solar panels open crop lands to farming energy
spectrum.ieee.org
spectrum.ieee.org
Taking out productive land to put in a solar farm is not practical. There are loads of acres that would be a perfect fit such as pasture land no longer being utilized for grazing. Or if there is pasture being used for grazing with sheep/goats would be another good place for these to be placed.
Another suggestion would be utilizing the roofs of hog confinement buildings, poultry buildings, cattle sheds, machine sheds, etc. This also pertains to roofs in urban areas as well. I actually helped with a business putting up a new chemical shed to place solar panels on their roof. There are so many hog sites and poultry sites in my area that this would be a no brainer to try and push towards. Everyone saying eliminate or reduce meat consumption...all it is is a wish and prayer. It won't happen sorry that's just the cold hard truth so the above suggestion is what the world needs in a lot of situations...a compromise.
The next suggestion is some sort of portable solar paneling during the non-growing season. Pull them out of the crop and field work has been done, and remove them before the next season begins.
If people in rural areas NIMBY away solar power in these areas, more than likely the land is just going to have some exurban building plopped down on it.
Also, I don't get the whole thing where people act like farmland is sacred and good for the environment. I like food, I understand the value of farms, but farmland is typically pretty awful for the surrounding environment.
The area I live in Ohio has a whole handful of lakes, and any of them that are surrounded by farmland (and to a certain extent exurbs and suburbs) are incredibly polluted, to the point where you have to look at "forecasts" on ODNR's website to see if the water is healthy to swim in.
0: https://www.nass.usda.gov/Publications/AgCensus/2017/Full_Re... (check table 1 for historical data)
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 not a giant corporate is the norm. I doubt there is a "solar friendly" county in the country.
People vehemently fight this stuff even if the only potential way you'd ever see the panels is via drone. It's honestly really depressing, and I've been curtailing my dreams due to it.
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.
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.
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.
Output has gone up because yield trend has been increasing. I'd know this because even 10 years ago 200bu corn was great for us...now 250 bu is what we hit.
Am I going to argue there are some operations that do not take proper steps to ensure that what they put on their ground stays on their ground? No because there are. However for our personal operation and a growing number I'd pull water coming out of our field tiles and put it up against the water you buy in the store. Then I'd take the same water coming out of our field tiles against the runoff of water from the parking lot, or the streets in the city or the yards in the suburbs.
There is a reason why I am apart of a growing number of farmers who are pushing for soil health and utilizing practices that benefit the environment in a measurable way. We do not agree with the way a lot of the conventional operations are doing it. Heck there are a handful of solutions that have been presented to the state and national government in order to further move the number of acres that are doing these things to avoid the situation that you mentioned about Ohio and their lakes. We hate that as much as you do.
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 stress.
Certain cereal crops get slightly lower yield from reduced light, but reduced water loss can make up the difference.
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.
100e18 joules = the amount of energy the USA consumes in a year. [0]
4,000 sq kilometres = area of solar panels to generate the energy. [1]
5,000,000 sq kilometres = USA land devoted to agriculture. [2]
Ergo whatever is the problem is with 100% solar, it isn't the availability of land. Even doing bizarre things like saying we will over provision by a factor of 10 doesn't stress the land supply. (Over provisioning by a factor of 10 gets rid of the cloudy day problem, because even on the cloudiest day you get 10% yield).
If you put solar on ag land, you will do it because the solar helps the ag, not because solar needs the land.
The cost of those solar panels might have something to do with it not happening. At $1.00/watt it's about USA$800B. It's less than the USA spent on the Iraq war. But it's significant nonetheless, and you need storage. So perhaps double it.
[0] USA Energy consumption, all types (not just electricity) https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/us-energy-facts/
[1] 4,000 sq kilometres = (64km x 64km) assuming 4 peak hours of solar per day and 20% efficiency. That's 2,500 sq miles = (50mi x 50mi).
[2] https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/ag-and-food-statistic...
Or helps the farmer's cash flow. They might put in solar where it is not technically ideal, but helps them personally.
Panels are under $0.50/W peak lately, and still falling. Of course mounting costs money, but most farmers have experience with putting up fences. Wiring, maybe less.
To the degree that electricity can displace fuel fed to heat engines, the need is reduced by the inefficiency of the heat engine. So solar replaces 2.5x coal-fired electricity, 5x automotive vs. gasoline, 3-5x domestic heating (when outside temp is high enough a heat pump works) vs NG, oil, or propane, depending on chimney losses. Electrolysing water for hydrogen for steel processsing is lossy, while burning coal for heat is less so, so maybe 0.5x there.
When aviation finally goes to LH2, it will be complicated. Flight deck will be higher, H2 turbines may be more a bit efficient than for kerosene, and lofting an LH2 fuel load takes much less energy than lofting a kerosene load; but again, electrolysing is lossy.
So assuming an average advantage of 2x, and cost-per at half cited, that's only $200B spread over decades. Iraq cost >$5T.
The amount of this land that is dedicated to growing food for livestock and the livestock themselves is simply astounding. Reducing meat consumption is a much simpler solution and I believe the one that will win out anyway. Complicated solar systems like this will only become relevant once we’ve addressed the low hanging fruit (pun intended) of overproduction of meat.
