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It can be really good to cover the fields!
Reduce evaporation, expand the range of plants that can grow and provide subsidies for hard pressed farmers
Protecting food and water resources are going to get increasingly important over the next few decades
Yes. Both, not either or. Where is that shitty competition thinking coming from?
The cynic in me suspects it’s an attempt to sow division within pro-solar panel groups. Get them arguing amongst themselves over where to put them, rather than uniting to push for more panels.
Yeah I really hate this post, and how often it seems to surface on lemmy. Agrivoltaics is good for energy and for the plants*!
*Some exclusions apply. Not all plants grow better with the added shade.
In Switzerland, there was a vote on a petition requiring new houses to include solar panels. Conservatives opposed it, arguing that construction costs were already too high without such regulations. Instead, those same people want to build massive solar farms on untouched natural landscapes. To me, the reason is obvious: energy companies want to maintain control over a centralized power infrastructure. This way, they can keep charging us high electricity prices while pocketing subsidies for infrastructure projects.
Ding ding ding that is correct!
no, it’s one thing to allow solar panels on houses, but a completely other thing to require them. i’m against the requirement as well. there’s absolutely no sane reason for that besides making people uncomfortable if they don’t want them. if they want them, they can already get them.
A lot of the big building companies, in Europe, treat solar panels as a premium option and so charge a larger profit margin on them. Installing solar, while constructing the house is a LOT cheaper and easier than retrofitting them later.
The panels have gotten cheap enough that it’s no longer a real cost burden, Vs the cost of the house.
A lot of it comes from conservative AstroTurf.
And, unfortunately, a lot of it comes from farmers and other people living in rural areas, who see fields of crops being turned into solar farms and think “these panels are ugly, these panels are industrial, these panels are taking up fertile farmland” and see it as just one more way the government is exploiting rural areas for the benefit of the cities.
They’re wrong, of course, but rural America has been abandoned and neglected and made the dumping ground for all sorts of polluting industries for so long I can’t blame them for thinking that way.
Put them everywhere. I don’t care where they go. I want my son and daughter to have a planet to enjoy and raise a family in.
It’s the way the typical American thinks
'Muricans have a habit of seeing things as zero-sum, because that’s what their shitty system relies on
Every single time this gets posted: Both is good.
Farmers are the biggest welfare queens in this country. They all bitch and moan about needing subsidies and everything but they all have crop insurance.
Generally speaking these are the large companies doing this while pretending to be small farmers.
Farmer A through F are family members. They each have their “own” farm, just inside the limit to make it a small farm. Farmer A also has a “small” farm with Farmer B, and C, and D, and E, and F, each qualifying as a “small” farm. Do the same with the rest of the mixes.
The reality is that these “small” farms are really one 400 acre farm run by the same people, worked by the same people (migrants being taken advantage of with illegally low wages).
The actually small farms do benefit from a lot of the programs, and that can be a really good thing. Its unfortunate though that there are enough loopholes that large scale corporate farming finds ways to abuse the system by cosplaying as “small farm” owners.
how many farmers do you know? You understand many are black and you’re calling them welfare queens, right? I get that people think farmers are republicans or conservative but that’s just admitting you have outdated knowledge. The times have changed
I don’t know. Sheep like to park below panels too.
Yeah I was gonna say:
First of all, we probably should not encourage more parking lots.
Secondly, in the words of that kid in A League Of Their Own who gives Gena Davis a ride who hits on her and then she makes a snide remark about smacking him around instead: “Can’t we do both?”
we probably should not encourage more parking lots
I don’t think anyone was suggesting that we build new parking lots just to install solar on them.
Woolly engineers hard at work.
On a nearby field, they placed panels in a height that cows can still use the field as well - win-win in my book.
Saw a documentation a few days ago. It was about a berry Farmer who put solarpanels above his berries to shield them from direct sunlight. Works great! And He could replace all his transporters with EVs. :)
I’ve seen plenty of different types of solar panels, some specifically for agriculture use that have small gaps between the solar cells to allow for more sun to reach plants.
I’m not sure how that affects solar panel output/longevity but it can’t be too much of a hit.
How about we don’t cover our fields with car parks?
