8 ms·
In Denmark, the spread of solar panels has become a divisive issue
- doctorpangloss 7mo agoeverything that goes into real life is an aesthetic experience. it's not complicated. imo, you can either literally hide things from the public, or aesthetic concerns, like whether or not a piece of infrastructure's exterior is physically beautiful & attractive, becomes the #1 priority.
- mikaeluman 7mo agoThe dirty secret is of course that the Danish power grid would be totally unusable without the base power provided from Sweden and Norway. They almost suffered a catastrophic shutdown a year or two ago and the situation has not improved
- ceejayoz 7mo agoIs that really a "dirty secret"? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continental_Europe_Synchronous_Area https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continental_Europe_Synchronous... exists for good reason.
- tensor 7mo agoThe power grids of US states are similarly linked. Very dirty.
- crooked-v 7mo agoExcept for Texas, which decided as a state that avoiding federal regulation was worth people dying every winter from power outages.
- karamanolev 7mo agoI'm not a fan of Texan electrical isolationism, but "people dying every winter from power outages" is stretching it a bit...
- ceejayoz 7mo agoEvery winter is a stretch, yes. But they did get a big warning shot in 1989 and 2011, and ignored those lessons for cost reasons. A couple hundred people died.
- amarant 7mo agoWhich actually works out to rather more than one person per winter, when averaged out.
- card_zero 7mo agoLike all the Canadians who die every winter in the Halifax explosion of 1917.
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- gottorf 7mo ago> But they did get a big warning shot in 1989 and 2011, and ignored those lessons for cost reasons. Cost is always a valid reason! > A couple hundred people died. Looks like about a thousand people in the US die of hypothermia every year, on average. So this happens frequently in states that aren't in its own interconnection, too.
- ceejayoz 7mo ago> Looks like about a thousand people in the US die of hypothermia every year, on average. In their powerless homes? I don't doubt people get lost in the woods. But that's not some systemic failure.
- tensor 7mo agoThe only dirty secret is that humans are happy to kill future generations as the effects of the oil economy will only minimally affect the people alive today.
- codebolt 7mo ago[flagged]
- ethan_smith 7mo agoThe Nordic grid was designed to work as an interconnected system though - Danish wind exports and Norwegian/Swedish hydro imports balance each other out. Calling it a "dirty secret" makes it sound like a failure when it's actually the intended architecture. Denmark is frequently a net electricity exporter.
- Gud 7mo agoNo it wasn’t. That has come later.
- matthewdgreen 7mo agoThat's like pointing out that Rhode Island isn't designed to be a self-sufficient grid.
- expedition32 7mo agoYeah and entire countries would shut down without LNG and oil- it's almost as if we are all living in an interconnected world!
- OutOfHere 7mo agoDenmark could use floating sea solar.
- dathinab 7mo agoif there where an issue yes, but it doesn't look like there actually is a major issues. A look at satellite images it looks more like a problem for a handful of people across all of Denmark which then is misrepresented by populist, to push anti-solar propaganda. (Oh, and we don't even know how much the people in Hjolderup do resent it. Like seriously, they might even have put the solar panels there them-self to make money, idk.. Because conveniently the article shows pictures of Hjolderup to invoke a felling of how terrible it is, but never any interviews or options with anyone _from_ Hjolderup. )
- gritzko 7mo agoLived there. Baltic weather, not too sunny. Must be a great place for wind generation though.
- ahartmetz 7mo agoThe world's largest wind power company, Vestas, is from Denmark.
- pfdietz 7mo agoNorthern Europe really is the energy armpit of the post-fossil world, although more so away from coasts.
- SoftTalker 7mo agoDenmark is a poor location for solar. They are pretty far north and don't have a lot of sunny days that are good for solar generation. When they do, those peaks drive energy prices negative. From the article: Over the next 10 years, the official expectation is a very large rise in the amount of solar produced. But that kind of clashes with the reality on the ground – they can’t make money
- dathinab 7mo agofrom the article which uses intentionally deceptive photography angles to paint a very different picture, yes more interesting is, if that is actually true. Or only true because idk. the investors also bought the land and they profits are used to amortize the land buying cost etc.
