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The Italian farmers saving an ancient fruit with solar power
- asimpletune 3y agoThere’s a drink in Italy made with this that’s way better than sprite.
- fanatic2pope 3y agoAre you referring to Chinotto? I love that stuff. I wish I could get the less sweet versions, but I always buy a few cases of Brio anytime I go home to Toronto. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinotto_(drink) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinotto_(drink)
- jaclaz 3y agoChinotto is made with a different kind of fruit, still a citrus, but a different kind. The cedrata is made with Citrus Medica or Citrus Diamante. This is basically a larger and sweeter (less acid) lemon. The chinotto is made with Citrus Mirtyfolia. This is basically a small, bitter orange.
- linksnapzz 3y agoChinotto is stupid expensive in the US right now. Lurisia, Galvanina, San Pellegrino-little italian delis want $14 for a 4-pack of 170ml bottles. If this keeps up, I'm going to become an italian soda smuggler.
- rootw0rm 3y agoWholesale price for San Pellegrino large bottles was around a dollar each a couple years ago when I was ordering them in SoCal
- Naga 3y agoI first thought you made a mistake, but I googled and see the I was wrong. Where can you find chinotto in Ontario?
- klyrs 3y agoSan Pelegrino makes it. Higher-end grocers have it sometimes; Italian import stores are more reliable. Speaking in general; we have it in BC but there are a lot of Italian diaspora here.
- fanatic2pope 3y agoI buy Brio at Longo's market when I am there.
- jaclaz 3y agoBrio (never tasted it personally) is said to be quite unlike chinotto (too much sweet), personally even the San Pellegrino made one is a bit too sweet, in Italy there are quite a few almost artisanal brands that are usually much better (in the sense of being more similar to "traditional" chinotto) but they tend to be marketed nowadays as "niche/luxury" and have hefty prices. What you can do (at home) is to make it yourself, there are good chinotto syrups and you just add sparkling water to make a chinotto that is better than the pre-made soft-drinks.
- mhb 3y agoThat's a pretty low bar. Maybe if it's better than 7-Up...
- jaclaz 3y agoIn Italy what is similar to Sprite or 7-up (but usually better) is called gazzosa (or gassosa).
- jaclaz 3y agoYou mean cedrata? Though there are many makers of similar soft drinks, traditionally (since 1956) the most reknown maker is Tassoni. The company has been recently sold (2021) and the buyer, Lunelli group (more famous for wines) has promised (but seemingly hasn't done anything about it till now) a new international expansion. It is recent news that they are re-positioning the brand toward luxury beverages, JFYI (Italian): https://www.repubblica.it/il-gusto/2023/03/24/news/cedrata_tassoni_progetti_di_crescita_arriva_il_mix_con_il_gin-393404318/ https://www.repubblica.it/il-gusto/2023/03/24/news/cedrata_t...
- asimpletune 3y agoYeah, it’s Cedrata
- jagermo 3y agoI love these experiemts. In Bavaria, one of the hop farmers is trying a similar approach in large scale. Smaller tests have shown a similar outcome like in Italy, with the hop beeing protected from excess sunlight as well as hail and other weather. Their biggest issue currently seems to be the grid. It is (still) not designed for decentral usage and while the smaller test areas didn't have any problems, it seems like they will run into problems during peak production. But that is "just" an infrastructure problem that could be solved. I really like this dual use of land, with one complementing the other, because, as highlighted in the article, it gives farmers an additional income stream and enables them to run otherwise costly experiments with different crop. Love it.
- jdeibele 3y agoOn the grid issues: it seems like battery storage is either massive or individual. What doesn't seem to be happening is battery storage at the substation level. It would take planning but substation batteries could run low during the night and be re-charged by solar panels during the day. In the event of a major power line being damaged, there would still be power for some amount of time coming from the substations. Somebody I talked with last night was vehement about how irresponsible moving to EVs is, that the grid simply isn't up to it in her opinion. It's hard to get new power lines approved but distributing energy storage seems like it would help.
- Retric 3y agoEV’s don’t actually need much power and adoption is going to be really slow. 15k miles per year at 4miles per kWh is only ~430 or so watts per car on average. Considering the average car lasts around 25 years even 100% of new cars becoming EV would spread the transition over 25 years.
- sparsely 3y agoThis is cool. I've seen a bunch of farms with solar panels on their barn roofs (which makes sense, they can be a pretty large area) but never over crops. Solar panels over car parks are pretty great as well.
- glogla 3y agoIt is tricky - on one hand, it seems pretty nice to cover places like car parks or some crops with roofs of solar panels. You get to use the space twice and you get some shade. On the other hand, the panels are pretty heavy and need to be cleaned every so often. You need a lot of steel to make sturdy framework to put the panels on, unless you want them to fall on someone or break in strong wind. And cleaning the panels that are high up is more difficult than cleaning panels that are ground level. So depending on cost of labor and cost of steel and whatever (and I don't have numbers, I'm just musing) you might be better of putting solar panels on separate empty field.