Too radical for Americans
By and large we don’t. 53% percent of the surface area of the US is farmland. 28% of it is protected federal lands of some stripe or another — national forests and national parks, BLM land, etc. Everything else, all the remaining cities and suburbs and coal burning power plants, freeways, stroads with no bike lanes, Walmarts, and strip malls are all packed into the remainder. Most of that is along the coasts. The US is absolutely full of wide, huge, horizon-to-horizon, enormous expanses with nothing in them.
It’s just that our populated areas, largely along the costs, are utter hellholes.
The raw numbers are very misleading. First, although only (!) 53% of U.S. has been ecologically devastated by farming, the 28% of “protected” federal land is often leased for cattle rangeland, clear-cut by logging companies, or what environmentalists derisively call, “rocks and ice.”
The small remainder has been carved up by roads. It would be one thing if all of the pavement were one, contiguous blob in the middle of the New Mexico desert, but it is laced across the landscape from coast to coast. The effect on wildlife has been profound, from direct impact to roadkill numbers, to fragmention of ecosystems, to pollution from tailpipe emissions and road surface runoff.
It’s not about the space that cars physically occupy (though that is a major issue in cities), but rather the almost-apocalyptic effect they have had on the natural world. We would be better off if we didn’t build all of the parking lots on farmland (or anywhere).
This is ridiculously untrue and confuses too much of what matters for food
I just drove through New Mexico hundreds upon hundreds of miles of nothingness
With a pink hotel, a boutique, and a swinging hot spot?
public transport makes sense above a certain population density. many rural areas just don’t have that.
It’s called Agrovoltaics and it works pretty damn good,if you do it right.
The pairing can also offer some synergies. Solar panels can help moderate ground temperatures, provide shelter for livestock and help plants retain moisture.[6] For farmers the ability to produce electricity can help diversify their income stream.
Solar panels block light, which means that dual use systems involve trade-offs between crop yield, crop quality, and energy production.[7] Some crops/livestock benefit from the increased shade, obviating the trade-off,[8] such as green leafy vegetables, and spices such as turmeric and ginger, whereas staple crops such as wheat, rice, soybeans or pulses require more sun.[9] Agrivoltaics has also been used at scale in arid and semi-arid regions to stabilize soils, reduce dust storm intensity, increase vegetation cover, provide forage for livestock, and curb desertification, notably in northern China.[10][11]
Pv is around 250-400 times more efficient than energy crops for Bioethanol. So 1ha of pv could free up 249 - to 399 ha of land. Thats an ultimate win!
In the states, though, solar is woke and gay, and thus doesn’t get any financial help(currently). Farmers that live hand-to-mouth in the old model, getting drip-fed agri-subsidies, don’t have a way to soften the blow of the capex needed to push through the expense barrier, even though the other side is cleaner and more profitable.
Shift the subsidy requirement from agricultural to PV migration and that’ll fix itself.
Stop sharing this bullshit. It is a stupendously simplistic view that is propagated by those wanting to get in the way of cheap renewables.
Yes, it makes sense in some cases to cover parking lots, but it increases the price and complexity many folds and the areas needed in open land are next to nothing compared to the area being used to grow energy crops today.
The meme should be “stop covering our land with fertilized, pesticide covered corn and rapeseed that go into combustion engines, cover it with solar instead”
Technology connections has a video where part of this is explained.
soooo much this. Also stop building parking lots, people using cars need higher pressure to use other means of transportation. Car pool etc.
The meme should be “stop covering our land with fertilized, pesticide covered corn and rapeseed that go into combustion engines, cover it with solar instead”
It’s doubly stupid cause it’s just greenwashing a fucking carpark of all things. Do they not see the irony here?
Covering parking lots has the benefit of also protecting parked vehicles from sunlight and weather, meaning your car isn’t blazing hot when you return to it and you can unload any purchases in peace.
Why would installing panels over a parking lot be many times more expensive than installing them in any other open, flat area? Is it having to bury the power lines?
both. both is good.
Actually, with climate change in the back of the mind, covering fields with solar panels (not 100%, only partially) will reduce heat damage and water usage in the height of summer, and also protect the ground during cold spells of winter. So it is not that stupid after all.
That covering car parks with solar is a good idea is completely independent of this.
