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Comment by vkou | Hacker News Reader

The answer to that question is 'It would cost more and produce less power than building out dedicated solar plants, which is what we should do instead, because aren't running out of land'.

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There are certainly some places where we aren't running out of land, but I suspect super-high land values and the challenges of permitting new transmission infrastructure might make this economical closer to major metro areas.

it seems easy to undervalue undeveloped land. I think the argument being made is that we have land that's already connected to the electrical grid, already has roads and routes for servicing, already has fire mitigation and contingency plans in place, already has disrupted whatever ecological processes would have been happening if it were left undeveloped, and is just missing the last piece of solar panels, which we may as well add since we've done the rest of the development process.

Why would it cost more to do warehouses? Not discussed here.You could say we should do nothing except full scale land solar, stop houses for example.

There's actually a movement to block solar at farms by the Petro industrial complex, since they want to block solar everywhere.

Warehouses are not uniform. If you were to pick any of the vast millions of acres of free land in the mountain west, you could simply pick a suitable flat area near existing power transmission lines and get to work. If you were trying to develop that capacity on warehouse rooftops you'll run into a variety of problems from: (1) Some warehouses do not have rooftops that lend themselves to power generation. (e.g. they include smokestacks, antennae, vents, and other features that make some of the roof unusable) (2) It is inherently more labor-intensive (and therefore expensive) to haul solar panels onto a rooftop and install them around existing infrastructure than to put them into place in a suitably-prepared empty spot on the ground. (3) Warehouses are not situated in spots that are optimally chosen for sunlight exposure and therefore may not be very productive for solar power. Many will exist in the shadows of mountains, buildings, or trees. Others exist in places where natural forces such as ice, hail, and rapid temperature swings will shorten the expected lifetimes of solar panels. (4) The inherent costs associated (labor, logistics, materials) with setting up 10,000 small solar plants and connecting them to the grid will naturally exceed the inherent costs of setting several large purpose-built locations and connecting them to the grid.

This.

There's no good reason to couple solar panels to anything. It's some non-engineer idea that got currency - I have a house but a small yard. Hey! Put it on the roof!

But if you have any choice whatsoever, do not do that. Put them in an unobstructed cheap ground-level serviceable location near the power grid. Because electricity can flow over wires for many many miles with little loss.

Hell, the midwestern farmer used to be the highest-risk job for accidents. But I hear solar installers have taken the crown. The cost in human capital has to be considered as well.

I just want to call out that unimproved land is not free land. Someone owns it, be it private citizens, state governments, federal governments, or private trusts.

Not to mention, undeveloped land (especially land flat enough for solar) is still being used, generally for livestock.

The government owns the majority of the unimproved land in the US. The government does not own the majority of the warehouses in the US. For instance, in my state, the majority of the land (40 million+ acres) is owned by the government. Another 20 million acres not owned by the government is unimproved. The majority of both those quantities is not merely unimproved but not being utilized for anything at all - not even livestock. (It's desert - very expensive to produce most livestock out here.) And it's not even in the top five states in terms of area. In some places not far from here, land can be purchased privately for $5 / acre. I think you underestimate just how much unused land there is in the USA.

Just off the top of my head:

- Longer permitting delays, including structural engineering work and electrical design work to tie into the existing warehouse electrical system.

- Need to rent cranes or lifts to hoist equipment onto roof.

- Warehouses may need to be partially closed while roof work is being done, for safety.

- Probably need to do roof penetrations for fasteners and ensure they are sealed.

- Likely increase in worker death and injury rate from working on roofs instead of the ground.

If we're embracing solar + storage as our future energy solution we probably should be doing both. We should be building solar plants, and also supplementing it with distributed solar installs on buildings.

How does the dedicated solar installation impact the wildlife in that area?

Edit: I also wonder if there are even though sunny days in the mountain west to recover the massive carbon cost from building the solar cells in the first place. Regardless of we put them on roofs or elsewhere.

Thank you for saying this.

Having a grid-tied building festooned with solar panels has always seemed absurd to me for this reason. It would be interesting to calculate the implied "show-off value" of the solar cells that building owners are paying relative to the utility-scale alternative--I bet it's shockingly high.

Unconsidered options: adding solar to parking lots, ranches and orchards. That's land which is already in use, but could bear to be a bit less sunny.

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