The NIMBY/YIMBY thread

[WouldBe]

I agree with all that but when the government is going on about food security and the need to build 1M+ houses the land could be used for that instead.

 

[Artaxerxes]

I agree with all that but when the government is going on about food security and the need to build 1M+ houses the land could be used for that instead.

Food security is a pipe dream that won’t happen and if people wanted to build houses there’d be even stronger attempts to stop it being built on

 

[WouldBe]

if people wanted to build houses there’d be even stronger attempts to stop it being built on

They need to be built somewhere regardless of what nimby's say.

 

[Leafster]

I agree with all that but when the government is going on about food security and the need to build 1M+ houses the land could be used for that instead.

Absolutely, and if those 1M+ houses were energy efficient buildings with roof-top generation it would go some way to to reducing the need for solar farms.

 

[skyscraper101]

I don't agree with solar farms on farmland. There are plenty of roofs they could be put on and they are already connected to the grid so no need for pylons or cables underground.

I don't know about the economics of installing solar panels on roofs vs farmland, but studies have shown agrivoltaic farming is a viable solution to double up on land usage. In short, you can grow crops and utilize the same land for solar. In fact, studies in South Korea have shown that you can even improve the quality of crops by providing extra shading to retain moisture (see in the link above).

Not to mention solar panels provide great shade for sheep on grazing land. This article in the New Scientist suggests sheep living among rows of solar panels spend more time grazing, benefit from more nutritious food, rest more and appear to experience less heat stress, compared with nearby sheep in empty fields.

There's one of these solar/grazing fields I always see on the train heading up to Norfolk and it always pleases me to see the sheep grazing and taking shade and shelter underneath the panels. How anyone could object to something so obviously beneficial is beyond me. I don't even buy the 'unsightly' argument. It's ridiculous.

 

[Artaxerxes]

They need to be built somewhere regardless of what nimby's say.

So do solar panels

 

[WouldBe]

So do solar panels

There are plenty of roofs to put them on. You can't build houses on top of solar panels.

 

[skyscraper101]

There are plenty of roofs to put them on. You can't build houses on top of solar panels.

I don't disagree that roofs shouldn't be utilized as much as possible - especially on new builds, industrial estates, retail and leisure facilities but I'm not convinced they are the only way, or even the better way. Surely we should encourage a mixture of both while accounting for cost/benefit of both.

 

[WouldBe]

I don't know about the economics of installing solar panels on roofs vs farmland, but studies have shown agrivoltaic farming is a viable solution to double up on land usage. In short, you can grow crops and utilize the same land for solar. In fact, studies in South Korea have shown that you can even improve the quality of crops by providing extra shading to retain moisture (see in the link above).

Not to mention solar panels provide great shade for sheep on grazing land. This article in the New Scientist suggests sheep living among rows of solar panels spend more time grazing, benefit from more nutritious food, rest more and appear to experience less heat stress, compared with nearby sheep in empty fields.

There's one of these solar/grazing fields I always see on the train heading up to Norfolk and it always pleases me to see the sheep grazing and taking shade and shelter underneath the panels. How anyone could object to something so obviously beneficial is beyond me. I don't even buy the 'unsightly' argument. It's ridiculous.

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How do you get tractors / harvesters between the panels?

Sheep do well on hills/moors. You could do a combination there where you couldn't grow arable crops.

 

[skyscraper101]

How do you get tractors / harvesters between the panels?

You don't need tractors and harvesters for every crop. See the article I posted above about using agrivoltaic farming for growing broccoli for example.

Sheep do well on hills/moors. You could do a combination there where you couldn't grow arable crops.

They do, but as I said, they appear to do very well, if not better where they can access shade/shelter and rest more. Solar panels have proved ideal for this.

 

[WouldBe]

They do, but as I said, they appear to do very well, if not better where they can access shade/shelter and rest more. Solar panels have proved ideal for this.

And they could get shade/shelter if you put the solar farms on hills/moors where sheep graze.

 

[skyscraper101]

And they could get shade/shelter if you put the solar farms on hills/moors where sheep graze.

Yes I’m not arguing against using hills and moors btw.

 

[pinkmonkey]

out here they're protesting about a proposed battery storage facility because it'll be an eyesore and dangerous. This was demolished three years ago and people went crazy and said they'd miss it.

They also bang on and on about how dangerous lithium batteries are (the type used in battery facilities like these will be LifEp04, same as on my boat, chosen because they're stable and won't burst into flames when damaged or shorted.)
Short memories, my grandpa was in a mining accident at Wheldale colliery and eventually died from lung cancer caused by um, being a miner.

 

[skyscraper101]

out here they're protesting about a proposed battery storage facility because it'll be an eyesore and dangerous. This was demolished three years ago and people went crazy and said they'd miss it.

 

[mx wcfc]

The underlying reason why solar farms in fields are preferred to panels on roofs is that it is easier to monetise for investors.

It’s not about producing clean energy, it’s about providing income streams for capital.