Plants need direct light to grow… most need full sun. Personally all the solar farms I’ve seen just “grow” grass and everything is kept trimmed down to not cast shade on the panels. Putting the panels up higher would still cast any plants grown in deep shade. I think putting them in places deep shade is needed/wanted on the ground makes sense and because cities tend to be hotter due to paving using solar panels to cast shade would help lower the temps in cities, lowering power usage on things like AC. I think integrating solar into urban landscapes is the future
Plants need direct light to grow… most need full sun
Except for all the plants that evolved and thrive in the low light beneath tree foliage. Evolution is not so picky as a pretty houseplant.
They need direct and indirect light, and agro-panels have a coverage of about 50%. Not enough for high-end farming, but more than enough for grass and similar to grow for grazing. Or some herbs that need shadow to grow properly. Those panels are usually placed on land that can’t be used for high-performance farming, anyway.
Plant butterfly bushes and other pollenator attractants / nectar sources.
One can always do this. Quite some of those plants love shadow and half-shadow environments. And, as i stated in my original post, don’t ignore the climate change. Many plants growing in a given location for ages will have difficulties in the future because of the more extreme weather.
You can either change the plants you are growing (like people in the south of my country who replace wineyards with olive orchards), or you can help historically local plants to survive, and solar panels is actually one way to do this.
Plants need direct light to grow… most need full sun.
That’s only true, if the solar panels are not properly adjusted to this use case.
The solution for that is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agrivoltaics#Spectrally_selective_modulesPlants need direct light to grow… most need full sun.
The humble Monotropa uniflora:
Crazy thought: put solar panels over A/Cs and tie it into the panel.
Obviously we could do the same or better with coal by just burning as much as we can without any attempt to filter it out of the air, encasing the earth in a wonderful shady smog, keeping us all shaded and cool /s
How many times is this gonna get posted? It gets dunked on every time too…
I’m convinced this is astroturfing in the same vein as the “Just stop oil” protesters that do all that trolly shit. The goal is for you to view green technologies negatively by association, and to feel like the science and decision-making behind them is suspect.
It’s not a bad idea to have energy production near where the energy is being used.
That said, it’s not an either or.
Technology Connections actually did a great video on why using solar panels in place of crops can benefit the crops and actually provides more energy than the crops themselves. At least in the U.S., a huge portion of our crops are used for ethanol in gasoline anyway.
Ooooof course it is
So anything that needs energy should have its own energy supply near where the energy is being used on the body as a design principle?
Sounds good.
Sounds even better than the (relatively) mere incremental improvement in batteries from donut labs.
Even if only painting everything [that needs some electricity] with photovoltaic paint.
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Not only to feed cattle, also to make ethanol to be used as fuel 🤦♂️
This is emotionally resonant but it’s actually sometimes better to cover fields. The right thing is not always intuitive.
Yup, like, what is it replacing? If it’s food that goes directly to humans, let’s not do that. If it’s corn for ethanol, that has little worth. Covering it with solar panels isn’t terrible by any means.
I feel like people still haven’t internalized just how much of our fields go to corn for ethanol
Exactly, and those take resources to grow. Water, fertilizer, pesticide, herbicide, oil, farm equipment, and so on.
Both. Agriphotovoltaik is neat stuff, proctects the more sensitive plants and enables farmers to generate more income, making them less depending on subsidies, bad crops, etc.
The foundations used to support both pictures are the same: W6x9 or W6x10.4 W-beams.
Carports are more expensive, though, because those foundations need to be just as long as the ground-mount ones + 14’ to support the panels above parking spaces. And often, ground-mounts can use alternative foundations like helical piles or ground screws which don’t need to be embedded as deep as W-beams. This shaves down foundation costs.
Then, you have to consider the steel trusses needed to distribute complex carports loads, which are simplified or non-existent with ground-mounts.
Then, you often have concrete encasements around carport foundations to protect the foundations from vehicles collisions.
All of this contributes to carport solar PV being the MOST expensive out of any alternative.
And if anyone is curious, for Commercial & Industrial (C&I) solar in urban/suburban contexts, cost effective PV usually goes roof-mount < ground-mount < canopy-mount. For utility/DG-scale, ground-mount is king.
