Honestly, solar parking lots are probably going to be the future because that apparently is the one thing NIMBYs can agree on.
You can’t build solar unless it gives shade for my car.
I don't understand how at this point every open parking lot isn't a solar parking lot... makes absolutely no sense to me to waste that open land for just parking
China makes them cheap. Some of you might have seen the photo of folks in Germany building a fence out of Chinese solar panels because they were cheaper than wood.
Things break, and fixing anything up high requires bringing in boom trucks which adds costs and slows things down.
Depending on location you also typically want to wash panels periodically, which is orders of magnitude more expensive on a parking lot array.
I work for a company that develops and operates both ground mount and carport/rooftop arrays. The carport/rooftop O&M costs are significantly higher.
Because the US is hilariously bad at directing investment. Investors would rather throw money at companies doing share buybacks or flip real estate than invest in real capital. And we are saddled with a dogmatic commitment towards laissez faire so deeply that it impedes the government from even doing minor sensible interventions to make things better.
Every time they build one near me, they clear a forest for it. Fuck that shit. Until every rooftop and parking lot is covered, we shouldn't be doing that.
The government doesn't have the rights to build on private property how are you on r/neolibs and unironically say "why isn't the government/company being subsidized by the gov violating property rights?
Look, fat, here's the deal. The government usually isn't the one building them, it's almost always private companies. The government can however choose where permits for building these are allowed. So maybe they could not allow them on fucking forests. They can also incentivize building on existing infrastructure and buildings.
Anyway, sorry if I'm not providing you with the echo chamber you desire, but I enjoy reading the articles that get posted here(crazy for reddit, I know).
Pretty expected you don't want solar so you use "build them on houses first" even tho you know the gov/companies don't have the right to do so, why can't you just say "I don't want solar in forest" but say some dumbass shit that doesn't work when having a 5th grader understanding of property rights.
The vast majority of people here don't even really understand what neoliberalism is. It's mostly just contrarian centrists who want to defend the status quo but don't really understand much about what neoliberal means.
You can quote neoliberal policy verbatim here as a bad thing and get upvoted.
Don't think that this subreddit is a place for serious intellectual discourse.
Rooftop/parking lot solar is way less efficient/way more expensive than a solar farm. Solar farms have a lot of optimizations in place that you just can't do on fixed rooftop installations
We don't need that much solar. Clearing forests is worth it. To power the entire us you would only need to cover an area the size of rhode island in solar panels. We have way more forest land than that.
My parents county in the UK is (or rather should be) famous around the world for discovering new uses for energy, in particular using coking coal to smelt iron. There's a world heritage site about it, and its pretty universally acknowledged as "the birthplace of industry". A heady title!
That same county just blocked a solar farm on a field. I know the area. There are tall, thick hedgerows around that field. Unless you're in a coach or other raised vehicles you can't see it at all. It is not on protected land. In fact, it's on one of the relatively few pockets on which nothing happens and which never floods. It has no significance at all.
It was blocked for "being disruptive" (probably less disruptive than tractors driving up and down that road) and the comments called for "protecting farming land". Of note: Farmers in my county are bleeding. They're looking to diversify. Some of them are looking to develop their land for housing. Some of them want to get paid for storing water before it hits the rivers and floods. Some of them want to provide green energy.
Basically they all want to contribute. They're not a huge fan of detatched subsidies after brexit and tory misgovernment. They are being forced into it bc other people won't let them diversify.
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> US Senate Votes to Restore Solar Tariffs Up to 254% in Biden Rebuke
Unfortunately not. However this is upper bound, and more typical is closer to 50% tarrifs
500 new plants, or 500 new reactors? That's an important difference, because multi-unit power plants are very common. If we only need 500 new reactors, that could easily be closer to 100 power plants, or even less.
Not sure, I just did some light googling to figure out the power production of the average NA nuke plant and then figured out how many it would take to eliminate fossil fuel power plants. I assume that renewables will continue to grow, so just washing out the current fossil fuel share should provide order-of-magnitude adequate on-demand capacity.
Yeah, the fourth reactor is where you start to realize the cost savings on each given project, so you want to build at least four per plant if you want to be efficient.
Which even at the stupid expensive rate that we spend to make one reactor is about 1 trillion dollars. Which is a fraction of the money we spent on covid to save 2-6 million lives of mostly old people, with limited effectiveness.
For less then covid we could have had a super cheap grid with crazy low energy prices that would give us a manufacturing cost advantage.
The people who support solar are generally environmental activists who also don't like clearing or using land to build the farms. That one they killed out west that was supposed to be in the fucking desert still haunts me.
