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Solar Panels Spread Across America's Heartland as Farmers Chase Stable Returns
(www.bloomberg.com)
this post was submitted on 07 Mar 2024
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Where I live in Ontario, there seems to be quite a bit of solar going up. The article mentions that ideally, the panels would be deployed on land that is marginal from the standpoint of agriculture. I'm not sure how much that is the case? I get the impression that proximity to power corridors and transfer stations is the main driver of where the solar actually goes.
The article mentions concerns about food security if too much agricultural land is given over to solar. I seem to recall similar arguments being made about corn diverted to make ethanol, and can't help but think solar would still be a better use for the land than ethanol production?
I wonder if they could design a solar farm that would be relatively easy to move? Then you could put your panels on fallow land and rotate them around every year. Just a thought.
Moving your installation will probably not be worth it simply for the labor effort. However there is also benefits by combining them with traditional crops, as they help to protect the crops from cold winds and the hot sun in summer.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agrivoltaics
I think solar panels are easy to move, the problem is the wiring.
Easier to move than, say, wind turbines, but there's a lot involved to solar installations in the field. Often they have to have significant piles driven into the ground (or you've just made a big glass kite ready to blow away), and the individual panels are about as tall as a person and double sided glass (think about shower glass/slider door glass installation and how often you see videos of them exploding). Installation alone can take over a year for larger facilities. I'd imagine there could be some creative solutions to rotating solar with crops, but I generally agree with the other folks suggesting some form of agrovoltaics is more viable with the technology we have currently!
A bit of googling and I came across a company called solarfold that seems to make a pre-wired solar array that unfolds out of a standard shipping container across a pair of rails.
I meant more the wiring from the field to the grid.
Ah ok, that's fair.