- delusional 7mo agoThat's a terrible argument on the face of it. "They can't make any energy, but also they make so much energy they can't use it all". I actually live in Denmark, and we can produce solar energy just fine. My dad installed rooftop solar 10 years ago, and that thing has 90% of his electricity usage since then. It's still producing at around 85% capacity too.
- littlestymaar 7mo ago> that thing has 90% of his electricity usage How is that supposed to work with cloudy days with barely 7 hours of daylight in winter?
- detourdog 7mo agoIn New England it works fine and we project 3 hours of production during the winter months. Not sure what Denmark’s latitude is, but 7 hours of production is not needed.
- littlestymaar 7mo agoNew England is Spain in terms of latitude. Americans tend to forget how far north Europe is compared to the US.
- aaronbrethorst 7mo agoOne interesting detail about Denmark's renewable energy infrastructure mix is that Vestas, the largest wind turbine manufacturer in the world, is a cornerstone of Danish industry. Note in the article that wind supplies about 40% of Denmark's electrical needs, and that the populist right party mentioned in the article doesn't attack wind turbines, despite the antipathy that other (supposedly populist) rightwing figures do in other countries.
- darth_avocado 7mo agoThis would’ve been a non issue if human beings worked together as a species, but we don’t. There is plenty of space on the planet where no one lives and nothing thrives that could be converted massive solar farms that power the planet.
- SoftTalker 7mo agoTransmitting that energy from where nobody lives to where people do live becomes the problem with that.
- TimorousBestie 7mo agoBuckmister Fuller envisioned a worldwide high-voltage transmission network implemented with 1980’s technology, there just isn’t the worldwide political will or cooperation to build it.
- ahartmetz 7mo agoIt could possibly be combined with a solution to the storage problem: store the energy in some transportable chemical form like hydrogen, methane or the electrolyte of a redox flow battery.
- SoftTalker 7mo agoYeah possibly. Synthetic hydrocarbon fuel that's already compatible with transportation infrastructure and energy consumers might be the best bet.
- devilbunny 7mo agoWe will probably be using that in aviation for a long, long time. Turbines are pretty efficient and jet fuel has a remarkably high energy density for something that does not easily explode.
- Sharlin 7mo agoBuilding HVDC lines from North Africa to Europe, for example, wouldn't be a huge feat of civil engineering. Rather standard stuff, really.
- chvid 7mo agoDenmark has undergone the same sort of right wing populism that has gone through most of the west. Including rhetorical tricks like this. Though the recent election is slight swing to the left, and the newly created right wing parties are already undergoing various forms of internal meltdowns, making a center left government friendly green energy projects most likely.
- dathinab 7mo agonot buying that this isn't anti renewable propaganda for the US the images in the article looks bad until you take a short look at satellite images and realize: - it's not the norm but the exception - the photos are made to make it look maximally bad in a deceptive/manipulative way, and that is even in context, that Denmark is a special case in that it both quite small and has little "dead" (not agriculturally efficiently usable land). And many old "culturally" protected houses where fitting solar on top of it is far more complicated/inefficient. Don't get me wrong it isn't the only special case, but there are very many countries which don't really have such issues. Also quite interestingly this "iron fields" can be "not bad" from a nature perspective, at least compared to mono-culture with pesticide usage. Due to the plant and animal live below them. Through that is assuming people do extra steps to prevent that live.
- mellosouls 7mo ago"not buying that this isn't anti renewable propaganda for the US" Its the Guardian so that is a very unlikely motivation.
- Arn_Thor 7mo ago_Something_ motivates them, though. They have been on a wild anti-solar bend the last year or more. Dozens of articles, all with the same anti-solar NIMBY bent
- andor 7mo agoThat's just your reading comprehension. They are reporting on an anti-solar NIMBY movement and mention how the far-right is pushing the issue. That doesn't mean they share the same opinion.
- zipy124 7mo agoThe guardian have previously been found to generate a significant amount of ad revenue from fossil fuel companies. They aren't politically aligned with it, but are financially. Remember that a large portion of the left in the UK are also anti-solar since they are pro-green nature and they have yet to make a choice on this. P.s I am pro renewable and pro-solar/wind/nuclear just to clarify that this is nothing about my personal beliefs.
