Quote:
Originally Posted by HooverDam
On another topic...
There was an article in this months "Arizona Highways" about the installation of solar panels on top of a visitor center at the Grand Canyon. It also mentioned lots of desert land being sold for future use as solar farms. Im all for solar and hope theres a major breakthrough in it soon as that would be huge for the city and state, but is anyone concerned about losing desert to the development of these farms? I suppose its better than typical sprawl, but its certainly not w/ out its downside.
It got me to thinking of course about the need for a wider proliferation of rooftop units. Of course those photovoltaics cant match the output of the heat using arrays built out in the boonies.
My thought was, would it be possible/a good thought to build solar farms above our freeways? If you look at the top of ASUs parking garages theyve installed panels that follow the sun, as well as shade cars. Id love for this to become more widespread in parking garages (perhaps even made mandatory in some sort of phased implementation) but I figure you could also do it above the freeways. I was on the I-10 west of downtown today which is basically sunken between two large berms. Couldnt you build a huge system thats miles and miles long about the same height as the bridges to create energy? That way you get the energy, aren't using up any of the new land, and are having solar in a more visible place which gets people thinking about it.
I dunno, maybe its dumb. But I like the idea of a 'solar highway'.
EDIT: Ive also been at Sky Harbor today and I wish theyd take a more aggressive approach with solar. Every garage, lot, building, etc should have panels. Sky Harbor is the first thing a lot of people see when they come to Phoenix and it would be a great image for the city to project.
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Creating "solar farms" with photovoltaic panels will always be a stupid idea I think. Photovoltaics make a lot of sense on rooftops, on parking garages, etc. I live in an apartment, so I'm biased, but something I would very much like to see done is more marketing/city codes encouraging solar at apartment complexes. Most apartment complexes have tons of covered parking, not to mention all the rooftops, I'd like it if some of the organizations that put in the panels and then charge for usage would spend some time marketing their product to apartment complexes and probably managed office parks too rather than just property owners such as home owners or large public entities.
While I agree to a degree that interstates could be utilized as photovoltaic corridors, you eventually run into a problem with the technology. I don't know where the limit is, but at a point you reach a percentage above which photovoltaic is no longer a useful technology. It doesn't provide power in the evenings when the usage is the highest, or through the night. Solar panels look space age and they sell well to the self-supporting crowd, but it does little good to provide power during the day when you still have to fire up the coal/oil/nuclear plants to provide power in the evening and at night. Coal/oil/nuclear plants take relatively little fuel to run, they use the most fuel by far when they are being started up. Sure photovoltaic is useful to a point especially during the summer and in replacing inefficient peak plants such as natural gas plants, but it is simply not a replacement technology for base load plants.
More importantly, it is still relatively very expensive, especially if you don't count the subsidies (which I'm still in favor of btw, it's still a good idea to promote greener technologies even if they need subsidies). I haven't done the research and I don't know the numbers, but once you get private home owners and other property owners to put up solar panels, I don't know that it makes sense to cover the interstates in solar panels too. Or maybe someone will do the research and prove me wrong, I'm ok with that, but I don't think it will happen.
The heat type of solar plants that they put out in the boonies are a much more practical replacement for base load plants because they can produce power late into the evening and through the night. It's not just about the amount they produce, it's about when they produce it. While it's a distasteful option, we may have to surrender a large amount of desert to these types of plants because it's still a better option than fossil fuel and nuclear. Better to cover the desert in mirrors than soot and smog. And better financially to rely on a type of power that's not guaranteed to get perpetually more expensive until it runs out.
Finally, (sorry for the long post), I whole heartedly agree with the idea of covering every feasible inch of sky harbor in the coolest yet most conspicuous looking solar panels that can be found. I love the idea of turning this major gateway into the valley into a solar icon to help cement the image of Arizona as the sort of Saudi Arabia of solar power. I won't go so far as to suggest that they cover the runways in solar too