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> Ground-based solar is land-intensive, however, with utility-scale arrays often spanning hundreds of acres. Wind farms have their own sprawling land needs. Th

by ncmncm 4y ago

> Ground-based solar is land-intensive, however, with utility-scale arrays often spanning hundreds of acres. Wind farms have their own sprawling land needs. This is stupid. The article leads with the solution to this non-problem. There is no shortage of pasturage to site solar in. Likewise, of reservoirs and canals. Both places get net benefit from the dual use, even discounting the extra revenue.

montalbano 4y ago
Do you have some references on this? I would probably agree if you are referring to USA. But I would be skeptical that the same is true in the UK.
- ZeroGravitas 4y ago
  https://www.nfuonline.com/updates-and-information/solar-farms-and-the-british-landscape/ https://www.nfuonline.com/updates-and-information/solar-farm...
- cheeko1234 4y ago
  They're quite wrong about 'this being stupid'. It is true, that the amount of solar needed to power the entire US is about 0.5% of the land. That doesn't mean there's no benefit in increasing the efficiency of panels and get dual use of the land. It also has the benefit of allowing for solar in more places where it's needed for more decentralized power.
  - ncmncm 4y ago
    Better efficiency, in dollars per watt, is always good. Pretending there is some sort of shortage of land to site solar in is not a valid reason to court efficiency. There are other, legitimate reasons.
  - ZeroGravitas 4y ago
    On the question of this being stupid or not, I think that a sentence saying "Ground-based solar is land-intensive, however, with utility-scale arrays often spanning hundreds of acres. Wind farms have their own sprawling land needs" that links to a source that says: > Solar energy is one example where the context and type of material matter a lot. Solar panels made from cadmium use less energy and materials than silicon panels, and therefore use less land per unit. It also matters a lot whether you mount these panels on rooftops or on the ground. Rooftop solar obviously needs much less additional land; we’re just using space that is already occupied, on top of existing buildings. However, they do need some land over their life-cycle because they still require mining of the materials to make them, as well as the energy (mostly electricity) used in refining the silicon. Finally, the density and spacing of the panels also makes a difference. > Wind is the most obvious electricity source that we should consider differently when it comes to land use. You find it separated from the other sources, at the bottom of the chart.3 There are several reasons for this. First, offshore wind takes up space, but it’s marine, not land area. Second, onshore wind is different from other electricity sources because you can use the land between turbines for other activities, such as farming. This is not the case for a coal, gas or nuclear plant. This means the land use of wind farms is highly variable. I have calculated the land use of 22 of the world’s largest wind farms [you find my calculations here]. > Take the Roscoe Wind Farm in Texas, which uses 184 m2 per MWh. This is a large project, where farmers can generate additional income through electricity production while they continue their farming operations between the wind turbines. The wind farm is almost a secondary land use. This contrasts with much more dense wind farms, such as Fântânele-Cogealac in Romania, or the Tehachapi Pass in California, where energy production is the primary land use. These can have a small land footprint of just 8 m2 per MWh. Seems pretty stupid to me. Though if someone get sucked in by the headline, reads the article and moves from thinking "we don't have enough room for renewables" to "there are lots of ways to dual use land with renewables" then maybe it's all for the best.
- ncmncm 4y ago
  Panels work exactly the same way in the US and the UK. Indeed, laws of physics are identical in all countries. The UK has a large amount of crop and pasture land, and quite a lot of reservoirs and canals besides. Most places do.
  - BitwiseFool 4y ago
    >"Indeed, laws of physics are identical in all countries." There's no need to be glib, and the GP was obviously talking about the availability of land on a much smaller and more densely populated nation than the comparatively massive and wide open country that is the United States.
    - ncmncm 4y ago
      Only an entire failure ever to have looked at Google Maps "satellite view" would lead anyone to think UK has a paucity of crop and pasture land. It has, in fact, easily many, many times more of both than could ever be needed to share with solar and wind.
      - BitwiseFool 4y ago
        You also seem to be ignoring cost and land value. Just because land seems to be available doesn't mean it actually is. Or that it would be economical to convert it. And I also wonder how a solar panel, which blocks sunlight, would allow crops/grass to grow underneath it at the same time. It seems like trying to make land do these two sunlight dependent things at once is not as efficient as having dedicated agricultural fields and dedicated solar farms.
        ncmncm 4y ago
        BitwiseFool 4y ago