Even precision fermentation is an easier to implement fix for land use, which looks increasingly like it can reduce our need for land to grow grains. See Solar Foods for example
Solutions to problems ought to address root causes.
If you have a tailor, that's you.
Therefore it's not "us vs them" it's all of us together and the root cause is indeed the overall number.
Oh really? Please lead by example.
The “population problem” is a solved problem (not ignoring ongoing efforts and regional as opposed to global problems such as Madagascar population/land use issues which are largely political anyway) and there is nothing left there that we can do to solve the global environmental ecological degradation.
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 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.
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.
In summary, chill my friend. I bear you no ill will at all!
Bye.
Possible solutions include raising the productive potential of those resources, like the effort described in the article, and acquiring more resources beyond Earth. Neither of those two requires reducing the human population. So I think you're being inexplicably hasty in offering a drastic anti life solution.
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 other use.
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.
What do you refer as "precision fermentation" here? The linked Wikipedia article is about "growing microbial biomass that can be used as edible protein". Just curious, perhaps I missed the connection.
https://www.monbiot.com/2022/11/26/fermenting-a-revolution/
Is it incorrect?
Imagine wanting to harvest your crops and you can’t use any machinery because of all the structures. Or imagine there is a slight wind and it rips up 200k in solar panels.
https://www.pv-magazine.com/2022/11/16/baywa-velux-sign-euro...
> "According to BayWa, the installation will have rows of panels spaced more widely than usual, to allow passage of agricultural machinery and the cultivation of cereals. In addition, the rainwater that falls on the modules will be collected and used for irrigation."
> "Commercial farms growing high value fruits and vegetables use shade structures to create protected environments. These growers benefit from bigger yields, better quality produce, fewer pests, timed crop growth, and resource conservation. Unfortunately, shade structure use is limited for many small and medium size farms who lack economy of scale. Commercial shade structures available today are very expensive to purchase and install as well as difficult and time-consuming to move."
Solar structures mean the farms generate revenue from the shade systems, although initial cost-of-installation is high.
A sidenote on the first sentence in the article: I question the narrative that we are struggling to support 8 billion people because of lack of arable land. For instance I've seen estimates that 20-30% of perfectly good food is thrown away these days because it's not esthetically pleasing, e.g. a cucumber that might be of unusual shape. Also it's more economical to throw away food that you can't sell but is still good, than it is to give it away because then people would spend less which is bad for business. I don't know if this is a solvable problem, but it exists.
I'm highly skeptical of this. I have direct experience as my family were (until covid) market gardeners who would sell to farmers markets, local supermarkets, and restaurants.
Typically "nothing" gets wasted in these operations. You sell the prime produce at huge markups at the farmers markets, the mid-tier at the supermarkets, and the food service industry gives exactly zero care to the aesthetics of the produce so long as it's high quality and tastes good.
I can't imagine this would be any different at an industrial scale, if anything the incentives become even greater. You sort your produce for the market vs. industrial use, and the latter is likely to be a far more reliable income stream. I doubt farmers are throwing away 30% of their product.
Yes, there is a lot of loss along the way - but I'm not sure we can really do much better short of everyone growing everything locally.
https://www.armor-group.com/en/asca
I can see it being used in agricultural applications where shadecloth is used both to kill intense sunlight (eg: Australia) and to keep birds at bay.
We have many large acreage areas fully under shade cloth here.
And while tessellating every surface with little panels gets more energy than not (and is the only option if that's all the land you own, like people adding panels to their own houses), it's dramatically easier and cheaper to lay out 1MW of panels in one 100m X 100m square, than 1000 hetrogenous 1kW panels mishmashed over dozens or hundreds of buildings.
For large buildings, then, yes, it's a pretty clear win. The IKEAs in London have large arrays on their roofs, for example.
So maybe the effective day could be extended a bit, but likely not a whole lot; IDK if the increase in growth would be worth the LEDs.
https://www.amusingplanet.com/2015/10/alaskas-giant-vegetabl...
Alaska outperforming warmer regions due to longer days is not something I had expected.
Some pepper varieties show 3x yield, given afternoon shade.
I wonder about powering UV LEDs under crop plants to control weeds.
Sorry only have german link: https://www.oekolandbau.de/landwirtschaft/betrieb/oekonomie/...
Then we can cover large chunks of the desert, lots of it is not really all that productive. I know it is an interesting environment and has some unusual animals to fill the weird niches, so we shouldn’t just totally cover it. But since we’ve already signed up for more deserts via climate change, surely we can panel-up some.
This doesn't eliminate the need for either storage of PV power for use at night, or use of an alternative energy source (gas-powered turbines with rapid response times, etc.) at night, but clearly this could massively reduce demand for natural gas power during daylight hours.
Of course, the investors in private utilities tend to also invest in natural gas companies, and they'd be losing revenue to the farmers and solar panel owners. This is certainly the case in California, and seems to account for the recent decision to limit net metering for solar PV producers who feed power into the grid. Note that this happened in a state where the political leadership makes lots of noises about supporting renewable energy and 'fighting climate change'.