
California farmers are planting solar panels as water supplies dry up - prostoalex
https://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-agriculture-farmlands-solar-power-20190703-story.html
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ecpottinger
What I noticed is a lack of mention of installing elevated solar panels so
grasses and other plants can grow under the solar panels where the shade
reduces the impact of too strong a sunlight exposure.

~~~
WalterBright
On my own lawn, the shaded areas stay green all summer, the full sun areas
turn brown and into dust. I gave up watering the lawn years ago due to endless
problems with the sprinklers. (Everything from them simply getting smashed by
foot traffic to freeze damage to getting chewed to bits by coyotes.)

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swarnie_
The idea of using water via a sprinkler system to keep a lawn green is such an
alien concept to most people. Maybe California have a water problem for a
reason?

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wmil
I'm curious where you live. Are lawns not common?

Even in Ontario, not particularly hot or dry, people water to prevent their
lawns from turning brown in August.

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swarnie_
UK.

Using water during a water crisis so you can have a green patch next to your
driveway is the most excessive American thing I've heard today (a worthy
winner in such a competitive field)

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mrkstu
Its eye-opening to see how little understanding of American living conditions
are overseas despite the pervasive distribution of American media.

My 'patch' of grass here in Texas is thousands of square feet. The lot my
house site on is .33 of an acre, which in metric is 1335 square meters. The
house itself is ~3200 sq. feet (306 sq. meters) over 2 stories so the
foundation is roughly 1/2 that so you can extrapolate that is a crap-ton of
area left for our patch of grass.

This is in no way unusual or extravagant for the suburb I live in and provides
lots of enjoyment for our 2 dogs and 6 kids.

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mosdl
Because everyone else has it doesn't stop it from being excessive and wasting
water. In California we are seeing more and more people switching to drought
tolerant landscaping.

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mrkstu
Our part of Texas has overfilling dams and our particular town has enough
excess water that neighboring municipalities are buying our unused rights from
us.

Our Texas adapted grass goes dormant half of the year as well so the actual
consumption is relatively minimal.

Our water use is fractional of a traditional manicured English garden.

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jaaron
Soil salinity is a serious issue in the central valley of California [1].
Converting more of that land (often currently fallow) to solar is an
interesting solution to the problem.

[1]
[https://www.waterboards.ca.gov/centralvalley/water_issues/sa...](https://www.waterboards.ca.gov/centralvalley/water_issues/salinity/)

~~~
OrgNet
lack of water isnt a bigger problem?

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jpollock
Using ground water for irrigation increases the salinity.

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matt9j
Specifically groundwater use with poor drainage leads to salt accumulation
over time as the water evaporates and the trace amounts of salt present in the
"fresh" water are left behind.

~~~
OrgNet
why don't they use reverse osmosis? because they move the farm when the soil
is contaminated? CA is messed up when it comes to agriculture

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nwallin
Reverse osmosis is super expensive.

The central valley accounts for 1% of US farmland by area and 8% of US
agriculture by revenue. Whatever they're doing wrong, they're also doing
something right.

~~~
OrgNet
yeah, and they dry up Mexico in the process... thanks democrats

~~~
ac29
California agriculture uses roughly 10¹³ gallons of "applied" water a year
[0]. That would cost a bit more than $200 to run RO on.

[0] [https://www.ppic.org/publication/water-use-in-
california/](https://www.ppic.org/publication/water-use-in-california/)

~~~
OrgNet
Because they don't get taxed properly for destroying the environment, it would
be a lot worst.

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topher515
This article made me think of the endless "solar farms" scene from Blade
Runner 2049[1]

[1] [https://youtu.be/u9L0pord5jE?t=68](https://youtu.be/u9L0pord5jE?t=68)

~~~
Analemma_
That scene is quite plausible! People have calculated that we could supply all
of Earth's (present) energy needs by covering just 1.2% of the Sahara desert
in solar panels [1], and there would be positive side effects on the local
climate to boot. Of course, we would never actually get _all_ our energy in
one spot, since there are questions of transmission, redundancy, political
instability, etc. But it does point toward a future where lots of otherwise-
useless desert land (like in SoCal, where the Blade Runner movies take place)
is converted into solar farms.

[1]:
[https://science.sciencemag.org/content/361/6406/1019](https://science.sciencemag.org/content/361/6406/1019)

~~~
grogenaut
I'm going to bet power consumption is like hard drive space, the more you have
the more you use.

There is of course some thermodynamic limit to the amount of power we can use
before over heating

~~~
bjourne
Not at all! For the last few decades, reductions due to efficiency gains has
far outpaced increased demand. For example, we nowadays build much more well-
isolated homes which reduces the need for electrical heating in colder
climates, and air conditioning in hotter ones. I don't think there is any
Western country in which the per capita consumption of electricity has grown
significantly over the last 20 years.

~~~
flukus
Surely electricity prices have something to do with that, I hope in future
energy becomes abundant enough that we can waste it without costing a fortune
or destroying the environment. I want my toilet seat warmers and aircon, I
want my PC to be as fast as possible and not throttled, I don't want to feel
guilty about using a clothes dryer. On the bigger scale imagine what we could
do with cheap water desalination and removing dams.

~~~
mrpopo
The environment is being destroyed right here and right now. Are you willing
to risk it being destroyed more because you want toilet seat warmers and a
clothes dryer?

Sorry if this makes you feel more guilty.

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ggm
Non-water consuming income stream, which also rests the land. Minor worries
about erosion and soil health, but feels like a net beneficial model overall.

