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This seems more activist or environmental and one were protection can done.
Controversial Oberon solar project off I-10 near Desert Center wins federal approval
A controversial 500-megawatt solar project off Interstate 10 in the Southern California desert has been approved, the Bureau of Land Management announced late Thursday. The Oberon Solar Project can move ahead on approximately 2,600 acres of public lands near Desert Center in eastern Riverside County.
The decision authorizes a right-of-way for a subsidiary of Intersect Power to build and operate the photovoltaic solar facility, which will also include 200 megawatts of battery storage. The project will create 750 union construction jobs and eight permanent jobs, according to the news release.
The facility is expected to produce enough electricity to power 142,000 homes.
A company spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but past documents indicate construction could begin as soon as February, with $2.6 billion in funding already obtained for the work and similar renewable projects.
The project is the third to be approved in the California desert on public land in the past month under the rubric of the Desert Renewable Energy Conservation Plan.
Huge solar project near Desert Center would devastate animals, forests, Native sites
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This topic of SpaceNut's has been sitting without a reply since January of 2022.
Here is a decidedly upbeat report on the (somewhat surprising) success of solar energy in assuming the load on Planet Earth ...
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets … 9b65&ei=55
essanews.com
Experts: Solar energy can become the main source of energy in the world
Story by KS •
2h
POMONA, CALIFORNIA - OCTOBER 19: GRID Alternatives employee Tony Chang (L) installs no-cost solar panels on the rooftop of a low-income household on October 19, 2023 in Pomona, California. GRID Alternatives has installed no-cost solar for over 29,000 low-income households located in underserved communities which are most impacted by pollution, underemployment and climate change. They are the country’s biggest nonprofit clean energy technologies installer and operate in California, mid-Atlantic states and Colorado. (Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images)POMONA, CALIFORNIA - OCTOBER 19: GRID Alternatives employee Tony Chang (L) installs no-cost solar panels on the rooftop of a low-income household on October 19, 2023 in Pomona, California. GRID Alternatives has installed no-cost solar for over 29,000 low-income households located in underserved communities which are most impacted by pollution, underemployment and climate change. They are the country’s biggest nonprofit clean energy technologies installer and operate in California, mid-Atlantic states and Colorado. (Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images)
© Getty Images, Mario TamaScientists in the United Kingdom analyzed three different models, taking into account the development of technology, energy, and the economy. Their simulations suggest that solar energy is well on its way to becoming the main source of energy worldwide.
Even without further government incentives in the form of financial support or tax relief, solar energy may soon become the most widespread alternative to traditional energy sources, predicts the main author of the article published in Nature Communications, climatologist Femke Nijsse from the University of Exeter. In his opinion, solar panels can dominate the energy sector by the mid-21st century.
In 2016, solar energy became the cheapest source of energy in over 60 countries. By 2020, the International Energy Agency declared that this type of renewable energy is officially the cheapest electricity in history - cheaper than both coal and gas in most major countries. If the costs of obtaining and storing such energy continue to drop, solar panels have a real chance of dominating other solutions. At least, that's what the researchers claim.
Will the importance of solar energy be increasing?
In 2020, fossil fuels produced over 60 percent of the world's electricity. New models predict that by 2050, this number will fall to 21 percent. For comparison, solar energy will be responsible for 56 percent of the world's electricity production. In more than 70 percent of simulations, solar energy accounted for half of the world's electricity generation by 2050.
Related video: Solar Forecast, October 22nd, 2023 (WQRF Rockford)Our Greenland Energy Solar forecast shows that we were able
WQRF Rockford
Solar Forecast, October 22nd, 2023
Nijsse emphasizes that the financial and economic sectors should prepare for such a change. According to the authors of the study, the dominance of solar energy is not only possible, but also the most likely. This is primarily influenced by economic factors. They also notice that the use of fossil fuels probably won't fall to zero, but will have a marginal significance on a global scale. This, in turn, is good news for those who care about combating progressing climate changes.
essanews.com
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tahanson43206,
Your "newsy" article claims that "no-cost solar panels" were installed. No cost to who? Absolutely nobody paid for this?
If there's no cost associated with making and installing solar panels, then I should be able to start my own solar farm and cover the entire planet with solar panels. I can transform the entire planet into one giant toxic electronics waste dump. After all, they're "free".
20 years later when these people can't drink water that's laced with Arsenic, I guess they'll come to understand that there is no such thing as "free". Everything has a cost.
Grist - Climate. Justice. Solutions. - Solar energy’s dirty little secret
Any form of energy production has its dirty side and solar is no exception. While its impact is nowhere near that of coal-fired power plants, photovoltaic modules are made from a witch’s brew of toxic chemicals. Arsenic, cadmium telluride, hexafluoroethane, lead, and polyvinyl fluoride are just some of the chemicals used to manufacture various types of solar cells.
