Hacker News Reader

Comment by petee | Hacker News Reader

Albeit much smaller area, I see this a lot around Rhode Island. They are taking farms and woodlands and turning them into dusty dirt fields with just panels, its a sad state of affairs.

I would love to see laws preventing destruction of woods, or otherwise fertile land, especially when wind power seems to be the way to go around here.

View on HN

I've seen a lot of solar panel installations around Massachusetts highways. It seems they got put up on otherwise unused open areas around the roads, such as clearings between the shoulder and the woods, or the area inside the clover leaf ramps. [1]

[1] https://www.google.com/maps/@42.3127663,-71.3832247,557m/dat...

That is a much better use of space, although I'm concerned that any shiny object near a roadway needs to be carefully aimed not to blind drivers (there is a certain gold-windowed building on 95/128 that comes to mind...)

I do recall seeing more parking lots being fitted with a solar roof, and vehicle charging below...this probably should be the primary use of panels, shading otherwise blacktop parking lots

> I'm concerned that any shiny object near a roadway needs to be carefully aimed not to blind drivers

We seem to deal with driving near the ocean and other bodies of water just fine.

Not to mention other cars have a lot of shiny surfaces too.

Yes, but curved, not a large flat reflector. Huge difference

Big difference between a large flat reflector 20 feet away, and a uneven ocean surface, likely atleast 100 ft away...

That said, at the right angle, no, its not just fine, the ocean reflects alot of sun, just like anything else.

About aiming… solar panels want to be installed normal to the sun which means any reflection is going to go back toward the sun. Of course the sun moves around but the reflections are mostly sunward. You’d probably have to have panels in a steep valley to reflect back toward a road.

Solar Panels North of lat 42 is like building a dam on a local stream.. it does something, but not worth the cost!

Germany would disagree

The energy prices they pay would agree.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/418078/electricity-price...

https://www.statista.com/statistics/418087/electricity-price...

Why 42° specifically? Is it related to the current cost and efficiency?

Its a thumb rule of sort!

https://globalsolaratlas.info/

The red area in the map is the most productive part for Solar and Orange is partially good.

Solar is very geographically dependent, also high altitude is good, that is why Tibet/Colorado is in dark red. Precipitation is a problem for Solar, that is why Florida is OK but not great place for it.

How about lat 57? http://aberdeensolar.com/

I live in the bay area atmospheric river and I still get a ton of juice out of my solar panels. I definitely have down seasons and the local laws with respect to off-grid power are frustrating, but I don't regret it.

You might say, "You have not recouped the cost." This is difficult to measure; my home has power during power outages. We have them regularly around here. What is the price on having uninterrupted power in your home when no one else can deliver it? Surely quite high, by comparison, no?

I have always had very reliable electricity just from the grid. The value of additional reliability would be almost neglible for me.

Well, I'm glad things have gone your way.

Sorry I missed "We have them regularly around here." I kinda thought you were protecting against something that rarely happened for peace of mind.

I'm doing nicely out of my panels at 56N, but that's mostly subsidy. It's also extremely seasonal.

We have seen this in many places in Japan - otherwise unused spaces around railway corridors, factories even seafront now host solar panel installations.

Also you can see it when going to Narita with Skyliner over the old unused shinkansen corridor - Skyliner fits in just about a half of the corridor & the rest is solar panels: https://www.google.com/maps/search/narita/@35.7981082,140.10...

People are actually cutting down trees to put up solar farms? Do you have a citation for this? If it's unprofitable farmland that doesn't need development that's one thing, but I can't picture a utility actually clearing out a forest just to put solar panels up, that seems a tremendous waste of resources when there's so much open land elsewhere in the US.

There are no articles written about it, usually it's simply driving around and suddenly seeing a field where there were woods.

If you want to find historical satellite images, one area is on Plains Road near URI. Ironically, it is across the street from URI's empty turf fields (although they do use that for research)

I wonder if you could utilize a carbon tax to capture some of the complexity here, because it's not simple:

* Removing woodland is not great.

* On the other hand, more solar power over, say, coal, is a win for the environment. How much woodland will climate change destroy?

I would love to see laws preventing destruction of woods, or otherwise fertile land, especially when wind power seems to be the way to go around here.

Or we could just build nuclear: https://www.city-journal.org/atomic-power and solve many problems at once, using technology that already exists.

