Idk if you’ve noticed this, but AZ native living in Wisconsin, humidity makes a big difference. All the other benefits remain, but the shade from them making it cooler would have less of an impact here
half the time it's not even real people doing the up and down voting anymore, though it's reddit so there's always square tight ass anal users. I just ignore the system entirely. burying comments and hiding them due to a negative vote score just makes this place even more of an echo chamber.
no wrong think allowed
Yes, but you got to look at maximizing environmental benefit using finite resources (money). It’s an unfortunate reality that as of now solar is just not sufficiently mature of a technology to significantly supplant other grid scale energy sources. That’s not to say it never will, but when it comes down to it area really isn’t the limiting factor preventing the wide scale adoption of grid scale solar; it’s the cost of the panels and their low generation density.
While it may make us feel all warm and fuzzy to see green energy slapped onto every roof in America, it’s not what is going to be what majorly reduces our dependence on fossil fuels. Rather it would be better and more green in the long run to take the money build hydroelectric plants, or do something else like provide subsidies for EVs.
I've heard that many states have restrictions on who is certified to install things like that, so it makes installing your own solar panels difficult.
It does seem like a huge missed opportunity though. Why isn't a car company paired with a solar install company at the point of purchase? If you buy an electric car you could get fold the solar install cost into the car loan.
Relax, if we asked European nations how they did things, the United States would be in great shape, we don't want to be happy or healthy like the Scandinavian countries.
>we don't want to be happy or healthy like the Scandinavian countries.
Some would want to but I promise you this, once you spend any appreciable amount of time in Scandinavia you will completely understand why their system works so well for them and why it would literally never work here. Tldr pretty much everyone actually gives a shit about everyone else here it's individualism run rampant. Which honestly is great for some things but awful for others.
Again, only nit I'll pick is your comment on Scandinavian countries, I wish we could be more like them but I'll leave you with this - in Norway fast food is taxed on the whole at 25% as unhealthy food. Imagine trying to tax any and all fast food 25%, you'd see riots lol. Love the idea, would never work here... aka microcosm of the greater argument
I totally agree, but if there’s any region of the US that can pull it off, it’s Wisconsin and Minnesota. We tend to give a shit more than most. Still a far cry from Norway, but I’d like to see that worldview encouraged a bit more.
Or restarting coal plants we prematurely mothballed and having to deal with impending energy crises impacting our ability to negotiate with our over zealous nuclear capable land snatching neighbor…..
Realistically panel technology needs to develop a lot to make it more flexible for places with less perfect weather conditions. There’s a lot of opportunity in circumstantial uses (parking lot shades, shingle replacements, eventually hopefully maybe sidewalks and roads, piers, ship surfaces, etc) but material science needs to become literally more flexible for cheap, current hardware is too fragile to integrate with our society as is. It’d make sense to start urban planning in places like WI now for a bleaker furniture with resource issues. It’s dumb to build solar panels here now if CA and other western state residents needs to relocate to where there is fresh water and livable temps (WI, MI, IL). Our farmland now will need to be farm land cities and likely homes on it so this tech is really really really really important because it would be cheaper to passively generate solar energy here as close to where it would be consumed as possible all the time than waits it in from auxiliary fields like we currently do.
https://www.seia.org/state-solar-policy/wisconsin-solar
Q1 2024
2326MW for the state
https://montelnews.com/news/7d5cd695-e32a-46b4-9785-99408e33d432/finlands-solar-production-capacity-reaches-1-gw
Seems so.
So kind of moot point about snow anyway we already do a ton more than I thought.
Solar is non-existent there. It was in 2022 0.41% of their total energy production.
In 2021 as far as I could tell Wisconsin was at 0.91% of total energy production.
Sort of. Source: panels at our place, on adjustable pole mounts.
They don't weight much individually, but yes, it is an increased static load. In return, though, they can also help clear the snow faster and reduce the load more quickly after a snowfall. Roofs can be engineered for the weight, but of course that's easier during construction than retrofit.
Hail is a yes. Ours got blasted last summer, took out five panels (of 30) right away from those frozen tennis balls - I mean, big suckers - but those damaged panels were also still functional at reduced output. Hail up to an inch or so shouldn't affect quality modern panels.
Kind of the whole "nothing's perfect" aspect of energy production. We get more bang-for-the-buck by reducing consumption in the first place, but this is 'mur'ca.
Wisconsin is great for solar, flat roofs aren't, was there a question here or? Flat roofs or parking structures arent a good idea even without solar panels, Bayshore Mall can attest to why.
That is not practical one bit. Cobalt is a major limiting factor in that, and we already rely on children to mine it in Congo, I'm skeptical that we're ready to do this responsibly.