...
The company’s first product is Bio Backsheet, a replacement for the the material that forms the protective back of a solar cell. Standard so-called backsheets are usually made of polyvinyl fluoride, a chemical compound that can contain lead, chromium, cadmium, selenium, arsenic, and antimony.“Existing backsheets are extremely hard to recycle,” says Lee, who holds a Ph.D. in electrical engineering. “The only way to get rid of them is by burying them in the ground.”
According to Lee, BioSolar’s Bio Backsheet can be safely recycled at the end of a solar module’s life or disposed of in a landfill. It will degrade — eventually I’ll have to check but I suspect I’ll just get a vague estimate — but without causing environmental contamination.
So far, BioSolar has only manufactured limited quantities of the Bio Backsheet, mainly so that solar module makers can test the product. Lee says BioSolar is working with several solar companies who are testing the product, which he declined to identify.
...
While BioSolar talks about greening the solar industry, the company’s pitch to photovoltaic module makers is just as much about saving money as the world. “We all know that everyone loves green products,” says Lee, “but unless the cost is less, manufacturers don’t pay much attention.”
Solar Panels Are Starting to Die, Leaving Behind Toxic Trash
When solar panels reach their end of their life today, they face a few possible fates. Under EU law, producers are required to ensure their solar panels are recycled properly. In Japan, India, and Australia, recycling requirements are in the works. In the United States, it’s the Wild West: With the exception of a state law in Washington, the US has no solar recycling mandates whatsoever. Voluntary, industry-led recycling efforts are limited in scope. “Right now, we’re pretty confident the number is around 10 percent of solar panels recycled,” said Sam Vanderhoof, the CEO of Recycle PV Solar, one of the only US companies dedicated to PV recycling. The rest, he says, go to landfills or are exported overseas for reuse in developing countries with weak environmental protections.
Even when recycling happens, there’s a lot of room for improvement. A solar panel is essentially an electronic sandwich. The filling is a thin layer of crystalline silicon cells, which are insulated and protected from the elements on both sides by sheets of polymers and glass. It’s all held together in an aluminum frame. On the back of the panel, a junction box contains copper wiring that channels electricity away as it’s being generated.
At a typical e-waste facility, this high-tech sandwich will be treated crudely. Recyclers often take off the panel’s frame and its junction box to recover the aluminum and copper, then shred the rest of the module, including the glass, polymers, and silicon cells, which get coated in a silver electrode and soldered using tin and lead. (Because the vast majority of that mixture by weight is glass, the resultant product is considered an impure, crushed glass.) Tao and his colleagues estimate that a recycler taking apart a standard 60-cell silicon panel can get about $3 for the recovered aluminum, copper, and glass. Vanderhoof, meanwhile, says that the cost of recycling that panel in the US is between $12 and $25—after transportation costs, which “oftentimes equal the cost to recycle.” At the same time, in states that allow it, it typically costs less than a dollar to dump a solar panel in a solid-waste landfill.
“We believe the big blind spot in the US for recycling is that the cost far exceeds the revenue,” Meng said. “It’s on the order of a 10-to-1 ratio.”
We never stop finding new ways to poison all those poor people, do we?
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The zero or low-cost game that solar installers are playing comes from leasing or other community games.
Sometimes it comes from the owner of the property paying the additional taxes for extra panels that do not count towards the owner's output to the grid.
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SpaceNut created this topic a while ago, and an article that fits the topic just showed up on the Internet feed...
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/compani … 45ee&ei=46
WATTSBURG — Venango Township supervisors have rejected an application to build a huge solar farm in the township.
Supervisors Dean Curtis, D.J. Austin and Mike Vogel voted unanimously Monday night to reject Wilson Solar LLC's application for a conditional use permit required to build a 902-acre, 80-megawatt solar farm along Jones Road.
"The board has given Wilson Solar's application careful consideration," Board of Supervisors Chairman Dean Curtis said. "We've taken our time, done everything we could do and made our decision based on the evidence presented."
That evidence included residents' concerns that the proposed solar farm would "destroy the character" of the rural neighborhood, would require the clear-cutting of 150 acres of trees, and could adversely affect the environment. Residents also raised concerns about noise generated by solar components and the possibility that some of the proposed 300,000 solar panels could catch fire.
Venango Township Supervisors D.J. Austin, Dean Curtis and Mike Vogel, seated at front, from left, voted Monday to reject an application to build a massive solar farm in the township.
© VALERIE MYERS/ERIE TIMES-NEWS
Supervisors' decision was applauded by a standing-room-only crowd at the township municipal building.
