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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
by maxk42 3y ago
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.
- JoeAltmaier 3y agoThis. 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.
- falcolas 3y agoI 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.
- maxk42 3y agoThe 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.