I was almost ready to dismiss your reply as another "knows nothing" post, but I read it over a couple of times and I find I agree with you. Your post inspired me to look at the situation from another angle. Maybe the next steps in this process of us trying to save our earth should be things like:
We have to deal with how these mines operate, we all know the objections to the mines. Children working for nothing wages, everyone working in dangerous conditions, damage to the earth and atmosphere (or even future issues we can't fore see.) We had better put our efforts to the test and figure this out, and quick.
Canada has some cobalt mines with great labor and environmental practices. It’s more expensive than the stuff coming out of the Congo, but not by much and the quality is more consistent too. We can do solar ethically and sustainably. Just gotta be willing to pay a bit extra for it.
There was actually a group at UW that was exploring making roads out of solar panels. The concept is pretty cool, but I think the challenges were durability and a suitable traction surface.
Man, I've been saying this for years, even if only Walmarts did it we could power 1/4 the country with just those parking lots.
Another good one would be the edges of highways or the center strips that are just grass currently.
Too much can be a bad thing. Those panels get very hot, which in turn can change weather systems. With that much heat you can dramatically change weather patterns. Solar panels also leave chemical residue behind.
While the sentiment is great there can be too much solar. There just isn’t enough demand for power during the day, on sunny days panels would need to be disconnected. If there were a battery bank charging with the excess power it could work but that’s very costly.
I find it somewhat hard to believe there's too much power being produced during the day. Maybe in some parts of the U.S. but as days get hotter and temps soar during the day, our dependence on ac is only going to increase. Besides if it came down to it, there are other options like producing less from coal burning plants during the day to utilize 100% solar before burning finite (and carbon producing) coal.
However i agree the reality is solar is not fully viable as an independent energy source with out storage capabilities. It can assist and offset (during the day when the sun is shining) but to fully harness its capabilites, it needs to generate and store enough energy during the day to suffice for the coming dark hours energy demands (and probably 3x that to account for cloudy days).
There are a few promising companies who are working on this exact problem. ESS Tech comes to mind where they're building an "Iron flow" battery made out of salt, water and iron (non toxic and common, plentiful components). I sat 10 years and we'll have battery capacity at scale to really make solar a viable energy source.
A big problem is they can’t turn down the power plant enough during the day to utilize solar/wind if a lot is available. The new Oak Creek power plant is going to be several small turbines they can turn on/off quickly should help a lot.
Another problem is the timing of the use of the generated electricity. It is still quite hot at 6pm and later in summertime, but that's when south-facing solar starts to wind down generation. And 4-6pm is when we spike our use as offices are still using a lot of power and people are starting to come home from work and also use more power at home.
Opposite problem in winter: generation is actually really good on sunny winter days, but for fewer hours. And when it's sunny, we're getting building heat from the sun which should reduce the load. Sun goes down, generation goes down, lighting and heating use go up.
At our place, we're looking to add some west-facing roof-mount panels to help 'stretch' the generation day by a couple hours.
We'll get it figured out, but right now it's complicated. Cheap and reliable batteries that use common materials will be key, but that's somewhere on the horizon. Can't come soon enough.
Roofs are usually because they were never built to take that type of additional weight. Especially with industrial buildings that already have heavy equipment on their roofs like powerplants.
Another reason is fire safety.
Power plants are some of the worst places to have fires for any number of reasons - the larges though is that you are dealing with a building full of high-density fuels.
There are a ton of regulations that surround powerplants - and very few of them are able to be controlled by the State or local municipalities. All powerplants in the US have to be compliant with federal standards to retain their licenses to operate through FERC.
So TLDR: if you want to require them to do so - better start petitioning the President and Congress.
Why don't we just build more nuclear plants? People will complain about "nuclear waste." Yet don't realize that most solid nuclear waste is gloves, protective clothing and tools with an extremely low radiation level. Which can be sealed in a concrete encased barrel and disposed of. The actual 3% of high-level radiation waste that everyone fears can be encased and buried deep within the earth, where it will never affect anyone or anything.
Also nuclear produces a ton of power for only operating at like 10% capacity. The amount of solar you’d need to offset this just is realistically feasible yet.
We have great plans for storing nuclear waste, but our transportation infrastructure isn’t really reliable in terms of safety (see Palatine, PA for example). I’d also like to see less centralized mega producers and more local energy production, so wind and solar are better options on that front.
>but our transportation infrastructure isn’t really reliable in terms of safety
Because surviving a direct hit 90mph on fire train isnt good enough? High level Nuclear waste transport is fine. High level casks can take a beating w/o taking a scratch.
California has the country’s leading green energy push and they are doing it right when it comes to wind turbines and solar farms but even they have the Diablo canyon nuclear power plant that takes up over 1000 acres and produces more than 9% of the states total power consumption just from one plant.
there will be a breakthrough with nuclear power technology in the near future with smaller more manageable power stations. we just gotta wait for technology to catch up. kinda like how electric car suck right now, the technology will get better and we will all be driving them.
One near Madison (Town of Christiana I think) is building a solar farm right next to the generating station I believe, though the neighboring farms were all kinds of pissed, which seems odd.
