Anti Solar Farm People

Some areas in Indiana and Ohio, you see yard signs and billboards saying NO SOLAR. My area is not like that but can someone explain without getting political the anti solar position. Having a farm background, I can think of many worse things to have in the neighborhood. The local BTO has corn and beans along my road that I check out on my AM walk. If he retired, I would much rather see solar than a housing addition, trailer park, factories, or a confined hog operation. Please be polite so this does not get poofed.

I'd rather see native plants & trees on unused properties than houses, solar panels etc. Put the solar panels & wind power towers in the city where they belong. Ya know.... with the city people that actually want it?

Also, you can park a lot of mobile homes on empty lots in cities. Flat lot, available power & utilities.

Makes too much sense though.

Mike

Why use good farm land for solar. There are just so many acres left to farm. Once solar is installed the farm will be junk in 20 years or whatever. Two many around here already, and housing hits rock bottom. Have a friend who is trying to sell his house because of the constant hum. Cannot sell it, been for sale for a year now. His place is valued at 200,000 plus and has not had any serious buyers

Quite a few of the solar farms are going in on farm ground. Its a waste as that land will never produce food again and it ruins the look of the country side.
Honestly, why dont they build them onto the roofs of the thousands of warehouses and factories in this country?

I agree!

IF solar farms need high voltage transmission lines to get them on the grid......I

How come they are not installed in older industrial areas that are vacant and declared brownfields due to contaminated grounds, acres of old parking lots and torn down factories, etc.

The ability to connect to the grid is almost always nearby.

Fill up those areas first.

I know a farmer that just leased 2000 contigenous acres to solar most of it has pivots. He said you would have to be fool to not take their money. He said if pained him. He is still farming and will continue

If I built a 5000 cow mega dairy, or a whole bunch of poultry barns and went belly up, or they just plain became obsolete in 20 or 30 years, do you think the land would ever go back in to production, or that the neighbor would be able to sell his house? Be honest.

Hearing some discussions about people allowing solar on their property. Problem seems to be the requirement for the land owner to keep the land mowed.

(quoted from post at 20:01:17 08/22/23) Hearing some discussions about people allowing solar on their property. Problem seems to be the requirement for the land owner to keep the land mowed.

Click to expand...

Problem why?
If you don't want to mow it, don't take the money.

The company would adjust the mowing cost into or out of the lease, if they were serious.

While we all may have our principles is it ''right'' for folks not paying taxes on the privately owned land in question to rule out alternative uses that provide a greater ROI the the owner than ''dirt farming'' or an other agricultural use?

Something to think about!

What crops and animals would benefit from the partial shade under the solar panels if they were installed high enough to facilitate some dual use for the land?

How much toxic waste is produced by solar panels?
Bright Panels, Dark Secrets: The Problem of Solar Waste ...
The act of producing one ton of polysilicon leads to three to four tons of silicon tetrachloride waste. In fact, solar produces 300 times more toxic waste per unit of energy than does nuclear energy, according to Environmental Progress, a Berkeley, California, nonprofit that supports the expanded use of nuclear energy.Jun 2, 2022 SO now you want that across the road from you rather than houses or hog confinement? Yup the hog stink but won't kill you like the solar can or could. Then the tile lines are all ruined so the drainage will suffer terribly since they don't care about that when driving those I-beams that hold the panels. Now then you said the cons and now the weed infestations or the chemicals they will use to control them. ALso how do they keep the snow off in the winter in northern climates or what about the damaged debris from storms. I would not want them next to me and there are a bunch going in or are in in this county. And these sound like the oil lease deal that after a year or so the money quits coming and your stuck with this mess. You can keep your solar nightmare. Put it on those reclaimed coal mines and building roofs in town where they all want such so-called favorable arrangement.

