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Solar farms can be pretty big, but we have the space for it. If you look at a map of the United States, there's a lot of land in the Southwest that gets a lot

by elihu 5y ago

Solar farms can be pretty big, but we have the space for it. If you look at a map of the United States, there's a lot of land in the Southwest that gets a lot of sunlight and isn't usable for growing crops. It's an ecosystem, and anything that intrudes on that ecosystem will be somewhat disruptive, but as long as reasonable care is taken I don't see it as a problem to use a smallish fraction of that land for solar production.

stjohnswarts 5y ago
Not all of the United States is in the southwest, and why should the southwest destroy all their natural environments to power the rest of the rest of the country over lossy power lines when local nuclear could do it?
- elihu 5y ago
  Decent high-voltage DC lines can move that power around with pretty small losses. (Wikipedia quotes about 3.5% per 1000km.) And the Southwest doesn't have to destroy all their natural environments; they just happen to have a natural advantage in power generation on land that otherwise isn't economically productive. (Not that all land has to be economically productive.) This could be a major industry in those states. Ecological impact should be looked into and installations should be done in a way that creates minimal environmental impact, but I'm not going to say that it should be an absolute showstopper if sagebrush is interspersed by the occasional array of black panels. The environmental costs of major solar farms aren't going to be zero, but just because it's non-zero doesn't mean we shouldn't do it if it's environmentally preferable to burning coal and natural gas. I'm also not against nuclear, I'm just not optimistic we can get the costs down.
  - tlb 5y ago
    While the losses aren't too big, transmission lines are very expensive and take many years of planning to get the land rights required if there isn't already a transmission line going there. There aren't currently a lot of lines going to the middle of nowhere, except for some hydroelectric dams.

by elihu 5y ago

stjohnswarts 5y ago

Not all of the United States is in the southwest, and why should the southwest destroy all their natural environments to power the rest of the rest of the country over lossy power lines when local nuclear could do it?

elihu 5y ago
Decent high-voltage DC lines can move that power around with pretty small losses. (Wikipedia quotes about 3.5% per 1000km.) And the Southwest doesn't have to destroy all their natural environments; they just happen to have a natural advantage in power generation on land that otherwise isn't economically productive. (Not that all land has to be economically productive.) This could be a major industry in those states. Ecological impact should be looked into and installations should be done in a way that creates minimal environmental impact, but I'm not going to say that it should be an absolute showstopper if sagebrush is interspersed by the occasional array of black panels. The environmental costs of major solar farms aren't going to be zero, but just because it's non-zero doesn't mean we shouldn't do it if it's environmentally preferable to burning coal and natural gas. I'm also not against nuclear, I'm just not optimistic we can get the costs down.
- tlb 5y ago
  While the losses aren't too big, transmission lines are very expensive and take many years of planning to get the land rights required if there isn't already a transmission line going there. There aren't currently a lot of lines going to the middle of nowhere, except for some hydroelectric dams.