There are lots of astroturfing groups that do in and rule everyone up about these things. Iowa decommissioned a nuclear plant and converted it to solar farm but all around the area residents had yard signs about “no solar.” Any change can be politically weaponized, sadly.
Yeah good point, since the farms are the ones who agreed to lease their land.
It's crazy that they are against that. I would rather see a solar farm than a giant coal plant next to me. Solar farms are silent essentially and don't add traffic etc.
Now that I think about it,
off shore wind might be a better choice.
I just want to make use of that high-transmission infrastructure and transition to burning less fuel.
Because you can get more power with small, modern nuclear plant that works 24-hours a day. Solar is OK for residential, but really isn’t large scale capable in Wisconsin.
Solar has been booming in Wisconsin. Alliant just installed 1,200 MW across 12 projects in south/central WI. WEC and MGE have built just as much, if not more. There has been huge shift toward utility scale solar here.
Coming from Platteville, people in Grant, Lafayette, and Iowa counties are really getting tired of all the new solar and wind farms being put in our farmland and not having an effect on our energy bills. It sucks that these farmland counties are producing electricity for the madison area but aren't seeing any kind of return for it here. People in Grant county especially are praying for a bad wind storm due to the new solar farm along highway 61/35.
So these quarter billion dollar projects are obviously insured. A wind storm would just bring out more contractors out to complete repairs. Utilities aren't going to call it a loss and give up. Land owners are very much being compensated with long term leases that guarantee income each and every year, often 30 year contracts. Yes your counties are helping power Madison, just like somewhere else was helping power your counties before the solar and wind was installed.
Why exactly would you be entitled to cheaper energy bills? Are you under the impression that living next to a car factory means you get a brand new car at half price?
I worked on the 150MW badger hollow plant that went online in 2022. The companies funding these projects wouldn't be doing so if utility-scale solar wasn't viable in Wisconsin
Why bother with the roof when you have that giant open area of unused, but for some reason mowed, grass.
But to answer your question PVs are still quite expensive, don't provide the best ROI in our climate, and there's no shortage of giant buildings to install them on (malls, supermarkets, Walmarts, etc.) and open mowed grass fields to locate them for the few companies that are making the investment right now.
So yeah, why _would_ you put them on power plants?
>Why bother with the roof when you have that giant open area of unused, but for some reason mowed, grass.
I get your point, and I'm not trying to take away from it. But in this instance, that's a city park. So, maybe not the best tradeoff.
The grass is a park in Port Washington. I don’t want to cover the park. But there is plenty of roof and parking lot around there. I get they may not produce much in winter. But surely they could burn less gas or idle a turbine.
>giant open area of unused, but for some reason mowed, grass.
Very far from the truth here. Coal Dock Park; A large, and quite nice, lakeside park. A rather unflattering angle of it I might add, but it's actually a peninsula surrounded by Lake Michigan on 3 sides. It used to be a massive mound of coal, back before that powerplant switched to natural gas. Id say the park is a huge upgrade.
Yeah there are a lot of buildings for solar. But these happen to have high transmission lines and distribution infrastructure already built within meters of the generation.
Wind power would work just fine in the winter too.
It's not a competing product. It's simply another way for them to generate the product / service that they already sell. Forcing them, that's another matter. For now, it's more about incentivizing.
Honestly I think we should remove private companies from public energy and internet. Keep everything the same but take all the profits and reinvest or give discounts to lower income households.
Its crazy honestly that cities sign away rights easements to companies that run quasi monopolies/oligarchies.
Example I have 1 choice for electric and 1 choice for high speed internet (real high speed internet not something that was high speed in 1998). No other company is trying to make inroads because they essentially agreed long ago to split the map up.
Anyone know what amount of heat solar adds to the air? If you transform a grassy field for example to a field of dark colored sunlight radiation absorber, there is a rise in temperature radiating from said field. So do we have studies to show these effects?
I remember California was looking into (or has) resurfaced or coated streets with a lighter and more reflective concrete/paint to reduce urban temperatures.
We already know cities can transform wind and weather patterns simply due to convection so what effect will multiplying of solar panels do as they are installed in greater numbers?
farm fields I don't have so much a problem with as forest. it's not like those farm fields are naturally there as a field. someone else cut down the trees and made that into a field to farm. plus the farmer is still making money to lease the land. it's sad when they cut down forests though.
But farms can and will put food on your table. A solar field is owned by a company that will probably raise your electrical bill to maintain a solar field that may or may not even help you or anyone around you.
I can see that as a positive if the solar company aloud that but around me are all dairy, beef, and crop farmers. There are not any if many sheep or goats that aren't pets. Plus, from the farmers in my area, they see solar fields as kinda scummy because the company's are going to old farmers who ether can't farm the fields by their self anymore or going to their kids and make a contract that gives them a upfront payment for the land.