        >"Please allow me to suggest you consult some actual, you know, facts." You're free to provide them. Call it concern-trolling if you'd like, but I definitely sense you've got a "why don't we just" mindset, where any potential downside is literally a non-issue. You dismiss all concerns and then wonder why something isn't being done when the solution looks so simple. >"Since solar may use up exactly zero acres, its watts per acre may be infinite." If it has mass and surface area, it will take up some sort of acreage. Solar panels block light, so obviously anything needing light to survive is going to struggle being underneath them. And, who knew that we could get an infinite amount of wattage out of zero acreage, why haven't those fools designing our electric grid realized this yet?!? >"But most crops do not, and benefit both from reduced heat stress and reduced water loss." So you've acknowledged that corn and wheat need full sunlight, but again, it doesn't matter, because in your view solar has no downsides whatsoever. Anything bad is actually good! >"Please do not make up BS problems." And you say I'm being the troll here.
jacknews 4y ago
It wouldn't be pasture if it were covered in solar panels. Isn't that what the article is saying, place solar panels sparse enough that you get pasture and panels. Personally I think they should be put to sea. Along with floating farmland. Just make concrete (or seacrete!) pontoons, connected together into 1000 km^2 islands. Leave the actual land to nature. I concede that is currently scifi though.
- ncmncm 4y ago
  Maybe you could take your own remark as a clue that dual-use does not "cover" every square centimeter with panels. When you recognize you have plenty of land that is not being used up by placing panels in it, you can understand there is no need to try to pack panels as closely together as conceivably possible. You can leave room between for livestock and grass. Open ocean has destructive waves. Panels do much better on calm reservoirs and ponds.
BitwiseFool 4y ago
>"There is no shortage of pasturage to site solar in." I don't believe you are taking into account just how much location and transmission distance matters for such projects.
- ncmncm 4y ago
  It does not, in fact, matter. If you have some transmission loss, you just add a few more panels.
  - BitwiseFool 4y ago
    >"It does not, in fact, matter." What's your basis for this? Real-world power grids don't seem to be designed around transmission loss being a non-issue so long as they just 'generate more power' at the source.
    - ZeroGravitas 4y ago
      I think most real world grids are (or at least were) actually designed like this. Getting coal from a mine to a power station is a big task, so some grids are literally built around the locations of the coal. Hydro and nuclear have similar location needs. This has changed more recently with gas and renewables where as they get cheaper other factors start to dominate, but the grid was not originally set up for that kind of distributed load and needed some tweaks to adjust I believe.
    - ncmncm 4y ago
      Power at the source has never been as cheap as solar, and has always consumed extra operating expense to generate. Solar does not cost more each day it produces; you put up more panels and you get more power, day after day.
- ZeroGravitas 4y ago
  US government take on this: https://www.energy.gov/eere/solar/solar-futures-study https://www.energy.gov/eere/solar/solar-futures-study > Although land acquisition poses challenges, land availability does not constrain solar deployment in the scenarios. > In 2050, ground-based solar technologies require a maximum land area equivalent to 0.5% of the contiguous U.S. surface area, which could be met in numerous ways including use of disturbed or contaminated lands unsuitable for other uses. The maximum solar land area required is equivalent to less than 10% of potentially suitable disturbed lands, avoiding conflicts with high-value lands in current use. > Various approaches are available to mitigate local impacts or even enhance the value of land that hosts solar systems. Installing photovoltaic (PV) systems on water bodies, in farming or grazing areas, and in ways that enhance pollinator habitats are potential ways to enhance solar energy production while providing benefits such as lower water evaporation rates and higher agricultural yields. > Expanding rooftop PV could reduce solar land use. Almost 200 GW of rooftop PV are deployed in the decarbonization scenarios by 2050 (10%–20% of total solar deployment). However, the technical potential for U.S. rooftop PV is greater than 1,000 GW, and efforts to promote rooftop PV could increase deployment beyond the modeled level.
jeffbee 4y ago
Not just pasturage, but other wasteful and dumb land uses. All of California's energy needs and much more could be provided by a PV plant covering Edwards Air Force Base, with ordinary dirt-cheap panels on fixed mountings. People greatly overestimate the footprint of solar power, and underestimate the footprint of oil and gas. Every oil and gas well in the nation sits on a 1-5 acre pad that has been scraped flat and denuded of all life. The area that has been sacrificed for this purpose in west Texas and Wyoming absolutely dwarfs the area that we would need to replace that production with PV.

by ncmncm 4y ago

montalbano 4y ago

Do you have some references on this? I would probably agree if you are referring to USA. But I would be skeptical that the same is true in the UK.

