Solar farms took over the California desert: An oasis has become a dead sea | Hacker News Reader

Solar farms took over the California desert: An oasis has become a dead sea

theguardian.com

12 points_Microft8 comments

I always sigh when I see a solar farm. We should be putting solar panels firstly on man made space like parking lot or buildings. It will not disrupt nature anymore or take productive arable land.

Panel awnings seem like they would be a win-win for parking lots. The cars get shade, the local area gets energy, and the lot owners get a side source of income.

Is it not cost effective to raise the panels on stilts? Are there liability concerns? Is it too expensive to wire parking lots with beefy electric service?

In France they passed a law obliging business with parking lot to build solar panels on them. I'm happy to see more and more parking lot equipped with solar panels, I can finally have my car in the shade while I shop, and soon it will be the same at my work.

I do not know the reason why it had not been done before, I guess that there was not a lot of solutions available for this use case.

And that's not even mentioning the long-distance high-voltage transmission lines required for putting solar panel farms (and wind farms!) way out in the desert or open fields where they won't be an eyesore to anyone living close by.

While I agree aesthetically, the cost is about twice as much to install them on buildings.

I’m sure the problems are real, but we do ultimately have to make some kind of grand calculus about whether the net effect is worth it. I’m willing to take into account ideas to mitigate damage or find other even more remote, even lower utilization land, but doing it in the middle of the very sunny, very low (but of course non-zero) density of animal and plant life, and very low (but also non-zero) human population area seems pretty close to optimal.

Checking the area out on Google Maps is instructive.

https://goo.gl/maps/ToPPHx2Jjdz8rj5E7?coh=178572&entry=tt

The above takes you to the Ivanpah Concentrating Solar plant. You can also see the golf course that someone built in the desert next to it for scale.

https://www.google.com/maps/@33.7410557,-115.3975396,138227m...

The largest solar installation in the world, it's truly mind bending in size when you zoom in.

I've been to Mojave National Preserve (first link). It's OMFG hot and arid. Someone approved building a golf course of all things next to it. And people there are complaining about not having enough water. Well...duh.

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