- dividedbyzero 3y agoAs for cleaning, if this becomes widespread someone will surely make solar panel roombas.
- jaclaz 3y agoThey already exist, example: https://hycleaner.eu/en/produkte/hycleaner-solarrobot/ https://hycleaner.eu/en/produkte/hycleaner-solarrobot/ though they cannot "jump" from one line of panel to the other, so they are suitable only on continuous surfaces.
- Faaak 3y agoI've never cleaned my solar pannels in the 3 years I've had them and I still haven't noticed any loss of production. Raining once in the while seems to clean them good enough
- toyg 3y agoThe South of Italy stands to gain a lot from solar power. There is a generational chance to restore the fortunes of an impoverished region, leveraging cheap and plentiful renewable energy like this guy is doing.
- bombolo 3y agoThey get stolen like crazy.
- konschubert 3y agoThere is no prosperity without rule of law.
- bombolo 3y agoThere is no rule of law when people are poor.
- thiago_fm 3y agoUnfortunately it's an area mostly controlled by gangs without a presence of the police or the government. Maybe if there is interest from politicians and business people to make money there, those hanging issues could be fixed. I would love to move and live there if it wasn't for those issues, it's so fucking gorgeous and cheap.
- Mistletoe 3y agoI wish I knew more about what percent of the sun was being blocked, percent coverage by panels etc. I’m not familiar with those panels, they seem partially transparent?
- epistasis 3y agoIt's not clear to me what they are using here, but bifacial panels are typically more transparent, and can be used as partial shade for things like deck covering and pergolas https://news.energysage.com/bifacial-solar-panels-what-you-need-to-know/ https://news.energysage.com/bifacial-solar-panels-what-you-n...
- dghughes 3y agoI thought it was no big deal since most citrus are cultivars but Citron is one base fruits the cultivars come from. There's much more to it than this video but it's certainly interesting. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6fFHWdCcQ_c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6fFHWdCcQ_c
- pvaldes 3y agoThe Cidro is an interesting species for sure. Like a thorny and really big lemon (4Kg) that is basically all pith, no juice in the inside. Is either like that or shaped like Culthu's face. The most strange Citrus fruit by a mile. Also one of the "original four" wild citrus if I remember correctly so it has huge historical and genetic value. Important in Jewish culture as aromatic object, and surprisingly relevant also in food industry (most "candied lemon" found in baked pies is this thing really). Too tender for most areas but I wouldn't mind to have it as long as there was a good guarantee of having a clean strain without viruses.
- kranner 3y agoThe Cthulhu reference is funny because the common Asian name for this fruit is Buddha’s Hand.
- mc32 3y agoDo you mean pith or pitch? Pitch would seem to make things inedible to people (like pine resin) but fruit pith is used in cooking.
- pvaldes 3y agoYou are right. Fixed. Thanks.
- q7xvh97o2pDhNrh 3y agoNow that's what I call... a pithy response.
- MisterBastahrd 3y agoThere's a few trees along a road near here that has fruits similar to this. Every fall / winter there are gigantic fruit that litter the ground to the point that it looks like it's covered in a lumpy chartreuse carpet and they continue to fall from the trees for the next month, taking about 3-4 months for the fruit to rot and lose the color.
- mikae1 3y agoFunny, “citron” is lemon in Swedish.
- zinekeller 3y agoAnd indeed in most Romance languages (with the notable exception of Hispanic languages). English is showing its weirdness again.
- vidarh 3y agoWhich Romance languages other than French? I can't find any. Looks to me as if most languages will have some variation of citrus/citron in use as a broader classification for the genus of citrus fruits, but that variations over lemon/limon/limone inherited via Arabic and Persian seems to be more common for the specific plant/fruit C. limon/lemon.
- pvaldes 3y ago> Which Romance languages other than French? I can't find any. There are several, including the second language with most native speakers in the planet. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romance_languages#/media/File:Romance_languages.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romance_languages#/media/File:...
- bonzini 3y agoIs it in any Romance language other than French? It's limone in Italian, limon in Spanish, lămâi in Romanian, and those are the four main families of romance languages. It's indeed curious that English adopted the Romance name for lemon and French adopted the Germanic name.
- jaclaz 3y agoIn Italian these specific fruits are not "limoni" they are "cedri", but in latin there is citrus (as the name of the plant/tree) and citreum (as the name of the fruit) that means lemon so it is not strange that the French has citron that seems not Germanic at all. It is not clear at all whether what the Romans had were limoni, cedri or lime/limette, or all of them and whether they were only imported or actually cultivated locally. The lemon/limone etc. come from Arabic/Eastern languages and has evidently been "imported" in most romance languages. The scientific name of the lemon, "Citrus limon" settles it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lemon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lemon
- glogla 3y ago"Citron" is how bunch of languages (including mine) refers to lemon. This was pretty confusing article until I figured that out.
- realworldperson 3y ago[dead]