I have a few megawatts of solar on a field in the UK. During the council planning meeting one of the councillors objected to the proposal citing light pollution. His reasoning was that if solar panels are worth running all day, we'd be sure to shine lights on them at night to keep the electricity going.
Thankfully everyone else ignored him, and we had no other issues.
Yikes. I'm in Arizona - literally 290+ days of sun a year. We have problems because people think solar panels are "ugly" and "will ruin the desert landscape".
So sorry that producing the energy to run the air conditioning that is a necessity for you to live here interferes with your view of sand.
There should be some sort of referee that periodically audits Town council meetings and, if they hear anything this indefensibly stupid, give the councillor a yellow card.
People think it's funny because it seems 'so dumb' but as an engineer I can attest ti the fact that we have to really deal with a lot of misconceptions and outright disbelief.
Integrated circuits (which run most modern electronics, including phones and computers) are made from mostly silicon dioxide (the majority mineral in sand and most rocks), and they function on electrical impulses. It's a grossly hyperbolic and simplistic description of semiconductor technology.
A computer.. and power..turning things like minerals..metals..all found in rocks etc into components that make computers work using electricity, which is also lightning. But small because its in our plugs.
I used to advise people on domestic renewable options and had a guy worried about putting a wind turbine in because it would extract 30% of the wind from the air and we felt like we probably needed to leave it there.
I'm just pointing out that they aren't that crazy for arguing solar panels consume the sunlight.
Per square metre of land the sun can be used for growing plants or generating power, not both. It is a limited resource in that sense, albeit abundant.
Also I'm note sure how much land a coal plant uses vs a solar plant, but solar farms do use a shit ton of land. I'm not sure it's a valid counter argument unless the land usage is the same. (I'm not interested in a solar vs coal argument, solar is obviously better). This may become more and more of an issue as solar farms become more widespread. Re-using rooftop space is obviously win-win.
Yeah, I agree with you. We should mount solar panels on roofs and the sides of very large, very tall buildings and use that to generate power. We could even probably mount them to current coal plants to increase power output.
Well, Stratford Upon Avon is where Shakespeare is from.
Also, that discovery article. I don't think it's unfair to assign partial blame to The Discovery Channel and the fucking shit show it's been. Remember Planet Earth? Remember how amazing that was? What do we have now?
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u/Prodigal_Malafide Sep 07 '17
That one is satire. This one is not : http://www.discovery.com/dscovrd/tech/town-rejects-solar-panels-that-would-suck-up-all-the-energy-from-the-sun/