"It is a project we didn't ask for and a fight we didn't want," Venango Township resident Bruce Whitehair said in thanking supervisors. "You have the great respect of our community. The strongest thing you could do, should this go to appeal, is to have a unanimous vote."
Wilson Solar has 30 days to appeal the decision to court, township Solicitor Anthony Angelone said.
Wilson Solar LLC, a subsidiary of St. Louis-based Birch Creek Development, applied to the township in July for a conditional-use permit to build the solar farm on properties leased or purchased for the development.
Of great interest to me is this quote:
902-acre, 80-megawatt solar farm
In the Panama Canal topic we have "found" 128 square kilometers to work with.
If we extrapolate 80 MW for 902 acres, we'd have a ball-park figure for what that 128 square kilometers could generate.
Google came up with 3.65 square kilometers covered by 902 acres.
128/3.65 >> 35 and change.
35*80 >> 2800 MW from the 128 square kilometer patch.
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Sounds about right. But do keep in mind that is almost certainly 80MW-peak. It is what the power the plant will yield under full sun (1kW/m2). The real average power output of the plant will be some fraction of that.
In the UK, which is just about the worst place on Earth to build anything solar, it would be no more than one tenth of that. In the best possible location, where full sun at noon is a reliable 1kW/m2 and there is no cloud ever, you can expect an average flux of one third of full sun. So the real average power output from the plant would be somewhere between 8MW and 26.6MW, depending on where it is built. In Panama, it would be somewhere between those two values. The place is close to the equator. But it also gets quite a lot of rain. So best guess would be a capacity factor of around 25%. You could improve upon that best guess by looking at insolation charts and working out an effective 'time average' insolation value.
I worked out previously that you need about 500MWe average power to desalinate enough water for the canal. So you need something like 2000MWe of solar capacity, or 25 of those 80MWe solar plants. Is there enough space for that?
Another potential source of water is treated wastewater from the towns and cities. Depending upon the grade, you wouldn't want to drink this and it most often flushed out to sea. But it could be used in the canal system, as this water ends up in the sea anyway.
Last edited by Calliban (2024-01-11 09:46:47)
"Plan and prepare for every possibility, and you will never act. It is nobler to have courage as we stumble into half the things we fear than to analyse every possible obstacle and begin nothing. Great things are achieved by embracing great dangers."
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For Calliban re #6
This post is reserved for a careful review of your observations and questions.
The space identified for solar barges is 30% of the total water surface in the canal system. This estimate is based upon water depth of 4 meters (which I consider conservative) plus regular canal operations plus reserved areas such as national parks, plus a fudge factor because we undoubtedly missed something. That leaves space for 35 of the 80 MW farms. I assumed 1/3 of the day for power production, which itself may be conservative.
One observation about cloud cover. The need for water is in the dry season. You can see the dry season in the Canal web cams right now. There are wisps of cloud most of the time. Very rarely during this season there will be short lived rain showers.
Treated wastewater is (according to reports found by the Dynamic Duo) iused for agriculture. How much is so used is unclear, but I'm confident not a drop of water is wasted. With all sources of water taken into account, the Canal Authority is currently operating at 22 transits per day, which is 18 fewer than capacity.
I am confident that not one water molecule is put to waste. The Authority is reported to have even gone so far as to commission a study of rain making .... cloud seeding. The idea would make sense when there are clouds to seed. The reports are reported to be disappointing.
This is the opportunity for a well designed, robust solar powered desalination proposal. I have considered nuclear power, but that is a path that I suspect the folks who live down that way are reluctant to consider. Even solar would (probably) be a hard sell, but the economic benefits may be sufficient to overcome objections based upon the appearance of the panels alone. That remains to be seen.
Picking up on your hint that the 80 MW plant may have been so characterized based upon maximum power. I am expecting to find that the amount was based upon average power, because that would make more business sense, but at this point I have research to do.
Thanks for the motivation to dig further into the figures.
***
Side issue but important:
If the desalination plant is located on the coast (either or both) then the power has to be delivered by cable from the solar panels to the plant.
I had been thinking of performing the desalination operations directly at the barges, dumping the waste (ie, clean water) overboard, and saving the valuable extract for sale to a third party. A key valuable is Heavy Water, which is already useful in reactors designed for it, and ultimately it will be a major input to fusion power.
Please think about how to deliver the power 80 kilometers (maximum distance) to the plant, assuming it is situated on the coast below the locks.
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I started Google Earth today, and this ad showed up ... It is possible Google has noted my inquiries about solar power...
Using Earth for an early-stage real estate or solar design project?
Sign up for a limited, free preview to test new generative design features from Delve
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