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.
It’s crazy because ethenol COULD be just a byproduct from food production. Talking to farmers about a decade ago that what they were aiming for. Basically a step before just tilling it or burning it back into the field if it was misshappen (consumers don’t buy ugly veggies) or worse infested/rotting.
The subsidy structure messed that up apparently. The subsidized crop insurance made it not worth it, plus the ethanol subsidies required dedicated fields.
I 100% would rather see solar over dedicated ethanol fields and all of the water usage and pollution they represent.
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.
Saying it’s unreasonable is too far, fair to disagree with it though… Fossil fuel is always happy to push clean energy projects that wouldn’t work well at scale to sabotage things.
Though personally I’d say calling this out as car propoganda is more important…
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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:
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.
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.
nuclear does better for utilities level power than solar.
Define “better.” Personally, I think nuclear is too expensive to be a current solution. Let all the existing nuclear plants continue out their useful lives, and extend them as feasible, but constructing new nuclear plants is probably not worth the cost, even compared to solar + enough grid scale storage to cover multiple nights of demand even when days are cloudy.
Terrapower just got approval to build their $4 billion, 345-MW reactor. That’s $11.6 million per MW.
NuScale canceled their 462 MW project in Utah when it became clear that the total cost was going to exceed $9 billion. That’s $19.5 million per MW.
Solar plants are about $1 million per MW. Grid scale 4-hour batteries are about $750,000 per MW.
And the costs of solar/batteries keep dropping, while nuclear tends to increase in cost over time.
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.
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)
If you put them on most viable mad-made surfaces… do we really?
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.
It’s crazy because ethenol COULD be just a byproduct from food production. Talking to farmers about a decade ago that what they were aiming for. Basically a step before just tilling it or burning it back into the field if it was misshappen (consumers don’t buy ugly veggies) or worse infested/rotting.
The subsidy structure messed that up apparently. The subsidized crop insurance made it not worth it, plus the ethanol subsidies required dedicated fields.
I 100% would rather see solar over dedicated ethanol fields and all of the water usage and pollution they represent.
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.
Oh I’m certainly in the ‘do both’ crowd, but particularly in summer I just wish the parking lots I had to go to were shaded more… Also in the rain…
Saying it’s unreasonable is too far, fair to disagree with it though… Fossil fuel is always happy to push clean energy projects that wouldn’t work well at scale to sabotage things. Though personally I’d say calling this out as car propoganda is more important…
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.
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
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.
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.
Define “better.” Personally, I think nuclear is too expensive to be a current solution. Let all the existing nuclear plants continue out their useful lives, and extend them as feasible, but constructing new nuclear plants is probably not worth the cost, even compared to solar + enough grid scale storage to cover multiple nights of demand even when days are cloudy.
Terrapower just got approval to build their $4 billion, 345-MW reactor. That’s $11.6 million per MW.
NuScale canceled their 462 MW project in Utah when it became clear that the total cost was going to exceed $9 billion. That’s $19.5 million per MW.
Solar plants are about $1 million per MW. Grid scale 4-hour batteries are about $750,000 per MW.
And the costs of solar/batteries keep dropping, while nuclear tends to increase in cost over time.
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.