I won’t lie, my thought is, can’t we just have both?
There has been research into the benefits of solar panels over farmland, and also are benefits of solar panels over parking lots.
Call me an insane idealist, I would love the idea of implementing over both.
Por que no los dos?
If you aren’t using the field, who cares? Yeah fields are pretty, but honestly so are solar farms
I don’t know the numbers but Americans grow acres of corn for the sole purpose of making ethanol. I think they can spare a few acres for a far better solution.
I don’t think it is intentional on OP’s part, but this is really well-disguised fossil fuel propaganda. Carport solar is way more expensive than ground-mounted, and it isn’t viable for utility-scale projects. Should we do carport solar? Absolutely! But we also really need utility scale solar.
And if you put it on marginal farm land and make the ground cover pollinator-friendly, it actually improves yields on nearby farms without any real loss, since that land wasn’t great for growing food anyway. (Not to mention that cropland is about the furthest thing from a natural ecosystem)
Also in the US we grow massive amounts of corn to be processed into ethanol for gasoline, less than 5% of that land converted to solar would make the same amount of energy that all the ethanol from the corn produces. And if slightly less than half the land used for corn for ethanol was used for solar, the US would be at net zero carbon production.
And it’s not like ethanol is some byproduct that still allows that corn to be used for food or something else. Nope, we’re wasting all that land exclusively to burn up in our cars.
I think it’s unreasonable to say it’s fossil fuel propaganda. I like having shade and coverage in a car parking lot.
It’s not that the solar covering is just for solar power, but it’s a convenient pitch to combine the use cases where sure, solar covering parking is more expensive than solar straight on the ground, and sure, a plain covering is cheaper than a solar covering, but right now the lots are uncovered bits of asphalt that could be better.
Oh, to be clear, I don’t think carport solar arrays are fossil fuel propaganda. They’re a useful application where they fit. It’s the idea that solar on fields is harmful that I object to, and I worry that carport solar is being presented without the full context as a red herring, so folks like us who want more solar start objecting to utility-scale ground mount.
many also put them on pasture land, the grass grows just fine under it, and the animals get some shade to hang out in
Only problem is many pasture animals are not compatible with agrovoltaics. Cows tends to rub on the supports and may chew any exposed wires, goats will find their way on top of the panels no matter what you do, pigs will chew on any exposed wire or insulation, and sheep, well they’re actually okay for agrovoltaics.
There’s the alternate approach of basically using solar panels as fences which might work better for some pastures. Ultimately agrovoltaics is one of those combinations of factors that is going to take time and experimentation to perfect
Any time I’ve seen PV panels in a pasture field, they’re all set up a little differently depending on the field, animals, etc.
The ones with cattle look closer to the ones in the parking lot in the post photo, they’re way up on a post, all the wiring is either kept up high or are in a metal conduit. I don’t think I’ve ever seen them with goats though. Goats are assholes.
Large herbivores like cows are going to be capable of damaging traditional solar installations. But this would be great for goats and sheep and stuff.
Chickens would be fine, but you’d have to clip their wings (not surgically) so they can’t fly up on them.
Cattle pastures usually just mount the panels higher up, and put safety cages around service panels and electrical conduit.
The most I’ve seen with chickens is just a couple panels on the roof of the coop, or barn for industrial sized chicken processing. (I’m not going to call it farming, it’s basically a factory)
I have always been puzzled about why raising chicks is farming instead of ranching.
But I was meaning damage to the supports if the livestock was allowed close enough to benefit from the shade. Although the risk with chickens is getting the panels dirty or damaging them.
or have some kind of replaceable film for removing the shit easy
I’m not too up to date on solar panel materials engineering, but another concern would be them pecking at the panels or their claws scratching/cracking the existing cover.
And if you put it on marginal farm land
I like to casually browse land (you know, to build a little community for me and my friends when I win the lottery) and I see this everywhere. A lot of farms by me have solar panels along the road, often quite a lot of them. I’d imagine a lot of crops don’t do well next to a highway.
Many of the listings point out that the existing contract with the utility company pays more than the property taxes
Honestly, nuclear does better for utilities level power than solar. Solar is great, but it’s not perfect. It requires a lot of lithium for batteries, and producing the panels puts carbon in the atmosphere.
Thorium makes sense for supplying metropolises and 24/7 heavy industry between sunset and midnight. Uranium doesn’t make sense because it’s rare and hard to mine. Daytime nuclear doesn’t make sense because solar is cleaner, cheaper, and decentralized. And it doesn’t make sense for smaller cities, towns, and rural areas because you need to waste a shit-ton of electricity transporting the power of one reactor long distances.
It’s easy to forget how wasteful it is to lose 90% of your electricity transporting it long distances when that is what all the 20th century infrastructure was built around. But there are tons of energy storage methods that don’t require lithium that are more efficient, provided the electricity is generated locally.
