A farm in Bavaria is covering its hops with solar panels, providing electricity to 250 households and shading the plants from the increasingly scorching summer heat in the process.
Hops for beer flourish under solar panels. They're not the only crop thriving in the shade.::A farm in Bavaria is covering its hops with solar panels, providing electricity to 250 households and shading the plants from the increasingly scorching summer heat in the process.
Sounds good to me. My only real complaint about solar panels is the space they occupy. That complaint goes away if that space can also be used for crops. It's a win/win
Solar panels are about 70x as efficient in getting energy when compared to corn ethanol. If all corn ethanol land (which is heavily irrigated, fertilized, and subsidized) were converted to solar, it would generate 3x the yearly electricity needs of the US.
Well people also complain on expansion of agriculture land so I don't think consideration on land usage will disappear.
Real problem is that many people want the energy source which is clean, cheap, invisible, safe, doesn't consume any land or resources and of course has a easy to understand functioning. What could possibly go wrong ?
Driving through rural corn country, you see yard signs at every second residence saying to keep solar out of farming land, so there is land usage consideration, but by the farmers themselves
I’ll bet that tune would change if we stopped subsidizing corn. I find it hilarious when “farmers” (read just land owners) talk about land usage being wasted like that without even thinking for a second about the amount of subsidies corn gets or the random AG pay to not grow. Which is the most wasteful of land usage.
There is that idea to ring the equator in floating solar panels. Not actually sure how viable that is but sounds awesome. Like something you do in that game Dyson Sphere Project. That would certainly alleviate any worries about land usage.
Best use of space was argued for by...ME. Back in 2002 I argued at length with colleagues that California should build solar panel covers for their aqueducts. This would provide electricity as well as significantly decrease algae growth and evaporation from the aqueducts.
theres other ways. For instance in France its now law (I believe) that car parks (parking lots in US) over a certain size have to be covered in solar panels
takes up no space, covers the cars from the elements and provides power
The French Senate has approved a bill requiring all large parking lots across France to be topped with solar canopies in the next six years, which are predicted to generate as much energy as 10 nuclear reactors.
The legislation mandates that all new and existing car parks with 80 or more parking spaces must be blanketed in photovoltaics covering at least half of their surface area. [link]