I found it fascinating to compare the energy found in different substances. [1]

For instance, gasoline is 34.2 MJ/L

A lithium-ion battery is 2.6 MJ/L

Meanwhile, Uranium is 1,539,842,000 MJ/L

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_density#Table_of_energy...

Except nuclear costs a lot more. L

For the same amount of money we’d get a lot more energy out of solar or wind. And no radioactive waste and proliferation worries as a bonus.

Seems silly to do that, especially with so much open space, abandoned lots and rooftops.

Goes to show you the tide is turning from environmentalism to capitalism.

Not really a new trend...

Is it silly? You'd have to calculate the amount of CO2 sequestered by the destroyed woodland vs the amount output over time by whatever fossil fuel power generation could be replaced by the solar panels. I certainly don't know off the top of my head. Of course it would make much more sense to use already cleared land still - but maybe uncleared forest is much cheaper or something.

It's just way more efficient and uncomplicated to build large scale than to build a large number of small scale stuff. This shouldn't be surprising.

Im having a hard time figuring out what people thought was going to happen with renewable energy other than destroying woodlands and other open space to collect energy.

Well wind has a much smaller footprint, and can at least be embedded within the woods without razing the whole thing. The three main issues it seems are visibility, flashing shadows, and the lack of wind

That's not what i meant. I am mainly shocked at the publics general failure to understand human nature and its desire to extract money when incentivized to do so. I dont disagree that wind can have a lower footprint in terms of landspace taken but if solar is more efficient and less expensive then at some point when it becomes long enough lasting to be profitable, then of course those with forests will convert them to solar farms. This was not unforeseeable

You don't even need the solar panels themselves in order to see the effects of perverse incentives. The Kyoto Protocol defines "bioenergy" (energy produced by burning wood) as carbon neutral. As a result, in the EU, they're literally burning up forests for energy, under the banner of environmentalism.

https://news.mongabay.com/2019/03/eu-sued-to-stop-burning-tr...

Large wind turbines are much less sustainable and higher maintenance. They're really only sensible in small scales, where their other disadvantages go away, or when no other option is viable.

I don’t think anyone heard “let’s use renewable energy” and immediately thought “of course that means cutting down a bunch of trees”.

If you did, I’d love to hear why this is such an inevitable consequence that it’s worth pointing out how inevitable it is as opposed to putting solar panels literally anywhere else that doesn’t have trees.

I explain it in my comment below. But ultimately its because this is human nature

It's certainly the nature of the culture we inherited. You can look at alternative cultures folks have maintained where they don't spread out as rapidly as possible and have some base notion of conservation and environmentalism and it seems like those folks have a pretty good situation too.

Ever consider re-prioritizing and leading by example?

What about understanding how the world works makes me automatically part of the problem?

I do disagree that there are other cultures with a 'better' notion. Culture matters, but nkt that much in the long run when theres status at stake

> What about understanding how the world works makes me automatically part of the problem?

Pretend, for just a moment, that my proposition was true (as I obviously believe it to be). In that case, you've identified yourself as part of the problem. Especially so because you suggest that your prioritization is inevitable and therefore must be assumed.

> I do disagree that there are other cultures with a 'better' notion.

We can look at the development patterns of some other nations. Not all are so spread out, and not all believe that environmentalism is pointless.

> Culture matters, but nkt that much in the long run when theres status at stake

There's lots of ways to get status.

> Especially so because you suggest that your prioritization is inevitable and therefore must be assumed.

My friend I can guarantee you that despite what I do I will not change the prioritization of half a billion people. An individuals inability or past history of not doing something does not make him or her culpable of supporting the system. By your own measure you too fully support the system I am criticizing.

> We can look at the development patterns of some other nations. Not all are so spread out, and not all believe that environmentalism is pointless

Other nations that have developed in the presence and utilising the products of many other nations that do not share their beliefs.

> There's lots of ways to get status

And yet none of such import on the world stage that you can name it

> And yet none of such import on the world stage that you can name it

You're demanding that an alternative value system have value to you BEFORE you will consider it. This is not very realistic or sensible for obvious reasons.

You're also suggesting your socialization is an inevitable product of human nature. Evolutionary Psychology has been split down the middle on this subject for some time,so I'm skeptical that you can resolve the debate that actual experts can't.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com