The hardest part about solar is still the fact that you cannot store electricity efficiently to that scale. Has to be a hybrid model to ensure power being available for hospitals and such at night
Definitely a hybrid model. Same mistake I think was made with cars. We should have made a big push 10 years ago and we could all have hybrid cars at 60mpg. But instead 10% get full electric.
I think we would have produced fewer emissions if the hybrid transition was done while battery and charger tech were being improved.
Yes they exist and work great on a small scale. If you power the whole US with it, you won’t get to the efficiency. The other part that comes into play here is the resources of the batteries.
Not at all denying that we could make so much more out of solar power, but it will never be the only source of
Energy storage comes in a lot of forms, many of which are definitely scalable. No lithium required for a compressed air battery
https://www.wpr.org/economy/wisconsin-will-house-energy-storage-facility-thats-first-its-kind-us
Storage can be done on the user's site, not necessarily at the point of generation. There are lots of models for generation-storage-use and we have explored only a few. Power companies (understandably) want to keep everything centralized and under their control, but that's not the only way to keep things running.
Why? You have a plant running 24/7 -365 Day or Night ! It keeps the device your choosing to post on charged any time you decide to charge it ! Why don’t you slap a few solar panels on your place ?
I think any building that gets any sort of public financing should be required to put solar panels on it. I also love the idea of every parking lot having solar panel canopies.
I do miss the dangerous rocky outcroppings I'd skip across the water pits and avoid waves on the narrow path. At least got to enjoy the lighthouse walk when I was a kid.
The hardest thing about solar isn’t transmission. It is having Sun In the first place. If we are to make the solar transition we need to maximize usage which means starting with sunnier states. https://www.hotspotenergy.com/DC-air-conditioner/solar-sun-hours-map-usa.jpg
I think that we should be slowly introducing requirements to have a minimum amount of solar panels installed on any new construction. Especially say in Madison where they’re just building cheap apartment buildings to rip people off with.
The "government" should be? Doing what advanced materials research in a variety of fields, yes they spend money on that but you can't know what kind of technologies are going to pan out for something like that.
I should be staying that they should fund research into solar powered roads. There is so much we could do with them. Think of the thousands of miles of roads we have already in place
But see you can't just "research solar roads", what specific technology do they need to figure out? It's an unsolved problem that could be solved by any number of new materials. It's actually looking like triboelectric nano generators might be able to effectively harness the vibrational energy from traffic, China is so far ahead in that research it's not even funny. I don't disagree with you, I'm just saying that's not necessarily how that kind of thing gets figured out, you need to fund everything and see what works.
The simpler solution is to simply install solar next to the roads, along suitable right-of-ways, using existing technology. If heating the roads was the goal, then DC elements could be installed during reconstruction or repaving. Would be easy enough to try this with bridges, since they usually have good sun exposure and are the first to freeze over. Of course, bridges and roads are mostly likely to freeze at night...
Every surface parking lot in the country should have a canopy of solar panels over it.
Never thought of such a thing! That sounds heavenly! Shade/rain cover for us while powering the planet? Sign me up!
Displaced WI native in AZ here, my workplace parking lot has this. It’s excellent, makes the summers livable.
Idk if you’ve noticed this, but AZ native living in Wisconsin, humidity makes a big difference. All the other benefits remain, but the shade from them making it cooler would have less of an impact here
Every bit helps, ya negative Nancy
Wasn’t trying to be one. Sorry I’m not good with tone
Lol calling someone a "Nancy" is pretty light-tone around here
And there’s me sucking with tone again.
This shouldn’t be downvoted
half the time it's not even real people doing the up and down voting anymore, though it's reddit so there's always square tight ass anal users. I just ignore the system entirely. burying comments and hiding them due to a negative vote score just makes this place even more of an echo chamber. no wrong think allowed
-10
oh darn
Yes, but you got to look at maximizing environmental benefit using finite resources (money). It’s an unfortunate reality that as of now solar is just not sufficiently mature of a technology to significantly supplant other grid scale energy sources. That’s not to say it never will, but when it comes down to it area really isn’t the limiting factor preventing the wide scale adoption of grid scale solar; it’s the cost of the panels and their low generation density. While it may make us feel all warm and fuzzy to see green energy slapped onto every roof in America, it’s not what is going to be what majorly reduces our dependence on fossil fuels. Rather it would be better and more green in the long run to take the money build hydroelectric plants, or do something else like provide subsidies for EVs.
It's mind boggling to me that someone hasn't started selling solar panel carports for people's houses.
I've heard that many states have restrictions on who is certified to install things like that, so it makes installing your own solar panels difficult. It does seem like a huge missed opportunity though. Why isn't a car company paired with a solar install company at the point of purchase? If you buy an electric car you could get fold the solar install cost into the car loan.
Epic has this over their guest parking
Too much weight in areas with snow and hail if it's flat.
Maybe we should ask Finland how they do solar
Relax, if we asked European nations how they did things, the United States would be in great shape, we don't want to be happy or healthy like the Scandinavian countries.
