Main Takeaways.
- In developed countries today, solar panels use a small fraction of the land relative to agriculture. This fraction is expected to stay small in the next several years even as proposed solar projects get built out. Nonetheless, because it’s often most practical to build solar farms on agricultural land, local conflicts may arise.
- Solar energy is more land-intensive than gas or nuclear power, but not significantly more than coal or hydropower. Additionally, some agricultural land is already used for energy production – to raise crops for ethanol – a process that’s significantly less efficient than solar energy.
- There’s no evidence that solar panels are toxic to the soil. While poor construction practices can degrade the land beneath solar panels, the panels themselves are inert. Solar panels only contain heavy metals in very small quantities, and they are designed to prevent those heavy metals from leaching into the soil even if they are crushed.
- Solar panels can exist on the same plot of land as other agricultural uses, such as cropland or grazing land for livestock. This practice is called agrivoltaics. Only a small number of today’s solar projects use agrivoltaics, but studies have demonstrated that some crops have higher yields when partly shaded by solar panels and that solar panels can help soil recover.
I have lived near two solar projects in Ohio in the last decade.
In both instances the fields had been completely unused for years. With one being completely unmaintained and growing wild, to the delight of all manner of critters I’m sure.
Both had been sold by the property owners, and not to industrial owners. One was even helping power my house and a local hospital when they got it turned on.
Both had people in pickup trucks plow through during construction that damaged a ton of stuff.
Both had sudden extremely vocal opposition out of nowhere, with signs popping up all over yards and intersections about how we should be using farmland “for food, not wokeness”
Both have had drive-by shootings in the middle of the night after completion that ultimately only damaged a couple things (probably because rednecks aren’t exactly accurate when shooting from a moving vehicle, nor do they usually know the important tech bits to target for maximum damage)
I just think it’s interesting that people who have never set foot on a farm suddenly got concerned about a plot of land already not being used for farming that would continue going unfarmed. Especially since some of them I knew personally and up to a point had been praising the solar projects for “freeing people from profit hungry power companies”
Almost like they didn’t know much about it until someone told them what to think…
I saw somewhere a neat idea to align the panels vertically along N-S axis, two sided facing both E and W to catch morning and evening sun at low angles. This helps to top up the grid at periods of higher demand and lower supply, while leaving a wide open strip in the middle for growing normal crops, benefiting from the midday sun (a time when we already have plenty of electricity).
These are called “bi-facial” solar panels and you can buy them now. They have panels on both sides, and are commonly used in solar fencing.
Even though you place them vertically, they often are counterintuitively more efficient than normal panels that are angled into the sun. Not only do the two sides let sunlight bounce in from more surfaces, they dont get nearly as hot as angled panels, which is one of the main reasons solar panels get less efficient while in use. Normal panels literally have a problem with being in too much sunlight.
You don’t normally get 2x the power out of bifacial panels, but you get something like 1.3x, and it tends to be more consistent. The cost isn’t 2x normal panels either, so they tend to be pretty reasonable as long as you have a fence line that gets good light.
They’re not more efficient than south facing bifacials put at the correct azimuth for the season, but they will spike at what is usually the high demand periods. Additionally, they’re less likely to collect snow.
Source: I run 50+ bifacials and use both mount styles, so I have about a year of experience in watching them.
The “Projects with everyday Dave” has a bunch of videos on the difference that’s way more scientific than my back of the envelope calcs.
I heard from a solar installer a while ago that most of their panels on northern areas are bi-facial, since they get noticable efficiency improvements from light reflected off the snow.
Indeed, vertical solar panels are fully compatible with farming. :) And it’s also smart to position them north-south, to get on the market on morning and evening hours - because midday is already “crowded” by conventional solar parks.
Also, vertical panels are more resistant to hail - giant hail can smash a big investment in a few minutes if it’s horizontal. With a vertical solar park (and only a little of extra reinforcement on the upper beams), risk would be many times lower.
Of issues I have with solar, “we won’t be able to farm” isn’t one of them. The amount of space required for even gigawatt level solar farms is relatively trivial. I think I did the math and it was like 30km square or something, which is enough to convince a lot of greens it’s a bad choice because it’s big and ugly, but on a map isnt really that that much.
Of issues I have with solar, “we won’t be able to farm” isn’t one of them. The amount of space required for even gigawatt level solar farms is relatively trivial. I think I did the math and it was like 30km square or something, which is enough to convince a lot of greens it’s a bad choice because it’s big and ugly, but on a map isnt really that that much.
