> Crews reshaped the landscape, spreading fine sand across large stretches of rich topsoil, Duttlinger said. When Reuters visited his farm last year and this spring, much of the land beneath the panels was covered in yellow-brown sand, where no plants grew. "I'll never be able to grow anything on that field again," the farmer said.
Nobody is wasting money to add a thick enough layer of sand to be a significant issue. And if they did you could just sell the sand. Further the guys making more money leasing the land than farming it, set some aside to pay for cleanup if he’s worried about it.
>> "Crews reshaped the landscape, spreading fine sand across large stretches of rich topsoil, Duttlinger said"
Where did the fine sand come from, how deep is the [alleged] spreading of it, how much of it did the panel installers [allegedly] bring with them?
Can't help wishing we weren't quite so credulous....
Just let loose a few sheep.
How Solar Panels Are Changing Agriculture - Agrivoltaics Revisited https://youtu.be/ww-_U7_oQbY?si=Qw6h4oJ5AMx6BoYQ
Most of the farmland we have in Germany started out as forrest
For example, any trees near high voltage transmission lines are cut down so the trees can't fall on the lines, causing them to be in direct sunlight. There are thousands of miles across the country. Why aren't there solar panels under all of them, and why would they be buying other land before using that? The land is already owned by the power company. It's practically free.
They cut down any trees within a certain number of feet of the power lines. This is done when the power lines are installed. Then they come back and periodically trim any trees that grow laterally into that area.
> Transmission lines tend to be in difficult to reach, undeveloped areas.
Not unlike agricultural land.
Also not really true. Transmission lines tend to be near population centers, in order to supply power to them. There are more transmission lines per square mile in, say, New Jersey than there are in Montana.
> They’re often not owned by the power company but rather used with easements.
Enough of them are owned by the power company that we certainly haven't used them all yet.
> The power company might not be a generation company either.
In which case they could become one, or lease the land to one, which is free money to the power company but still a low price to the buyer because of the limited number of competing uses.
> Building the hookup for thin lines of solar panels might not be cost effective either.
Unclear what the layout has to do with anything. It's obviously possible to transfer an arbitrarily large amount of electricity in a straight line. If trying to minimize the number of inverters, panels could be wired in series to raise the DC voltage to whatever is appropriate to reach the distance to the inverter.
Maybe it could make sense. But with solar development being as aggressive as it is right now it seems unlikely that folks are just missing this idea.
But then you're just referring to specific subsets of them in heavily rural areas. The transmission lines that run parallel to I-95 or the 101 are not particularly difficult to get to.