~~~
erikpukinskis
Seems like you’re trying to give a general assessment on a matter that’s quite
context specific.

~~~
ggm
Same problem in Australia. Massive groundwater and surface water problems,
with a power issue around coal. If we paid farmers to take land out of direct
production or to reduced intensity, (income stream) and therefore reduce water
consumption (groundwater restored) and rest land (reduced soil erosion) its a
big upside.

And thats two economies, California and Australia. You think there are no
other places facing tensions around land use, water and farmer income?

~~~
jandrese
Unfortunately the Australian government is still in the pocket of the coal
companies, so these efforts have to come from private donation and face
government pushback. Australia has incredible solar and wind power
opportunities that the current government is trying their best to ignore in
favor of burning more coal.

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concert-gilled
I have seen many stories about large solar panel installations but I have not
seen very many stories about energy storage systems. Solar energy is dependent
on weather, season, and time of day so energy needs to be stored for when
there is less to no sunlight. I know Tesla has done several large battery
installations but has anyone seen any other stories?

~~~
strainer
[https://duckduckgo.com/?q=renewable+energy+storage](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=renewable+energy+storage)

~~~
concert-gilled
I know there are ways to store renewable energy. I am asking about specific
energy storage sites being built. Generally speaking, linking to search
results is condescending and not an answer.

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mrhappyunhappy
Is there any reason solar installation could not be vertical like a tree with
branches and leaves? Is there no angle / arrangement at which efficiency is
all the same as a flat set up? Or is it just more expensive to build out that
type of infrastructure?

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throwaway5752
More expensive. Do a google image search for "solar trees" and there are
plenty of them where space is constrained and aesthetics are a factor.

~~~
mrhappyunhappy
I’ve seen those, they are interesting but not exactly what I had in mind in
terms of form. I envision some sort of square set up at 45 degrees angles for
each panel, aimed inward like a funnel, but now I’m thinking it’ll probably
destroy itself with all that heat generated?

~~~
KirinDave
Are you thinking about molten sodium power plants that use mirrors?

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awinter-py
not sure of the details but heard that the chinese govt is incentivizing rice
farmers to install solar aerators and convert the rice paddies to fish ponds

(and this may be as part of a hybrid fish/rice farm with nitrogen exchange)

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foota
It was probably from that stack exchange answer about China a couple weeks
ago, about converting traditional fish ponds that used waste from silk worms?
to a method using solar panels.

~~~
_1tan
IIRC it was a Quora answer: [https://www.quora.com/How-is-China-able-to-
provide-enough-fo...](https://www.quora.com/How-is-China-able-to-provide-
enough-food-to-feed-its-population-of-over-1-billion-people-Do-they-import-
food-or-are-they-self-sustainable)

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rbanffy
The added benefit is that surplus electricity can make desalination practical.

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petee
Albeit much smaller area, I see this a lot around Rhode Island. They are
taking farms and woodlands and turning them into dusty dirt fields with just
panels, its a sad state of affairs.

I would love to see laws preventing destruction of woods, or otherwise fertile
land, especially when wind power seems to be the way to go around here.

~~~
foobarian
I've seen a lot of solar panel installations around Massachusetts highways. It
seems they got put up on otherwise unused open areas around the roads, such as
clearings between the shoulder and the woods, or the area inside the clover
leaf ramps. [1]

[1]
[https://www.google.com/maps/@42.3127663,-71.3832247,557m/dat...](https://www.google.com/maps/@42.3127663,-71.3832247,557m/data=!3m1!1e3)

~~~
sremani
Solar Panels North of lat 42 is like building a dam on a local stream.. it
does something, but not worth the cost!

~~~
KirinDave
I live in the bay area atmospheric river and I still get a ton of juice out of
my solar panels. I definitely have down seasons and the local laws with
respect to off-grid power are frustrating, but I don't regret it.

You might say, "You have not recouped the cost." This is difficult to measure;
my home has power during power outages. We have them regularly around here.
What is the price on having uninterrupted power in your home when no one else
can deliver it? Surely quite high, by comparison, no?

~~~
im3w1l
I have always had very reliable electricity just from the grid. The value of
additional reliability would be almost neglible for me.

~~~
KirinDave
Well, I'm glad things have gone your way.

~~~
im3w1l
Sorry I missed "We have them regularly around here." I kinda thought you were
protecting against something that rarely happened for peace of mind.

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rhegart
Only $113B? Half of CA budget and we were like 30B under budget last 2 years.
Divert more funding to this. Easily doable

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ptah
this is so much better than nuclear energy, which is very high risk of even
competent people making disastrous mistakes like fukushima and chernobyl.

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hedora
So, instead of building a few reservoirs (or just covering the aqueducts!!!),
California is going to convert irreplaceable crop land to solar farms that
could be put on top of much less scarce / valuable land. (eg: desert in New
Mexico, the Salton Sea, etc).

 _facepalm_

~~~
KirinDave
You have this curious idea that "a few reservoirs" are going to preserve the
usability of this land for farming?

You're just wrong. Climate change is going to make certain parts of California
much more expensive (in terms of energy and water) to farm. These areas are
probably irreparable, not irreplaceable.

P.S., The Salton Sea is not a place we should send humans to work. It's an
industrial disaster, not a resource.

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hedora
Climate change will increase the variance of rainfall from season to season.
California is projected to have a >15% increase in average precipitation:
[https://nca2014.globalchange.gov/report/our-changing-
climate...](https://nca2014.globalchange.gov/report/our-changing-
climate/precipitation-change)

The increase in variance means more droughts, and more need for reservoirs.

~~~
KirinDave
Yes, and the maximum precipitation increase will actually decrease the amount
of water that land will hold in topsoil, as has been Southern California's
condition for some time.