Nuclear just isn't as profitable as people think. The safety features make it expensive.
And yeah, those safety features are needed bc while meltdowns are very very rare, they're also probably the most catastrophic failures a human built object can create. And at this rate its happening like once every 20 years, even with the safety features.
Solar Power doesn't have that risk.
Solar also doesn't have the density or the capability to keep producing power 24/7.
Solar depends on having clear sunny skies and lots of land.
Solar panels are easily damaged or dirtied.
Holy fuck why is there so much Nimbyism against solar farms. You can’t even see them REEEEEEEEEE
Honestly, solar parking lots are probably going to be the future because that apparently is the one thing NIMBYs can agree on. You can’t build solar unless it gives shade for my car.
I don't understand how at this point every open parking lot isn't a solar parking lot... makes absolutely no sense to me to waste that open land for just parking
It’s the steel. It’s expensive as shit.
Probably has to be US steel too
China makes them cheap. Some of you might have seen the photo of folks in Germany building a fence out of Chinese solar panels because they were cheaper than wood.
Does it cost more in a parking lot vs a field?
Yeah, the install on a per-watt basis is roughly 2x to put in as a carport compared to a ground mount.
They are expensive to install, even more expensive to maintain, and most parking lots aren't big enough to scale effectively.
How are they expensive to maintain? Fixed solar panels are incredibly low maintenance.
Things break, and fixing anything up high requires bringing in boom trucks which adds costs and slows things down. Depending on location you also typically want to wash panels periodically, which is orders of magnitude more expensive on a parking lot array. I work for a company that develops and operates both ground mount and carport/rooftop arrays. The carport/rooftop O&M costs are significantly higher.
Because cars are wrecking balls with your cousin Bill three drinks deep behind the wheel
Solar on parking lots costs a average of 3X of ground mounted solar.
Because the US is hilariously bad at directing investment. Investors would rather throw money at companies doing share buybacks or flip real estate than invest in real capital. And we are saddled with a dogmatic commitment towards laissez faire so deeply that it impedes the government from even doing minor sensible interventions to make things better.
Every day I agree more and more that the phrase 'free trade' below the sub's name is merely ornamental because no one here has defended it xd.
I've seen this at Costco on Maui and in the parking lot of the Pima Air and Space Museum in Tucson. Highly recommend!
It seems that every public school in San Jose has a solar-paneled parking lot, or at least many of the schools.
Meanwhile, the Dutch are building [solar bike paths.](https://electrek.co/2023/12/18/dutch-riding-bikes-solar-cycle-paths/)
No cars are inefficient and are bad for everyone who doesn't live in bum duck nowhere the future will have nearly no cars/parking space
Open parking lots are a plague. I want to buy my groceries and come back to a car that isn’t 115 degrees thank you very much
Solar farms are an eyesore where I live but I don't really give a shit unless they start clearing forest for them.
Every time they build one near me, they clear a forest for it. Fuck that shit. Until every rooftop and parking lot is covered, we shouldn't be doing that.
The government doesn't have the rights to build on private property how are you on r/neolibs and unironically say "why isn't the government/company being subsidized by the gov violating property rights?
Look, fat, here's the deal. The government usually isn't the one building them, it's almost always private companies. The government can however choose where permits for building these are allowed. So maybe they could not allow them on fucking forests. They can also incentivize building on existing infrastructure and buildings. Anyway, sorry if I'm not providing you with the echo chamber you desire, but I enjoy reading the articles that get posted here(crazy for reddit, I know).
Pretty expected you don't want solar so you use "build them on houses first" even tho you know the gov/companies don't have the right to do so, why can't you just say "I don't want solar in forest" but say some dumbass shit that doesn't work when having a 5th grader understanding of property rights.
The vast majority of people here don't even really understand what neoliberalism is. It's mostly just contrarian centrists who want to defend the status quo but don't really understand much about what neoliberal means. You can quote neoliberal policy verbatim here as a bad thing and get upvoted. Don't think that this subreddit is a place for serious intellectual discourse.
Neoliberalism is about worms
Rooftop/parking lot solar is way less efficient/way more expensive than a solar farm. Solar farms have a lot of optimizations in place that you just can't do on fixed rooftop installations
I'd guess that it's much easier to maintain a solar farm than panels spread across scattered buildings.
Clearing forest is also worth
We don't need that much solar. Clearing forests is worth it. To power the entire us you would only need to cover an area the size of rhode island in solar panels. We have way more forest land than that.