>we don't want to be happy or healthy like the Scandinavian countries. Some would want to but I promise you this, once you spend any appreciable amount of time in Scandinavia you will completely understand why their system works so well for them and why it would literally never work here. Tldr pretty much everyone actually gives a shit about everyone else here it's individualism run rampant. Which honestly is great for some things but awful for others. Again, only nit I'll pick is your comment on Scandinavian countries, I wish we could be more like them but I'll leave you with this - in Norway fast food is taxed on the whole at 25% as unhealthy food. Imagine trying to tax any and all fast food 25%, you'd see riots lol. Love the idea, would never work here... aka microcosm of the greater argument
I totally agree, but if there’s any region of the US that can pull it off, it’s Wisconsin and Minnesota. We tend to give a shit more than most. Still a far cry from Norway, but I’d like to see that worldview encouraged a bit more.
Even with that tax the cost to consumer is roughly the same plus they have better wages...
Or restarting coal plants we prematurely mothballed and having to deal with impending energy crises impacting our ability to negotiate with our over zealous nuclear capable land snatching neighbor….. Realistically panel technology needs to develop a lot to make it more flexible for places with less perfect weather conditions. There’s a lot of opportunity in circumstantial uses (parking lot shades, shingle replacements, eventually hopefully maybe sidewalks and roads, piers, ship surfaces, etc) but material science needs to become literally more flexible for cheap, current hardware is too fragile to integrate with our society as is. It’d make sense to start urban planning in places like WI now for a bleaker furniture with resource issues. It’s dumb to build solar panels here now if CA and other western state residents needs to relocate to where there is fresh water and livable temps (WI, MI, IL). Our farmland now will need to be farm land cities and likely homes on it so this tech is really really really really important because it would be cheaper to passively generate solar energy here as close to where it would be consumed as possible all the time than waits it in from auxiliary fields like we currently do.
They produce about half the amount of solar energy Wisconsin does I believe...
https://www.seia.org/state-solar-policy/wisconsin-solar Q1 2024 2326MW for the state https://montelnews.com/news/7d5cd695-e32a-46b4-9785-99408e33d432/finlands-solar-production-capacity-reaches-1-gw Seems so. So kind of moot point about snow anyway we already do a ton more than I thought.
Solar is non-existent there. It was in 2022 0.41% of their total energy production. In 2021 as far as I could tell Wisconsin was at 0.91% of total energy production.
Sort of. Source: panels at our place, on adjustable pole mounts. They don't weight much individually, but yes, it is an increased static load. In return, though, they can also help clear the snow faster and reduce the load more quickly after a snowfall. Roofs can be engineered for the weight, but of course that's easier during construction than retrofit. Hail is a yes. Ours got blasted last summer, took out five panels (of 30) right away from those frozen tennis balls - I mean, big suckers - but those damaged panels were also still functional at reduced output. Hail up to an inch or so shouldn't affect quality modern panels. Kind of the whole "nothing's perfect" aspect of energy production. We get more bang-for-the-buck by reducing consumption in the first place, but this is 'mur'ca.
Most are pitched
They should be pitched at the optimal angle for your latitude
Covered parking lots? Most aren't covered let alone pitched.
Covered lots aren't covered. Agreed
And the ones that are , aren't usually pitched.. /whoosh
Bigtyme whoosh
the panels generate heat innately so it melts snow.
Really? Regions with snow have solar figured out.
Wisconsin is great for solar, flat roofs aren't, was there a question here or? Flat roofs or parking structures arent a good idea even without solar panels, Bayshore Mall can attest to why.
Solar panels are installed at an angle even on roofs or as parking shade. There's no question here.
Missing the point, it's added weight to a flat roof so you get the /whoosh too
Kind of, they get incredibly hot so snow wouldn't accumulate too much and if they were on a slight angle we wouldn't have a problem at all.
That is not practical one bit. Cobalt is a major limiting factor in that, and we already rely on children to mine it in Congo, I'm skeptical that we're ready to do this responsibly.
I was almost ready to dismiss your reply as another "knows nothing" post, but I read it over a couple of times and I find I agree with you. Your post inspired me to look at the situation from another angle. Maybe the next steps in this process of us trying to save our earth should be things like: We have to deal with how these mines operate, we all know the objections to the mines. Children working for nothing wages, everyone working in dangerous conditions, damage to the earth and atmosphere (or even future issues we can't fore see.) We had better put our efforts to the test and figure this out, and quick.
Canada has some cobalt mines with great labor and environmental practices. It’s more expensive than the stuff coming out of the Congo, but not by much and the quality is more consistent too. We can do solar ethically and sustainably. Just gotta be willing to pay a bit extra for it.
Arizona alone could power the entire country if just Phoenix would do this
What!? The government spend its tax payers dollars on things for the tax payers how dare you!! /s
There was actually a group at UW that was exploring making roads out of solar panels. The concept is pretty cool, but I think the challenges were durability and a suitable traction surface.