16k acres of prime farmland around my hometown is being turned into solar panel farms. A friend from high school days just sold 5200 ac. for 52 million $. His farm had been in rice production for near 100 yrs. Most of this property is about 20ft. above sea level. Hurricane Carla had some of this land 15ft. under water. After the water went down I saw dead cattle in the tops of oak trees. Estimates range from 5-7 deg. increase in ambient temp. in these solar fields. Take a guess as to who funded the purchase of all this land. What could possibly go wrong?

Here in WI we've got quite a bit of older wind and a lot of new solar. The wind farms don't take up much farmland ,but they got regulated out by a restriction requireing they be no closer than 1/2 mile from an objecting homeowner. The Solar builders have come more recently and got the state to offer special rights to build solar on any farm land ,even land that has special restrictions on development. The solar farm is not even taxed more than farm land. The solar developer agrees to pay a signifigant yearly fee based on electricity produced to the local and county goverment and the going rate to the farmer is about 4 -5 times the going land rental rate ($1000-1600/acre).The land has to be fenced and ground cover established ,but they don't like to put the panels up high enough to graze under except with sheep. We should have more restriction on using high quality farnland ,It should be taxed at full value as developed land, and the panels should be up high enough t0.graze livestock .

I have nice farmland in two directions from me, city in one and bombed out ghetto industrial in another. Guess where the solar is going. In the farm land. Why can't they use the fried out industrial wasteland by the highway that no one wants?

Because its cheaper. Zoned rural/agricultural vs commercial/industrial.
I agree with you and think it should be forced to use the commercial land.

I dont agree with solar farms being put on good farmland but I have them on my shed roof and they are hands down the best investment I have ever made. Havent had any issues in the 12 or so years since we had them put in and they net around $13000/yr.You honestly forget they are up there. I dont even bother trying to keep snow off them. I did the first yr or 2 and it didnt seem to make much difference on the check from Hydro one.

They should only be built on none productive ground like national parks.

Told a guy at the show this past weekend that the ladies had a solar powered clothes dryer on display outside their activities building. I dont think he caught on.

A 4000 acre facility is proposed for my area. The total cost will be in the tens of millions of dollars. My area is snowy and cloudy. I ran an analysis of the solar facility using the Energy Department's estimator for payoff. The payoff time exceeds the lifespan of the solar panels, meaning it will cost more to build than the value of the electricity it returns.

The project is an investment of an out-of-state financial services firm. They do their homework and I am sure will reap a healthy profit--probably 4-5% annually ROI. Landowners will get some pretty nice payments, too. The problem is that it will be all paid for by taxpayer dollars--they cannot sell the electricity for above the regulated wholesale rate, so they are using your and my money to line the pockets of an investment firm and some landowners. Yes, many of the landowners are retired farmers. But I cannot in good conscience defend using taxpayer dollars to pay for a system that returns less than it costs to build.

This is all justified by an appeal to gr==nhouse gas emissions and renewable energy. The problem is that the 4000 acres of land is 2/3 forest, which will be clear-cut. The rest of farmland which is taken out of service. This farmland loss has to be made up somewhere--probably in the American Southwest (water shortage) or by clear-cutting the @m@zon forest.

A local guy told me that the landowners are laughing all the way to the bank. I am sure they are. But, mark my words, the financial firm will sell off the project after 6 months to a hedge fund, which will then sell shares and 'derivatives' to various intermediaries, until 20 years from now, no one will really know who owns it. Then the solar panels will reach the end of their life and need to be retired. Whatever front company is still listed as the operator will declare bankruptcy, and the escrow account designated to pay for their removal will be used to cover creditors and their lawyers for pennies on the dollar per court order. Then the landowners will be stuck with these decommissioned solar panels, won't be able to sell, and the taxpayer will once again be called upon to pay for removal.

Sorry to be negative. I am sure others will have a different opinion. But unless the solar farm is in the sunny desert, neither the financial aspect nor the engineering make sense. But we're using tax dollars to force these things through. If it was just a waste of money, it would be bad enough. But the footprint on the environment that the solar farm is supposedly there to protect is enormous. I can't support something that is a waste of money and bad for us as a whole.


Poof?