- Flavius 7mo agoWe currently use vast amounts of land growing corn and other crops specifically for biodiesel. Solar panels produce over 100x more energy per hectare than corn ethanol, even in countries like Denmark with limited sunlight. It makes perfect sense to repurpose some biofuel farmland for solar panels. That's just efficient land use, not an attack on agriculture.
- dathinab 7mo ago> corn and other crops specifically for biodiesel. honestly that always sounded very misguided to me fields are not perfectly renewable, biomas gets removed from them and fertilizers can only help so much in any given time frame mostly corn/raps mono-culture can make that easily far worse and not needing to import food can safe a lot of energy too also as you mentioned, modern solar panels seem overall more efficient in difference to solar or wind, biodiesel just seem a very bad choice
- PearlRiver 7mo agoDon't forget all the pesticides and fertilizer that they have been pumping into the ground for the last 100 years. Farms are industrial estates.
- karmakurtisaani 7mo agoYes to progress, no to cheap right-wing populism with no real solutions to any problem. How about that?
- ls612 7mo agoRegardless of your political beliefs I would hope you could agree that using arable land for solar power is dumb. Denmark is almost entirely arable land and relatively small to boot so they should be using more compact power sources.
- lukeify 7mo agoAgreed. I'm very pro-solar but there should be incentives for residential solar and solar on commercial buildings first. Covering up farmland and natural environments should be a last resort.
- sophacles 7mo agoWhy would I agree to such a stupid position? Here in the us we could swap acres of corn used only for ethanol production for acres of solar panels that produce a 100x more power annually.
- hattmall 7mo agoYes, but the reason we incentivized ethanol production is to not lose the productive capacity for corn in case we need it to feed people. Having a significant excess of food production capability is incredibly important to long term stability. You really can't overstate the importance of food production capacity.
- rcxdude 7mo agoIt's a hell of a lot less dumb than growing crops for biofuel on it, to start. And it's not even an either/or situation, you can do both on the same piece of land. I think there is plenty of 'arable' land for which the most productive thing it could be doing is solar power.
- Arn_Thor 7mo agoThe Guardian continues its anti-solar crusade. For some inexplicable reason
- l5870uoo9y 7mo agoThe absurdity of the climate debate is that “we” talk almost constantly about two energy sources (wind and solar) that in no way have the potential to provide the stable baseload power required to electrify society. And unless nature has blessed your country with abundant geothermal or hydroelectric power, that leaves you with the following options: oil, coal, or nuclear power.
- rickydroll 7mo agoThe addition of batteries as an intermittent power source brings us closer to 100% renewable energy and allows us to incrementally decommission dirty plants, such as coal- and oil-fired plants. The design goal of adding a battery to grid power sources is to capture energy that would otherwise be lost when demand is lower than generation. In addition to capturing excess production of wind or solar-derived energy, one could capture unused energy from our current baseload generating plants overnight. We could also, this would also let us capture the energy that would otherwise be wasted by unnecessary nighttime lighting.
- recursive 7mo agoWind and solar can provide enough energy. You may be referring to their well-publicized variability. Energy storage can solve that.
- card_zero 7mo agoThe next phase in these conversations is usually to argue back and forth about whether energy storage is going to be good enough soon, or never will be, or already is. You're naive if you think your storage solution can handle the massive reserves required, unless you're not naive for technical reasons. Don't ask me, this part is always inconclusive.
- recursive 7mo agoOk, I guess we'll never know then.
- 7mo ago
- danw1979 7mo agoI took a stroll recently through the countryside around Swindon, UK, where there’s a massive new solar farm on formerly arable land. One thing I only just realised was how the view from the ground is so badly affected when you’re down amidst the endless rows of panels - they reach well above head height. It’s basically like walking through a industrial estate, just with more grass in between. Really very bleak. Give me an onshore wind farm over this.
- teamonkey 7mo agoAre you sure it’s arable land? The majority of solar farms in the UK are built on low-grade land that aren’t suitable for growing food.
- ghighi7878 7mo agoGreen grass is still good to look at.
- teamonkey 7mo agoThere is grass. Grass is allowed to grow around the panels. It’s great for biodiversity.
