See those rows of crops? On most farms, you need to be able to drive a tractor through them. I don’t mean a riding mower, I mean a giant thing that pulls a tool that’s working on 5-10 rows at a time doing things like tilling, seeding, fertilizing, harvesting, etc. If there’s big metal pillars every row or every other row, that tool can’t be used.
Thus, as pictured, those kinds of panels can only be used on a farm that’s not using large multi-row agriculture machinery. That means it’ll work for small family farms but not the large ag operations where this sort of tech could really kick ass.
What I would really love to see is more solar over commercial parking lots. That means a million little projects instead of a few huge ones, but think about how much surface area that is overall. It’s huge.
The key to doing that is twofold- 1. create a few cookie-cutter designs for the frameworks that can be tweaked for individual projects, and 2. remove red tape from their implementation.
It should be possible for a business to buy off the shelf plans for such a thing, have a local engineer tweak them for the project specifics, and then have a local contractor do the installation, and have this happen in under 6 months.
As it stands, building anything above where humans will be involves a nightmare of engineering and insurance and liability, making it cost-prohibitive for most companies. That needs to get easier. I believe every parking lot should have solar above it- that not only will produce a ton of power, but it’ll keep the cars cooler in summer.
Yeah I think indoor farming / vertical farming is going to be the ultimate answer. Much more efficient in every way, including resource use, water, pesticide, etc.
There are plenty of crops that have to be tended and harvested by hand: Most green leafy vegetables for example.
This opens those fields to dual use alongside power generation, which might reduce agricultural use of fossil fuels, and provide shade for field workers which is especially dangerous with climate change raising heat levels.
Solar Power World reports that Namaste selected sophisticated trackers to follow the sun across the sky, and mounted them according to strategically-measured heights and spacing to allow enough sun to reach the crops below. For each row mounted 8-feet off the ground, providing enough room to drive a tractor under, two were mounted at 6-feet.
Now finished, the electricity Kominek’s farm generates is enough to power 300 private homes, 50 of which are now his energy clients—including the city, and the county. Underneath there are tomatoes, turnips, carrots, squash, beets, lettuce, kale, chard, and peppers.
What I would really love to see is more solar over commercial parking lots.
Most of those parking lots shouldn’t exist in the first place. They should be turned into actually-useful space by putting dense, walkable buildings on them, then the solar panels should go on top of that.
Often times, the only option for smaller communities that are car dependent is just a multi-level garage that has a smaller footprint. But many don’t have the demand for downtown commercial real estate that would help it make financial sense.
This is harder than it looks.
See those rows of crops? On most farms, you need to be able to drive a tractor through them. I don’t mean a riding mower, I mean a giant thing that pulls a tool that’s working on 5-10 rows at a time doing things like tilling, seeding, fertilizing, harvesting, etc. If there’s big metal pillars every row or every other row, that tool can’t be used.
Thus, as pictured, those kinds of panels can only be used on a farm that’s not using large multi-row agriculture machinery. That means it’ll work for small family farms but not the large ag operations where this sort of tech could really kick ass.
What I would really love to see is more solar over commercial parking lots. That means a million little projects instead of a few huge ones, but think about how much surface area that is overall. It’s huge.
The key to doing that is twofold- 1. create a few cookie-cutter designs for the frameworks that can be tweaked for individual projects, and 2. remove red tape from their implementation.
It should be possible for a business to buy off the shelf plans for such a thing, have a local engineer tweak them for the project specifics, and then have a local contractor do the installation, and have this happen in under 6 months.
As it stands, building anything above where humans will be involves a nightmare of engineering and insurance and liability, making it cost-prohibitive for most companies. That needs to get easier. I believe every parking lot should have solar above it- that not only will produce a ton of power, but it’ll keep the cars cooler in summer.
deleted by creator
Yeah I think indoor farming / vertical farming is going to be the ultimate answer. Much more efficient in every way, including resource use, water, pesticide, etc.
deleted by creator
There are plenty of crops that have to be tended and harvested by hand: Most green leafy vegetables for example.
This opens those fields to dual use alongside power generation, which might reduce agricultural use of fossil fuels, and provide shade for field workers which is especially dangerous with climate change raising heat levels.
So we need levitating solar panels. Got it.
Others have built them over pasture.
Most of those parking lots shouldn’t exist in the first place. They should be turned into actually-useful space by putting dense, walkable buildings on them, then the solar panels should go on top of that.
Often times, the only option for smaller communities that are car dependent is just a multi-level garage that has a smaller footprint. But many don’t have the demand for downtown commercial real estate that would help it make financial sense.