Nuclear is good for baseload, and although it is very clean, it isn’t quite carbon-free either. It’s also very expensive, unpopular, and has a lot of regulations. I agree it’s good and necessary, but solar and batteries are way cheaper and can go almost anywhere, so they’re way easier to deploy. With the pace of climate action we need, I don’t think it’s an either-or, we gotta do both, fast.
Why would it be way more expensive? Sure, you’ll have to put it on poles, but…
The infrastructure to build a load-bearing roof over a parking lot is significantly more than the concrete footings and supports needed to hold ground-based solar. There are some public lots near me that have solar roofs over them. When I park there I almost feel like I’m pulling into an underground parking garage.
Not to mention… Much lower chance of some idiot ramming their car into the structure if it is out on a field somewhere.
But solar panels wouldn’t add a significant load. Pretty much any standard metal carport roof could support them.
I’m not an expert by any means, but every commercial solar install I’ve seen over public parking lots has included steel beam construction mounted on reinforced concrete footings that extend 2+ feet above ground. The concrete footings appear to be designed not only to support the structure but to be able to absorb the impact of cars that might otherwise dent/bend the steel supports. A few examples:
https://maps.app.goo.gl/fcQ9PUoWp68c21n57
https://maps.app.goo.gl/QqbmVsphByzN5Xi56
https://maps.app.goo.gl/n3wUKkYZLMCpzVTz5
The electrical infrastructure to support these is also significantly more than a residential solar setup. I have 44 panels on my roof, and I counted around 488 on one of these carports. I can generate around 85 kWh on a clear day, so one of these can probably generated 1000 kWh or more. You’ll need good electrical infrastructure to safely manage that and feed it into the grid. I didn’t need any infrastructure changes when my solar panels were installed other than a new utility meter. These all likely required a lot more than that.
Right, but there shouldn’t be any additional structural requirements to build a carport with solar panels vs one without. The steel beam construction is more than sufficient. Any electrical infrastructure, apart from wires to the panels, doesn’t need to be on the roof.
The count of panels on a wood frame house vs steel structure really isn’t something you can compare.
The actual panels are no longer the most expensive part of an install.
Except that agrivoltaics works out being better for the crops and the panels. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agrivoltaics
The crops part is similar to why grass grows better under trampolines. https://youtu.be/CoDn-1rGcpk
Remove the car parks in the first place
You wouldn’t want many carparks in the first place.
Very often the fields that those solar panels are covering are land fills or polluted sites that would be unsuitable for any kind of building or agriculture due to contamination. Utility grade solar often seeks out land that is already disturbed and unsuitable for other purposes because it’s cheap.
Covering parking lots with solar panels doesn’t make them any less horrible, we should all be aiming towards as little wasted space as possible. Which means no parking lots.
Solar has gotten so cheap to install that solar and wind contractors have been going around the farms around where I live and using high pressure sales and political tactics to buy up good farm land that’s been farmed for generations by small family farmers to instead setup solar panels. It’s been interesting watching the fight and reactions from the sidelines because there’s misinformation being thrown around by both the pro- and anti- solar factions (much more by the anti-solar faction of course) but there’s no avoiding that they bought out 2 family farms to do a particular solar project near me, so that’s two fewer small farms that will probably never return to growing crops
If you’re in the US it would be worth talking to your town and town’s planning board then. It would be up to the town planning board whether or not that was an acceptable use of that specific land in that specific area. A developer would only buy that land if they knew they would get a build permit. You can attend a meeting and there’s usually a time slot for a public input session on the agenda and you can bring that up. If you’re not in the US I’m not sure how it works but it might be similar.
Our fields are growing corn to burn as biofuel which delivers much less energy than a solar panel
And then turn parkings into essential energy infrastructure? Nah. Buldose the parking, put some houses, and put solar panels on the houses
Apparently, covering ~12% of the Australian Outback with solar panels would generate enough electricity to meet 100% of global energy (electricity, heating, transport) needs?!
If that’s true, the problem would be storing and transporting it. Sending electricity via wires is massively inefficient and limited in range.
THAT is how we should do world domination. Want to take over the world? Provide sustainable infrastructure and renewable resources.
i know the los dos is old but seriously why not integrate them into fencing. keep enough for electric and the rest goes toward paying for the fence. then some crops need shade so thats a good time to use it. lets not forget roofs in general.
But it makes the beautiful parking lots ugly.
Imagine a parking lot but with shade in the summer and out the rain
or both! ill wear a solar panel on my head if it helps adoption
You:
- yes, absolutely, we should be putting solar in car parks
- you deploy agricultural solar panels in grazing lands where the panels act as shade for grazing animals