- cjrp 7mo agoI wonder if that will remain the case. The input costs for farming are increasing (seed, fertiliser, energy), the output is becoming less predictable (flood, drought) and the grants from DEFRA which are meant to smooth things out have dried up somewhat since Brexit. If farmers are offered a guaranteed income for a field, I suspect they'd take it.
- teamonkey 7mo agoSee the adjacent link I posted about projected land use.
- Animats 7mo ago
- dev_l1x_be 7mo agoEnergy density is a real problem.
- jmward01 7mo agoWe are at a moment where we are finding more and more ways to integrate solar in. It is likely we will go 'too far' in some ways but hopefully over the next few decades we will see a lot more well integrated solutions like vertical panels complementing farming and solar integrated, potentially with lower efficiency but also less impact, into things like building surfaces and other non-traditional places. Getting a diversity of options out there, and iterating on them, is key to the next phase where solar is everywhere reasonable by default and well integrated in to daily life.
- iso1631 7mo agoI live in the UK in a town of 10,000 people, so say 4,000 houses (probably far higher than there are). If every house had a 10kWp (way more than most installs) that would be 40MW generation. On the outskirts of town we have a 40MW solar farm about the same size as the golf course. Most people have no idea it's there, it uses barely any land compared to the rest of farmland around here. That generates about 40GWh a year. The cost of renting the land it's on each year is about £20k a year, or 50p per MWh, basically nothing. Land is effectively free compared to the value from "farming the sun", it's far cheaper than the scaffolding to put 8kWp on a roof
- Gibbon1 7mo agoI like make the point that solar farms produce 30-100 times more energy per acre than farming plants. Lot of 'nature' is actually land that has been or being completely trashed via agriculture. But it's so normalized people don't get that.
- jmyeet 7mo agoYou don't even have to go to the issue of climate change to defned this anymore. The far more relevant factor is the cost of energy as well as national security. Europe as a whole has engaged in greenwashing where instead of really solving their emissions and energy problems has simply offshored those problems to poorer countries. If a neighbour uses fossil fuels for electricity generation and you buy their excess electrricity, you're not greener. You've just cooked the books. People who might say "when I go outside at this very specific place solar panels look ugly" should carry no weight when those solar panels (in Denmark's case) covers 0.2% of rural land. Go somewhere else. Unsurprisingly, China is leading here by making solar panel installations have multiple uses like reversing desertification and use vegetation growth from the shade and the water used to clean the panels as a place for grazing livestock. Obviously Europe in general and Denmark in particular doesn't have deserts, of course. I'm generally a fan of putting solar panels on non-arable land. In the US, that's much of the southwest, which incidentally also has very good solar yields because of the high amount of sunshine. There are whole areas of grass plains that can't be used for traditional farming as we discovered in the 1930s. It was called the Dust Bowl. There was a famous book written about it (ie the Grapes of Wrath). What I don't understand is why we don't build more solar around or over highways. This is already public land and it's land not doing anything else. The solar wouldn't interfere with the core purpose either. I guess people want solar panels tucked away where few can see them.
- chrysoprace 7mo agoFor decades I've been pointing to Denmark (partly out of national pride) as a successful model for renewables as Australia dragged its feet on the issue due to fossil fuel industry lobbying. The positive I take from the article is that Denmark is successfully diversifying its renewable energy sources, something that's needed while battery infrastructure is built to scale, and I sincerely hope it doesn't become a serious political issue like it's been here in Australia for decades (and continues to be today).
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- rcxdude 7mo agoI always find it kind of ironic when the more allegedly libertarian pro-farmer side of the political spectrum start to get really concerned with how farmers use their land. And a solar farm has to be the most inoffensive thing to live next to, I was frankly shocked that it was something that appeared on a house survey result as "developments nearby you might be concerned about".
- jeppester 7mo agoI live in a small Danish town that would have very likely been surrounded by solar panels by now if we had not put up a fight. The problem is that these projects are pitched to land owners, to be placed in areas they can't see from their own windows. Those who live nearby are not involved until the approval is a formality (or presented as such). Often times the investors will also pay certain house owners for their silence, making the locals suspicious of each other. They do this because obviously no one likes someone from the outside to take away the green* surroundings that are a big part of why people live there - and in the process lowering the value of everyone's houses. I can't comprehend why someone would think that this was a good way of rolling out solar. I agree that we are going to need solar as part of the mix. It would just be much better to start with the locations where people do NOT want to live, for instance next to motorways. Luckily I think we are slowly moving in that direction due to all the resistance. *I'm well aware that fields are heavy industry, but they are plants and rarely 2,5 meters tall.