 

[WouldBe]

You don't need tractors and harvesters for every crop. See the article I posted above about using agrivoltaic farming for growing broccoli for example.

Need to get the harvest from field to farm somehow.

As for the agrisolar article you would have thought that in all the time greenhouses had been around that if they worked better with the roof shaded that someone would have put a non glass roof on them by now as glass is expensive.

 

[Saul Goodman]

First time I saw one in the wild, we were so excited we stopped the car and took pictures standing in front of them.

Here you go!

Yeah, you look positively ecstatic.

 

[pogofish]

digging up the ground for electric cables can cause more damage than building the said cables above ground though. That stuff about the gas production is really not good tho

SSE/Scottish Power and their predecessors have had a lot of experience in constructing/managing and maintaining cableways in an environmentally effective manner, thanks to the Highlands Hydro Project and others in the Southern Uplands/Borders post-WW2. Almost all the major output was put below ground through the wild landscapes to the main distribution hubs and in most cases, you wouldn't know they were there today, until you find a discrete cableway marker. It worked very well.

 

[Leafster]

The underlying reason why solar farms in fields are preferred to panels on roofs is that it is easier to monetise for investors.

It’s not about producing clean energy, it’s about providing income streams for capital.

This was in the back of my mind when I posted earlier and should have mentioned it. It's far easier to control energy production and therefore produce future income streams out of it if it's in the hands of a few businesses rather than being generated directly by consumers who would see all the savings.

 

[pogofish]

What's going to go above the pylon interconnects though?

Nothing - its fucking great pylons all the way. Cheapest/fastest and no other considerations accepted.

 

[pogofish]

I don't disagree that roofs shouldn't be utilized as much as possible - especially on new builds, industrial estates, retail and leisure facilities but I'm not convinced they are the only way, or even the better way. Surely we should encourage a mixture of both while accounting for cost/benefit of both.

Yes, diversity of supply is a lynchpin of many other countries with developed renewables policies.

Partly because not all renewables sources are equally productive all the time, so when one form of renewable isn't delivering full output, another can be a more viable option, so they become strategic reserves.

Of course, not all forms of renewable are as well developed as wind, large-scale Hydro and now solar, so that requires research and investment to develop/adapt technologies for the different conditions they might be deployed-in. This is where too many of our main power producers are failing badly - they want the quick-fix solution and don't take an ongoing/long-term view.

 

[Elpenor]

Has no one considered strapping solar panels to the back of a sheep?

Sheep being grazed on hills and uplands would be lower yield surely, doubt you could get the density than say at sea level plus breeding later, higher mortality rates?

 

[WouldBe]

Has no one considered strapping solar panels to the back of a sheep?

You'd have to give them a compass so they could keep the panels facing south.

 

[Epona]

You'd have to give them a compass so they could keep the panels facing south.

Feed them iron filings...

 

[rubbershoes]

My village is 3 miles from the town, with farmland all the way. There's been plans to extend the town to about a mile away but no one's sure if it'll happen.

The current sticking point is that the plans require building a new motorway junction and no one wants to pay the massive cost of that.

 

[alex_]

This was in the back of my mind when I posted earlier and should have mentioned it. It's far easier to control energy production and therefore produce future income streams out of it if it's in the hands of a few businesses rather than being generated directly by consumers who would see all the savings.

No, it’s because a quarter of the costs of putting panels on a roof are scaffolding and labour if the panels are on a frame on the ground you can optimise that part of the cost about as far as it’ll ever be optimised.

Also economies of scale, is it cheaper to deliver 100,000 panels to a single building site or 10,000 different sites ? Or to have a team of people connecting them in one place or 10,000 places ? You can completely fix shade issues in a farm, etc, etc

 

[gentlegreen]

The underlying reason why solar farms in fields are preferred to panels on roofs is that it is easier to monetise for investors.

It’s not about producing clean energy, it’s about providing income streams for capital.

The fact that governments have invested in useless solar roadways is a warning that there's likely also more than a whiff of "kicking the can down the road while Rome burns" in this - along with the naivete of non-scientist politicians - though not as cynical as carbon capture...

The research papers on agrivoltaics are far too complex for me to read and even more so for the people I've encountered online claiming this as another "technology "they" don't want us to have - I'm waiting for my go-to Bruce Bugbee to voice his opinion though he currently seems mostly concerned with the growth of "specialist" crops under lights....

I recently read somewhere a suggestion that "vertical farming" under lights was not cost-effective only because of labour costs - but it's a super-niche area of horticulture even if it isn't just over-priced microgreens for the worried well - they certainly are not efficiently converting nitrogen into protein to feed the world.

Fields shaded and obstructed with solar panels are clearly not going to grow commodity crops either and vertical solar panels won't make much electricity ... perhaps if I ever get my smallholding I will experiment with growing wasabe under a greenhouse deliberately shaded with solar panels (can't get more niche than that) ...

As an ethical/environmental vegan I see far more low-hanging fruit linking food and energy..

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