ZeroGravitas 4y ago
https://www.nfuonline.com/updates-and-information/solar-farms-and-the-british-landscape/ https://www.nfuonline.com/updates-and-information/solar-farm...
cheeko1234 4y ago
They're quite wrong about 'this being stupid'. It is true, that the amount of solar needed to power the entire US is about 0.5% of the land. That doesn't mean there's no benefit in increasing the efficiency of panels and get dual use of the land. It also has the benefit of allowing for solar in more places where it's needed for more decentralized power.
- ncmncm 4y ago
  Better efficiency, in dollars per watt, is always good. Pretending there is some sort of shortage of land to site solar in is not a valid reason to court efficiency. There are other, legitimate reasons.
- ZeroGravitas 4y ago
  On the question of this being stupid or not, I think that a sentence saying "Ground-based solar is land-intensive, however, with utility-scale arrays often spanning hundreds of acres. Wind farms have their own sprawling land needs" that links to a source that says: > Solar energy is one example where the context and type of material matter a lot. Solar panels made from cadmium use less energy and materials than silicon panels, and therefore use less land per unit. It also matters a lot whether you mount these panels on rooftops or on the ground. Rooftop solar obviously needs much less additional land; we’re just using space that is already occupied, on top of existing buildings. However, they do need some land over their life-cycle because they still require mining of the materials to make them, as well as the energy (mostly electricity) used in refining the silicon. Finally, the density and spacing of the panels also makes a difference. > Wind is the most obvious electricity source that we should consider differently when it comes to land use. You find it separated from the other sources, at the bottom of the chart.3 There are several reasons for this. First, offshore wind takes up space, but it’s marine, not land area. Second, onshore wind is different from other electricity sources because you can use the land between turbines for other activities, such as farming. This is not the case for a coal, gas or nuclear plant. This means the land use of wind farms is highly variable. I have calculated the land use of 22 of the world’s largest wind farms [you find my calculations here]. > Take the Roscoe Wind Farm in Texas, which uses 184 m2 per MWh. This is a large project, where farmers can generate additional income through electricity production while they continue their farming operations between the wind turbines. The wind farm is almost a secondary land use. This contrasts with much more dense wind farms, such as Fântânele-Cogealac in Romania, or the Tehachapi Pass in California, where energy production is the primary land use. These can have a small land footprint of just 8 m2 per MWh. Seems pretty stupid to me. Though if someone get sucked in by the headline, reads the article and moves from thinking "we don't have enough room for renewables" to "there are lots of ways to dual use land with renewables" then maybe it's all for the best.
ncmncm 4y ago
Panels work exactly the same way in the US and the UK. Indeed, laws of physics are identical in all countries. The UK has a large amount of crop and pasture land, and quite a lot of reservoirs and canals besides. Most places do.
- BitwiseFool 4y ago
  >"Indeed, laws of physics are identical in all countries." There's no need to be glib, and the GP was obviously talking about the availability of land on a much smaller and more densely populated nation than the comparatively massive and wide open country that is the United States.
  - ncmncm 4y ago
    Only an entire failure ever to have looked at Google Maps "satellite view" would lead anyone to think UK has a paucity of crop and pasture land. It has, in fact, easily many, many times more of both than could ever be needed to share with solar and wind.
    - BitwiseFool 4y ago
      You also seem to be ignoring cost and land value. Just because land seems to be available doesn't mean it actually is. Or that it would be economical to convert it. And I also wonder how a solar panel, which blocks sunlight, would allow crops/grass to grow underneath it at the same time. It seems like trying to make land do these two sunlight dependent things at once is not as efficient as having dedicated agricultural fields and dedicated solar farms.
      - ncmncm 4y ago
        BitwiseFool 4y ago
        >"Please allow me to suggest you consult some actual, you know, facts." You're free to provide them. Call it concern-trolling if you'd like, but I definitely sense you've got a "why don't we just" mindset, where any potential downside is literally a non-issue. You dismiss all concerns and then wonder why something isn't being done when the solution looks so simple. >"Since solar may use up exactly zero acres, its watts per acre may be infinite." If it has mass and surface area, it will take up some sort of acreage. Solar panels block light, so obviously anything needing light to survive is going to struggle being underneath them. And, who knew that we could get an infinite amount of wattage out of zero acreage, why haven't those fools designing our electric grid realized this yet?!? >"But most crops do not, and benefit both from reduced heat stress and reduced water loss." So you've acknowledged that corn and wheat need full sunlight, but again, it doesn't matter, because in your view solar has no downsides whatsoever. Anything bad is actually good! >"Please do not make up BS problems." And you say I'm being the troll here.

