Don't put them over car parks, put them anywhere and everywhere. It's far more expensive to build both roofs and solar panels.
The field in question is probably being used to crow ethanol so replacing it with solar panels is an improvement if anything.
Not sure if this was mentioned cause there are quite a few comments on here. California is planning on putting them over the water canals to prevent evaporation and ‘save billions of gallons of water per year’.
That's a nightmare to maintain. The electricians would need to get hazard pay for the risk of falling and the risk of drowning.
India has been doing it since 2012, and these fuckers are claiming they invented the concept.
"Brandi McKuin, the lead University of California researcher on the project, says dozens of people have told her they had the idea of covering canals with solar panels decades ago."
Some combos are beneficial for the plants bellow. Either way, any solar plant is better than coal.
I'm a farmer, rancher, and dairyman. This shit pisses me off. You can get dual use out of land. I can grow crops and graze cattle around and often under solar panels. The limiting factor is what the power company will allow me to sell to them. And they don't want that because bottom lines.
Seriously. The oil industry has been extracting petrochemicals from the earth while we utilize the land above for animals and crops for over a hundred years. Its not difficult. Saying that renewables are using up our land and not allowing dual utilization for other commodities is a lazy and piss poor lie that will not stop and I'm tired of it.
Stop this nonsense bullshit petro propaganda now. Alternative energy can and already does coexist with modern land management and modern farming practices. Full stop.
Farming under the panels can be beneficial in drought conditions.
Putting solar panels above parking lots is still an excellent idea.
Parking lots are already wasted space—might as well make them useful too.
Or maybe downsize them like crazy and use them for native plants or housing and build infrastructure like trains trams and busses to reduce the dependence on cars
No, parking lots need to be developed. We can't have functional cities when every other plot of land is dedicated to park cars.
Ever since I was a kid, I used to wonder why roofs of buildings didn't include, or where made of, solar panels.
I have explanation, but you will not like it.
Parking lots have been built on cheap. Those who have roofs can't support any added weight, while those who do not have roofs are far away from any serious electrical connection able to give the energy outside.
The whole idea can be done... on new parking lots.
Also - how about instead we build more water-plant power storage? They pump water to the upper reservoir using electricity in the middle of day, and then produce electricity from flowing water at dawn/dusk/night. This would up the demand for electricity when solar panels are overproducing it and push businesses to consider including solar panels in their constructions.
not near electrical infra
Unlike the average field
The benefit of pavement being cheap is it's not terribly expensive to remove or repair bits of it. Cut a square out, drill down with an auger, chuck a sonotube in and pour a footing. Trenching in conduit for power lines doesn't seem like much of a deal breaker either.
I'd also image a parking lot is closer to an electrical connection than a farm field out in the country.
Ones on roofs are easy, a panel can’t weigh more than a car so you lose a few parking spaces on the roof level and bob’s your uncle. The goal is to reduce car usage so it’s fine. And existing ones are too far away to provide electricity? What? They’re literally beside stores which consume power! Yea I don’t like that answer, it’s dumb as hell.
The pumping idea sounds cool, though, and I’m not against it, but dude I’m so tired of “what if we do nothing because we can’t understand the concept of having multiple solutions going at once?”
False dilemma.
Also that ain't no field.
Crop yields are only very slightly affected by agrivoltaics and variance tends to be reduced. Water usage is reduced a lot.
Even dedicated agrivoltaics would only cover a fraction of usually sub standard land for giant power outputs. The fear of someone plastering the environment with solar is fear mongering.
Building enough parking infrastructure to cover with panels is a waste of space (outside of America).
It's probably a good idea to put solar panels on car parks where we're going to have car parks anyway, though. In addition to agrivoltaics and using, as you say, substandard land for large scale solar. Also put it on roofs. Basically anywhere it doesn't do any harm, I say.
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)
Why not both?
Panels on grazing areas and some fields has repeatedly been proven beneficial
THIS !!!!!!!!
As a solar engineer myself that started in utility scale solar and just left their first Commercial & Industrial (C&I) solar job, residential, commercial, and industrial solar is the best use.
you center generation as close as possible to utilization, minimizing transmission and distribution.
land is re-used, allowing other lands for other uses like rewilding, reforesting, and conservation.
You still have other problems like large power users, but you cannot ignore the benefits.
Some plants are shade loving and would do great under properly spaced panels
That's call Agrivoltaics. Strawberries are a prime example.
Just cover all fields used to grow biofuel crops with solar panels, it's an insane number used for biofuels - like enough to power the whole US twice over if they were all covered in solar.
interesting concept. i think it would be cool if we had solar power cars so we wouldn't put so much pollution in the environment. but i don't think the tech is there yet and if it was big oil won't let it happen.
I mean, functionally we do have the tech, but it's just solar farms powering the grid/on rooftop, powering an electric car. Probably more efficient than putting the panel on the car anyways.
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
Cover every dead roof that has sunshine beating down on it, yes.
But there’s an actual benefit to covering fields. Livestock can get shade and keep the grass in check for one thing.
I totally agree and I've been saying this for a little while. But get this, since there are plenty of unused grassy properties out there in America, there's somewhere they're making deals with sheep heard owners where the sheep are regularly brought over to the property to eat grass around and under the solar panels. Apparently trying to keep the grass cleaned up and not overgrowing the panels is a problem because of all the little nooks and crannies, getting mowing done under and around them as a pain in the ass. But the sheep can just come in there get a free meal and do the job perfectly well. It's win-win.
Cover the corn fields that are 95% being used to produce ethanol for fuel mixture into gasoline. Replace a one-time-use fuel that takes a ton of water to produce, contributes to pesticide usage, and requires a bunch more energy for processing (and makes your car run less efficiently anyway) with energy that can power homes, vehicles, industry, etc. starting now and lasting for decades with a one time investment into fully recyclable materials that is already pretty low cost and lowering all the time.
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