Fighting 'Solar Farm' Installation

[newbury]

This would piss me off but the land isn't mine so I couldn't complain.

Why not? It seems the American way to complain about things one has no say in.

 

[riptides]

Glad you feel like you have say so over someone else's property. Individual property rights. If you don't want anything there, you should have bought the property. But, you didn't, and now are belly aching about what they are going to do with it. That's real American of you.

Except when they come to hookup infrastructure and put towers through your yard because of you know - Eminent domain.

It pays to be heard and informed in your community.

 

[Mtsoxfan]

I have seen some large solar installations in my area and state and they are ugly. No argument there.

One in my county is along a busy rural road that is slowly sprouting subdivisions. The land is not great for farming and once tobacco went away was pretty useless though they would try to grow some corn which I think was for tax purposes. A fence was put around the solar panel installation which looked worse than the panels. They put up one of those chained link fences with green slats inserted in the fence. Really is ugly and I am not picky about such things. If a row of shrubs had been planted, eventually, no one would know that installation was there but that ugly fence just draws the eye.

Wind mills are problematic from a visual and sound perspective. They can make noise and the flickering affect that can happen is pretty bad. There is a move to put windmills miles out to see off of Cape Fear. People with beach property are not happy nor are fishermen. The government and windmill people are being iffy about the distance and height of the installations. It is simple math based on those two numbers if the windmills can be seen from shore but they are not nailing down those simple numbers. Can't imagine putting windmills off one of the most dangerous capes in the world and expect that to make money.

I have done the math for a solar power installation and it does not work out even with subsidies if one considers how much money one would make if the money was invested in the market vs spent on solar panels. Having said that, since the governments are removing reliable sources of power generation, and replacing with intermittent sources of power, with less generation capacity, blackouts are now in our future. We almost had them last December. Never in my life did we have to think about power outages due to lack of generation capability but it is our future due to government policies. So we might have to install solar and batteries to deal with blackouts. I designed our house so the roof pitch and alignment will maximize solar production but we could never afford the cost of installation, even with government subsidies.

Not the best aurgument you have there, you can make more money with investing. I'm sure you can. That is not what having solar is about. It is about controling the rising price of electricity, no matter how it is produced. I imagine it could be argued that the price of electricity could easily outpace most investments. Are you using investment data from a bull or bear market?
When I lived in CT, people were posting their electric bills, with distribution costs being 3 to 4 times the cost of the power itself. That's a whole different conversation though...

 

[MAX-24-Dean]

Glad you feel like you have say so over someone else's property. Individual property rights. If you don't want anything there, you should have bought the property. But, you didn't, and now are belly aching about what they are going to do with it. That's real American of you.

I am one of those that bought property next to me so I wouldn't have to deal with new land use issues. It's in CRP, makes me a farmer?

 

[MAX-24-Dean]

When we bought, I looked at multiple companies, and lease vs. own. Lease was nothing more than a discount, like .06 per kwh, and only during daylight. After that, it was full price. It wasn't explained to me that way, but my research showed me that it was true. I dodged that bullet, but many people, not so much. I'm sure things have changed in the last 10-15 years. Owning has some drawbacks, like initial costs, and out of warantee costs, but I had only one issue, easily resolved. Panels waranteed 25 years, inverters I think 10.

If you buy Tier 1 equipment the inverters are good for 20 years.

 

[Cougsfan]

People continually want to maintain a high standard of living but always want someone else to pay the price. The "not in my backyard" mentality really means one feels they should be considered privileged. If it really bothers them that much they should sell just their property and move elsewhere.

 

[turbo36]

Aren’t these called solar farms? If so, shouldn’t they have the same farming rights that other farms have?

 

[MAX-24-Dean]

What happens when a tornado hits a large solar panel field?

All installations I have been involved with are structurally engineered to meet wind loading and snow loading for the region they are installed. More secure than most structures built in prior years.

Wind ratings on the panels themselves vary from 130 to 160 mph depending on the brand. If panels are installed to local codes they are going to stay on thier mounts.
In Florida they are required to be rated for hurricane force winds in some juristictions

Only in 1.1 % of tornados (EF4 to EF5) would you need to be concerned with panels leaving thier mounting brackets, well unless they are not installed to code.

information below was copied and pasted from the attached link.
Across all of history, weak F/EF0 and F/EF1 tornadoes have comprised about 80 percent of all twisters. F/EF2 make up about 14 percent, F/EF3 roughly four percent, F/EF4 nearly one percent, and F/EF5 a miniscule 0.1 percent. As we saw in an examination of violent tornadoes, 63 percent of all fatalities have been caused by that one percent of F/EF4 and F/EF5 events.

Annual Tornadoes - ustornadoes.com

Well over 1,000 tornadoes of all sizes and strengths touch down across the country each year.

www.ustornadoes.com

Not playing down the danger of a tornado as the destruction can be devastating.

 

[5030]

Is it taking the acreage out of production or simply producing an alternate crop (sunlight/energy)? Do we really want to regulate exactly which crops can be grown or what a person can do on his own land?

Your views and mine are polar opposite and I'll leave it at that. You cannot eat sunlight or panels either and the only thing you do is perpetuate the Chinese slave economy. I don't play that.

 

[5030]

Aren’t these called solar farms? If so, shouldn’t they have the same farming rights that other farms have?

Read my post #83.