- shibapuppie 7mo agoWhat's the over-under on tire and brake dust settling on panels next to (presumably) high-speed motorways?
- jeppester 7mo agoThank you for bringing this up. It's not something I've thought of as a problem before. It does in fact - based on my 5 minutes of research - seem that it can be an important factor, especially if the panels are placed within "splash range" of the road. When I mention solar panels near motorways I'm not picturing them right next to the road, I'm thinking of larger strips, perhaps 30-100 meters from the road and in areas that have already become unattractive due to noise pollution. There are many such areas. I think the main issue with using them is that there are many land owners involved. It's easier to get fewer land owners to commit larger fields, than many land owners to commit small strips. But that is IMO a solvable problem, not a good reason for placing the panels next to where people like to live.
- 7mo ago
- rasz 7mo agorussia really doesnt like energy independence. Right wingers across Europe are supported with russian bribes, last big one caught is Nathan Gill.
- deaux 7mo agoThe Guardian here using the word "climate" 6 times. They mention prices and economics zero times. They talk about energy sovereignty zero times. While the US attack on Iran has massively increased fossil fuel prices. Framing solar expansion as being for the climate rather than the number one way reduce cost of living for everyone, boost the economy through cheap electricity, _and_ decrease dependency on other countries (a proper nationalist goal), is simply propagandizing for fossil fuel and capital interests. That's what the Guardian is doing here. Choosing that framing in an article less than 3 weeks after the attack on Iran is deliberate.
- nslsm 7mo agoDon’t attribute to malice what can be attributed to stupidity. And this is a leftist rag, so there’s lots of stupidity going on.
- torginus 7mo agoThough if we steer the conversation towards sovereignity, it bears mentioning that all components of solar installs (inverters, panels, and batteries) tend to be made in China, and afaik just recently they revoked some tax breaks that applied to solar equipment.
- leonidasrup 7mo agoAccording to data from 2021, China produced 79.4 % of all polysilicon (the most energy hungry part of PV production) in the world, 96.8% of all wafers. https://www.iea.org/reports/solar-pv-global-supply-chains/executive-summary https://www.iea.org/reports/solar-pv-global-supply-chains/ex... So if a country counts on becoming energy sovereign by investing into solar, this really depends on goods relations with China.
- f33d5173 7mo agoSovereignty doesn't mean autarky. Gas requires continuous resupplying which depends on maintaining relations with foreign countries. Solar requires you to acquire equipment to set it up, but doesn't require an ongoing relationship beyond that. Having invested heavily in solar doesn't give china a veto in your political affairs thereafter, except to the degree they would have one otherwise.
- erelong 7mo agoSounds like America... I could see panels being thought to take up farmland and not look that great but if it could use other lands and be out of the way idk what the remaining objections are
- lofaszvanitt 7mo agoWhy not make transparent panels? And put them on the top of houses everywhere, since actually nobody uses the top of their house for anything. And prohibit putting panels on fertile soil.
- animal531 7mo agoNot mentioned is that studies are showing that areas over solar farms remain stable in temperature, but surrounding areas get a few degrees warmer, which is problematic for either people living close to them and/or if they are planted next to crops, other infrastructure etc.
- rstuart4133 7mo agoA quick calculation shows to supply all of Denmark's energy needs with solar, (assuming sufficient storage), they would need about 1,000 km² of solar panels. That's about 2% of their land area. That assumes a solar irradiation rate of 0.5 kWh / m² which is about what they get in winter. They get 6 kWh / m² in summer, so there would be 10 fold over production then. If they stored that by converting it to hydrogen, even if done very inefficiently, it would more than halve the land area required. Given their solar irradiation is so poor they would be better off with wind. While 2% is big, it isn't inconceivable, particularly as solar panels don't prevent the land from being used for other things, such as transport, buildings, even some forms of agriculture. People will get comfortable with it over time, just as they did with destroying most natural ecosystems in Europe to turn the land over to agriculture. That horrifies me far more than covering 2% of land with solar panels.