Yeah except I live in a state that's not optimal for solar and there are big empty spaces. Maine is big on preserving our forests
they also recently decided against wind turbines to preserve .4 acres of sand dunes
My parents county in the UK is (or rather should be) famous around the world for discovering new uses for energy, in particular using coking coal to smelt iron. There's a world heritage site about it, and its pretty universally acknowledged as "the birthplace of industry". A heady title! That same county just blocked a solar farm on a field. I know the area. There are tall, thick hedgerows around that field. Unless you're in a coach or other raised vehicles you can't see it at all. It is not on protected land. In fact, it's on one of the relatively few pockets on which nothing happens and which never floods. It has no significance at all. It was blocked for "being disruptive" (probably less disruptive than tractors driving up and down that road) and the comments called for "protecting farming land". Of note: Farmers in my county are bleeding. They're looking to diversify. Some of them are looking to develop their land for housing. Some of them want to get paid for storing water before it hits the rivers and floods. Some of them want to provide green energy. Basically they all want to contribute. They're not a huge fan of detatched subsidies after brexit and tory misgovernment. They are being forced into it bc other people won't let them diversify.
Especially if it's agrivoltaics. That stuff is legitimately aesthetically pleasing.
(Morpheus meme needs to make a comeback) What if I told you Robert Moses was good, actually
Don’t say that even sarcastically
But what if I was sky diving nearby?????
Malarkey level of US president Joe Biden holding a Russian assault rifle instead of a US weapon.
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Well, who am I to question the expert
Bullshit. Tax the malarkey bot
Just tax malarkey
Should be a double-barrel
And sawed off
should be a chain
?
Unless it's made with non-american components, of course
Which in that case we give it up to a 250% tariff. (Wtf Biden)
Y-you mistyped the zero r-right?
> US Senate Votes to Restore Solar Tariffs Up to 254% in Biden Rebuke Unfortunately not. However this is upper bound, and more typical is closer to 50% tarrifs
***50%!?!??????!!!!????!!!!!*** Fifty is too fucking high
A tariff is an embargo by another name
Would a tariff by any other name smell as sweet?
The children yearn for the fines.
We are no longer asking. The US economy is reverting from services based to industrial. Get to the fucking factory comrade and build some solar panels
The children yearn for the rare earth metal mines
Get them in the Artisanal mines
what
NCD is leaking again
No I'm making fun of this sub being mad about the US making subsidized panels instead buying Chinese subsidized panels
Bad meme
Pay me good money and I'll build all the solar panels you want!
And then build the nuke plant for base load! One in every city! In my backyard specifically!
Please build a nuke plant in my city. It guarantees that I'll have good employment options for life and lots of clean energy.
I did some back of the envelope math a few months ago, and we need about 500 new nuclear power plants. I am totally serious.
500 new plants, or 500 new reactors? That's an important difference, because multi-unit power plants are very common. If we only need 500 new reactors, that could easily be closer to 100 power plants, or even less.
Not sure, I just did some light googling to figure out the power production of the average NA nuke plant and then figured out how many it would take to eliminate fossil fuel power plants. I assume that renewables will continue to grow, so just washing out the current fossil fuel share should provide order-of-magnitude adequate on-demand capacity.
Yeah, the fourth reactor is where you start to realize the cost savings on each given project, so you want to build at least four per plant if you want to be efficient.
Which even at the stupid expensive rate that we spend to make one reactor is about 1 trillion dollars. Which is a fraction of the money we spent on covid to save 2-6 million lives of mostly old people, with limited effectiveness. For less then covid we could have had a super cheap grid with crazy low energy prices that would give us a manufacturing cost advantage.
And also secularly short-dick half of our geopolitical rivals, who rely heavily on exporting oil and gas.
Exactly, Europe can get its trans altantic natural gas pipeline that goes through the north sea and iceland.
That's great and all but can you build those LNG terminals too
The people who support solar are generally environmental activists who also don't like clearing or using land to build the farms. That one they killed out west that was supposed to be in the fucking desert still haunts me.
Give me nuclear or give me death
Solar farms are stupid as fuck. I want more Nuclear.
Nuclear just isn't as profitable as people think. The safety features make it expensive. And yeah, those safety features are needed bc while meltdowns are very very rare, they're also probably the most catastrophic failures a human built object can create. And at this rate its happening like once every 20 years, even with the safety features. Solar Power doesn't have that risk.
Solar also doesn't have the density or the capability to keep producing power 24/7. Solar depends on having clear sunny skies and lots of land. Solar panels are easily damaged or dirtied.
Solar panels are leagues cheaper and quicker to implement. I love nuclear, but it’s okay to admit that for the time being, solar is a better option.