Yeah and money should be free!
Man, I've been saying this for years, even if only Walmarts did it we could power 1/4 the country with just those parking lots. Another good one would be the edges of highways or the center strips that are just grass currently.
Too much can be a bad thing. Those panels get very hot, which in turn can change weather systems. With that much heat you can dramatically change weather patterns. Solar panels also leave chemical residue behind.
While the sentiment is great there can be too much solar. There just isn’t enough demand for power during the day, on sunny days panels would need to be disconnected. If there were a battery bank charging with the excess power it could work but that’s very costly.
I find it somewhat hard to believe there's too much power being produced during the day. Maybe in some parts of the U.S. but as days get hotter and temps soar during the day, our dependence on ac is only going to increase. Besides if it came down to it, there are other options like producing less from coal burning plants during the day to utilize 100% solar before burning finite (and carbon producing) coal. However i agree the reality is solar is not fully viable as an independent energy source with out storage capabilities. It can assist and offset (during the day when the sun is shining) but to fully harness its capabilites, it needs to generate and store enough energy during the day to suffice for the coming dark hours energy demands (and probably 3x that to account for cloudy days). There are a few promising companies who are working on this exact problem. ESS Tech comes to mind where they're building an "Iron flow" battery made out of salt, water and iron (non toxic and common, plentiful components). I sat 10 years and we'll have battery capacity at scale to really make solar a viable energy source.
A big problem is they can’t turn down the power plant enough during the day to utilize solar/wind if a lot is available. The new Oak Creek power plant is going to be several small turbines they can turn on/off quickly should help a lot.
Another problem is the timing of the use of the generated electricity. It is still quite hot at 6pm and later in summertime, but that's when south-facing solar starts to wind down generation. And 4-6pm is when we spike our use as offices are still using a lot of power and people are starting to come home from work and also use more power at home. Opposite problem in winter: generation is actually really good on sunny winter days, but for fewer hours. And when it's sunny, we're getting building heat from the sun which should reduce the load. Sun goes down, generation goes down, lighting and heating use go up. At our place, we're looking to add some west-facing roof-mount panels to help 'stretch' the generation day by a couple hours. We'll get it figured out, but right now it's complicated. Cheap and reliable batteries that use common materials will be key, but that's somewhere on the horizon. Can't come soon enough.
Surely they could power down one of their turbines on summer days.
Absolutely not. The amount of solar panels you would need to replace one of those would take up much more space and property than they have.
Roofs are usually because they were never built to take that type of additional weight. Especially with industrial buildings that already have heavy equipment on their roofs like powerplants. Another reason is fire safety. Power plants are some of the worst places to have fires for any number of reasons - the larges though is that you are dealing with a building full of high-density fuels. There are a ton of regulations that surround powerplants - and very few of them are able to be controlled by the State or local municipalities. All powerplants in the US have to be compliant with federal standards to retain their licenses to operate through FERC. So TLDR: if you want to require them to do so - better start petitioning the President and Congress.
Thank you. All good points. Hurray Reddit!
Why don't we just build more nuclear plants? People will complain about "nuclear waste." Yet don't realize that most solid nuclear waste is gloves, protective clothing and tools with an extremely low radiation level. Which can be sealed in a concrete encased barrel and disposed of. The actual 3% of high-level radiation waste that everyone fears can be encased and buried deep within the earth, where it will never affect anyone or anything.
Also nuclear produces a ton of power for only operating at like 10% capacity. The amount of solar you’d need to offset this just is realistically feasible yet.
We were on the shortlist for the long term disposal site back in the early days. But NIMBY gotta NIMBY.
We have great plans for storing nuclear waste, but our transportation infrastructure isn’t really reliable in terms of safety (see Palatine, PA for example). I’d also like to see less centralized mega producers and more local energy production, so wind and solar are better options on that front.
>but our transportation infrastructure isn’t really reliable in terms of safety Because surviving a direct hit 90mph on fire train isnt good enough? High level Nuclear waste transport is fine. High level casks can take a beating w/o taking a scratch.
We have the technology, but there’s always the human dimension.
California has the country’s leading green energy push and they are doing it right when it comes to wind turbines and solar farms but even they have the Diablo canyon nuclear power plant that takes up over 1000 acres and produces more than 9% of the states total power consumption just from one plant.
there will be a breakthrough with nuclear power technology in the near future with smaller more manageable power stations. we just gotta wait for technology to catch up. kinda like how electric car suck right now, the technology will get better and we will all be driving them.
I get your point but I don’t think it’s productive to be combative on a solar post
Upvoted for Port Washington
I liked them better when they were super tall
And when the coal boat would come in. We could hear it all over town!
You a fellow native?
Live in Milwaukee now, but yes til I was 18
Ayyy same here
Dad?