jacknews 4y ago

It wouldn't be pasture if it were covered in solar panels. Isn't that what the article is saying, place solar panels sparse enough that you get pasture and panels. Personally I think they should be put to sea. Along with floating farmland. Just make concrete (or seacrete!) pontoons, connected together into 1000 km^2 islands. Leave the actual land to nature. I concede that is currently scifi though.

ncmncm 4y ago
Maybe you could take your own remark as a clue that dual-use does not "cover" every square centimeter with panels. When you recognize you have plenty of land that is not being used up by placing panels in it, you can understand there is no need to try to pack panels as closely together as conceivably possible. You can leave room between for livestock and grass. Open ocean has destructive waves. Panels do much better on calm reservoirs and ponds.

BitwiseFool 4y ago

>"There is no shortage of pasturage to site solar in." I don't believe you are taking into account just how much location and transmission distance matters for such projects.

ncmncm 4y ago
It does not, in fact, matter. If you have some transmission loss, you just add a few more panels.
- BitwiseFool 4y ago
  >"It does not, in fact, matter." What's your basis for this? Real-world power grids don't seem to be designed around transmission loss being a non-issue so long as they just 'generate more power' at the source.
  - ZeroGravitas 4y ago
    I think most real world grids are (or at least were) actually designed like this. Getting coal from a mine to a power station is a big task, so some grids are literally built around the locations of the coal. Hydro and nuclear have similar location needs. This has changed more recently with gas and renewables where as they get cheaper other factors start to dominate, but the grid was not originally set up for that kind of distributed load and needed some tweaks to adjust I believe.
  - ncmncm 4y ago
    Power at the source has never been as cheap as solar, and has always consumed extra operating expense to generate. Solar does not cost more each day it produces; you put up more panels and you get more power, day after day.
ZeroGravitas 4y ago
US government take on this: https://www.energy.gov/eere/solar/solar-futures-study https://www.energy.gov/eere/solar/solar-futures-study > Although land acquisition poses challenges, land availability does not constrain solar deployment in the scenarios. > In 2050, ground-based solar technologies require a maximum land area equivalent to 0.5% of the contiguous U.S. surface area, which could be met in numerous ways including use of disturbed or contaminated lands unsuitable for other uses. The maximum solar land area required is equivalent to less than 10% of potentially suitable disturbed lands, avoiding conflicts with high-value lands in current use. > Various approaches are available to mitigate local impacts or even enhance the value of land that hosts solar systems. Installing photovoltaic (PV) systems on water bodies, in farming or grazing areas, and in ways that enhance pollinator habitats are potential ways to enhance solar energy production while providing benefits such as lower water evaporation rates and higher agricultural yields. > Expanding rooftop PV could reduce solar land use. Almost 200 GW of rooftop PV are deployed in the decarbonization scenarios by 2050 (10%–20% of total solar deployment). However, the technical potential for U.S. rooftop PV is greater than 1,000 GW, and efforts to promote rooftop PV could increase deployment beyond the modeled level.

jeffbee 4y ago

Not just pasturage, but other wasteful and dumb land uses. All of California's energy needs and much more could be provided by a PV plant covering Edwards Air Force Base, with ordinary dirt-cheap panels on fixed mountings. People greatly overestimate the footprint of solar power, and underestimate the footprint of oil and gas. Every oil and gas well in the nation sits on a 1-5 acre pad that has been scraped flat and denuded of all life. The area that has been sacrificed for this purpose in west Texas and Wyoming absolutely dwarfs the area that we would need to replace that production with PV.