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I can understand not wanting to live close to wind turbines but I don't understand the issue with living next to a solar farm since the panels just sit there si
by UltraSane 1y ago
I can understand not wanting to live close to wind turbines but I don't understand the issue with living next to a solar farm since the panels just sit there silently.
- AlfeG 1y agoBecause they are not silent. Or sometimes are not. Inverters do have quite large fans.
- Forgeties79 1y agoCompared to literally every other way of generating power, they are relatively silent and unobtrusive. They also don’t poison the air around them which is pretty neat.
- mauvehaus 1y agoYes, but the relevant comparison for the residents isn't to a coal plant, it's to the undeveloped field that the solar arrays replaced. Depending upon their other priorities, they may be upset about the loss of hunting access as well. Understandably, people putting up solar arrays don't want people firing guns in the middle of their arrays.
- Forgeties79 1y agoWe have to make power somehow and they all want to use said power. It mostly just boils down to nimbyism at the end of the day. They are just unaware of (or don’t care about) areas like cancer alley where we dump all our mining/refining/processing/etc. in an already impoverished area that can’t push back the same way wealthy neighborhoods with social status can.
- Spivak 1y ago> and they all want to use said power If I were to hazard a guess every person complaining would happily suffer the 'consequences' of a solar farm not being near their neighborhood. It really should be a no brainer compromise to zone solar as industrial so they're not near where people live. There's in practice infinite amounts of land you can get zoned like this. Living to electrical noise sucks in a way living need next to a wind farm doesn't.
- UltraSane 1y agoPeople put solar panels right on their roofs. Noise is not a major issue for solar. It is hardly an issue at all.
- Spivak 1y agoI mean you're not wrong, if I measured the sound with a microphone I bet an air conditioner would be twice as loud but at the same time I'm sure that air conditioner would also be louder than the electrical buzzing you hear when you live near the big wires. But here's the thing, arguing over whether or not the sound is tolerable (or worse having some government agency full of people who will never live next to these things declaring it tolerable) I think is the wrong battle to be fighting which is why I think it's a no-brainer compromise. You won't have to hear it, you won't have to look at it except as way off in the distance, you won't have to worry about whether or not your buddy's farm is gonna get taken over by one when they run into financial troubles. Out your backyard you get to look at mostly pristine farmland and wilderness. During this time where there's political will and capital to just ban them outright I think this relatively small concession will make folks not put up too much in a fight as long as it's kept out of sight out of mind.
- slavik81 1y agoI have an air conditioner and I have solar panels. The air conditioner is not merely twice as loud. My air conditioner is 70 dbA and the solar panels are certainly below 30 dbA because I have never heard them make noise. The difference is multiple orders of magnitude.
- marcusb 1y agoThis is a very frivolous argument against solar farms given the amount of noise and other pollution emanating from regular farms. Farm-scale irrigation is not silent. Crop Dusters are not silent. Combines and other tractors are not silent. Burning fields are both not silent and release a tremendous amount of sooty smoke that spreads far beyond the boundaries of a farm. Farms make a lot of noise.
- dylan604 1y agoCrop dusters do not run 24/7, nor do the combines or other tractors.
- marcusb 1y agoReally? I had no idea! Thanks for clearing that up.
- JumpCrisscross 1y agoAre solar panel inverter fans running at night?
- alexdns 1y agoWell its not silent those panels go into MPPTs that produce noise when high amps are flowing through them to charge batteries if they don't direct export , if they direct export then there is noise from inverters to convert DC->AC
- Geezus_42 1y agoBut is it honestly enough to notice if you live half a mile a way? Couldn't they just put up sound damping like the oil rigs do?
- alexdns 1y agoWell depends on where they are they might be obligated to put due to some noise polution law or they might not care because there is no such law
- ourmandave 1y agoMaybe the guy who cleans them complains loudly, or the squeak of his 4' squeegee is annoying.
- fhdkweig 1y agoYou say that in jest, but it happens. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2987251/Charges-against-Kevin-McGill-came-work-early-annoyed-residents-wealthy-suburb-dropped.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2987251/Charges-aga... https://www.theroot.com/atlanta-garbage-man-sentenced-to-jail-for-picking-up-tr-1790859047 https://www.theroot.com/atlanta-garbage-man-sentenced-to-jai...
- Dylan16807 1y agoComplaining about garbage trucks before 7am is very different. They are quite loud and they get within 30 feet of your bed. That man shouldn't have been personally sentenced to anything, but it's a legitimate complaint to fix.
- ben_w 1y agoLots of people dislike change. Neophobia is a thing, and it's not particularly uncommon. The good news is, they'll rapidly adapt to each new solar farm; the bad news is, they'll forget about all the ones they're used to by the time comes to expand — I've seen anecdotes of the same thing happening with power lines, where people were upset that some proposed new ones would ruin the view, the person proposing them said they wouldn't be any different from the current ones, and the complainers said "what current ones?" and had to have them pointed out.
- hermannj314 1y agoThat human psychology eventually adapts to tolerate enshittification is probably the main reason we have enshittification.
- patall 1y agoThe only problem that I kind of understand are the huge fences surrounding the farms. Because copper thefts are a big problem for them, it is quite common to have 3m high fences all around, which is obviously more gated community like than a monoculture field. And of course, it depends on how the farm is run. Solar farms can be ecological heaven if managed properly, unless growing weeds are just killed of with round-up every few months. Everything else seems more pretended problems, like inverter fans that may just be placed in the middle and should barely be hearable from 100 meters away.
- Geezus_42 1y agoHow is that fence any different than the 3m high fence the deer breeder down the road has?
- bongodongobob 1y agoDeer breeding isn't liberal wokeness. Only the good ol boys do that, so it's ok.
- patall 1y agoIdk, maybe 3mm wire of 15cm grid size vs. 6mm wire in a <=5cm grid. But I have never seen a big deer farm, that is probably also not so nice to have right next door. But what do I know, here in Scandinavia, you have the right to roam pretty much everywhere, makes countries with too many fences seem claustrophobic.
- UltraSane 1y agoThe solar farm I live near has a 5 foot tall fence.
- prawn 1y agoI filmed a solar farm the other month for an energy company and they had sheep amongst the panels keeping the grass down. The main infrastructure, like you said, was positioned centrally so there was no sound at all at the perimeter.