I’m finally back with the milk I promised
pink floyd reference
One near Madison (Town of Christiana I think) is building a solar farm right next to the generating station I believe, though the neighboring farms were all kinds of pissed, which seems odd.
There are lots of astroturfing groups that do in and rule everyone up about these things. Iowa decommissioned a nuclear plant and converted it to solar farm but all around the area residents had yard signs about “no solar.” Any change can be politically weaponized, sadly.
Not the farms so much as the rural-dwellers.
Yeah good point, since the farms are the ones who agreed to lease their land. It's crazy that they are against that. I would rather see a solar farm than a giant coal plant next to me. Solar farms are silent essentially and don't add traffic etc.
Now that I think about it, off shore wind might be a better choice. I just want to make use of that high-transmission infrastructure and transition to burning less fuel.
How about both! We need offshore wind, onshore wind, solar on roofs, and solar next to these stations
Because you can get more power with small, modern nuclear plant that works 24-hours a day. Solar is OK for residential, but really isn’t large scale capable in Wisconsin.
Solar has been booming in Wisconsin. Alliant just installed 1,200 MW across 12 projects in south/central WI. WEC and MGE have built just as much, if not more. There has been huge shift toward utility scale solar here.
Coming from Platteville, people in Grant, Lafayette, and Iowa counties are really getting tired of all the new solar and wind farms being put in our farmland and not having an effect on our energy bills. It sucks that these farmland counties are producing electricity for the madison area but aren't seeing any kind of return for it here. People in Grant county especially are praying for a bad wind storm due to the new solar farm along highway 61/35.
So these quarter billion dollar projects are obviously insured. A wind storm would just bring out more contractors out to complete repairs. Utilities aren't going to call it a loss and give up. Land owners are very much being compensated with long term leases that guarantee income each and every year, often 30 year contracts. Yes your counties are helping power Madison, just like somewhere else was helping power your counties before the solar and wind was installed. Why exactly would you be entitled to cheaper energy bills? Are you under the impression that living next to a car factory means you get a brand new car at half price?
I worked on the 150MW badger hollow plant that went online in 2022. The companies funding these projects wouldn't be doing so if utility-scale solar wasn't viable in Wisconsin
It's probably because it would increase the maintenance costs by a lot more than it would be worth.
Are they stupid?
the reason is because solar panels cost money
Why bother with the roof when you have that giant open area of unused, but for some reason mowed, grass. But to answer your question PVs are still quite expensive, don't provide the best ROI in our climate, and there's no shortage of giant buildings to install them on (malls, supermarkets, Walmarts, etc.) and open mowed grass fields to locate them for the few companies that are making the investment right now. So yeah, why _would_ you put them on power plants?
>Why bother with the roof when you have that giant open area of unused, but for some reason mowed, grass. I get your point, and I'm not trying to take away from it. But in this instance, that's a city park. So, maybe not the best tradeoff.
The grass is a park in Port Washington. I don’t want to cover the park. But there is plenty of roof and parking lot around there. I get they may not produce much in winter. But surely they could burn less gas or idle a turbine.
>giant open area of unused, but for some reason mowed, grass. Very far from the truth here. Coal Dock Park; A large, and quite nice, lakeside park. A rather unflattering angle of it I might add, but it's actually a peninsula surrounded by Lake Michigan on 3 sides. It used to be a massive mound of coal, back before that powerplant switched to natural gas. Id say the park is a huge upgrade.
Yeah there are a lot of buildings for solar. But these happen to have high transmission lines and distribution infrastructure already built within meters of the generation. Wind power would work just fine in the winter too.
Isn't WE Energies a private company? How do you plan to force them to install their competitor's products on their buildings if they don't want to?
It's not a competing product. It's simply another way for them to generate the product / service that they already sell. Forcing them, that's another matter. For now, it's more about incentivizing.
Honestly I think we should remove private companies from public energy and internet. Keep everything the same but take all the profits and reinvest or give discounts to lower income households. Its crazy honestly that cities sign away rights easements to companies that run quasi monopolies/oligarchies. Example I have 1 choice for electric and 1 choice for high speed internet (real high speed internet not something that was high speed in 1998). No other company is trying to make inroads because they essentially agreed long ago to split the map up.
Same .... There are no choices other than generate your own power.
They aren't covered because solar panels are not free.
Anyone know what amount of heat solar adds to the air? If you transform a grassy field for example to a field of dark colored sunlight radiation absorber, there is a rise in temperature radiating from said field. So do we have studies to show these effects? I remember California was looking into (or has) resurfaced or coated streets with a lighter and more reflective concrete/paint to reduce urban temperatures. We already know cities can transform wind and weather patterns simply due to convection so what effect will multiplying of solar panels do as they are installed in greater numbers?
A solar wall is rarely effective enough to justify the cost as they only get sun for part of the day.
As long as they stop using perfectly fine crop fields to put solar panels on anything else is fine, just stop using farm fields.
farm fields I don't have so much a problem with as forest. it's not like those farm fields are naturally there as a field. someone else cut down the trees and made that into a field to farm. plus the farmer is still making money to lease the land. it's sad when they cut down forests though.
It is Coal Dock Park in Port Washington. I think the trees were all cut down 150 years ago!
I was referring to forests being cut down for solar farms
But farms can and will put food on your table. A solar field is owned by a company that will probably raise your electrical bill to maintain a solar field that may or may not even help you or anyone around you.
Solar fields are actually really good for grazing sheep and goats
I can see that as a positive if the solar company aloud that but around me are all dairy, beef, and crop farmers. There are not any if many sheep or goats that aren't pets. Plus, from the farmers in my area, they see solar fields as kinda scummy because the company's are going to old farmers who ether can't farm the fields by their self anymore or going to their kids and make a contract that gives them a upfront payment for the land.
Because they don't have the money, and if they raised rates to pay for it, everyone would scream about it.
They make like $1b in profit annually. So there is money. I am not sure it makes sense to do what the OP is asking though.
because the fossil fuel industry spends billions to keep solar out of the mainstream
The hardest part about solar is still the fact that you cannot store electricity efficiently to that scale. Has to be a hybrid model to ensure power being available for hospitals and such at night
Definitely a hybrid model. Same mistake I think was made with cars. We should have made a big push 10 years ago and we could all have hybrid cars at 60mpg. But instead 10% get full electric. I think we would have produced fewer emissions if the hybrid transition was done while battery and charger tech were being improved.
100% agreed!
Battery systems exist and work great. https://www.iea.org/energy-system/electricity/grid-scale-storage
Yes they exist and work great on a small scale. If you power the whole US with it, you won’t get to the efficiency. The other part that comes into play here is the resources of the batteries. Not at all denying that we could make so much more out of solar power, but it will never be the only source of
Energy storage comes in a lot of forms, many of which are definitely scalable. No lithium required for a compressed air battery https://www.wpr.org/economy/wisconsin-will-house-energy-storage-facility-thats-first-its-kind-us
This seems a little more promising as it’s not relying heavily on finite resources like Lithium
Storage can be done on the user's site, not necessarily at the point of generation. There are lots of models for generation-storage-use and we have explored only a few. Power companies (understandably) want to keep everything centralized and under their control, but that's not the only way to keep things running.
Why? You have a plant running 24/7 -365 Day or Night ! It keeps the device your choosing to post on charged any time you decide to charge it ! Why don’t you slap a few solar panels on your place ?
Well problem solved and climate crisis averted. Good job everyone.
I think any building that gets any sort of public financing should be required to put solar panels on it. I also love the idea of every parking lot having solar panel canopies.
The real answer is that the transmission lines that leave the station are at their rated maximum capacity.
It would look too cool.
Because you have not bought them yet.
I do miss the dangerous rocky outcroppings I'd skip across the water pits and avoid waves on the narrow path. At least got to enjoy the lighthouse walk when I was a kid.
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The path to the lighthouse in Port used to be an adventure, now irs all paved.
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The view from this photo is about 100 yards from the lighthouse. It's PORT Washington.
The hardest thing about solar isn’t transmission. It is having Sun In the first place. If we are to make the solar transition we need to maximize usage which means starting with sunnier states. https://www.hotspotenergy.com/DC-air-conditioner/solar-sun-hours-map-usa.jpg
Cause solar is junk, duh.
Because that would encourage green energy. Also, Tony Evers wouldn’t be able to push through rate increases for kickbacks.
Because we are too stupid to care that we are committing self genocide.
I think that we should be slowly introducing requirements to have a minimum amount of solar panels installed on any new construction. Especially say in Madison where they’re just building cheap apartment buildings to rip people off with.
One word, soot. The cost of keeping those clean would out way the benefits.
Underrated, tbh
The government should be researching solar powered roads, We could heat them in the winter to eliminate salt and snowy conditions
The "government" should be? Doing what advanced materials research in a variety of fields, yes they spend money on that but you can't know what kind of technologies are going to pan out for something like that.
I should be staying that they should fund research into solar powered roads. There is so much we could do with them. Think of the thousands of miles of roads we have already in place
But see you can't just "research solar roads", what specific technology do they need to figure out? It's an unsolved problem that could be solved by any number of new materials. It's actually looking like triboelectric nano generators might be able to effectively harness the vibrational energy from traffic, China is so far ahead in that research it's not even funny. I don't disagree with you, I'm just saying that's not necessarily how that kind of thing gets figured out, you need to fund everything and see what works.
The simpler solution is to simply install solar next to the roads, along suitable right-of-ways, using existing technology. If heating the roads was the goal, then DC elements could be installed during reconstruction or repaving. Would be easy enough to try this with bridges, since they usually have good sun exposure and are the first to freeze over. Of course, bridges and roads are mostly likely to freeze at night...