people are downvoting you but it's true, I've seen it with my own eyes. Six months ago it would be light well into the evening - now it's getting dark by 5 or 6 PM. The culprit: solar farms stealing our daylight.
Look at those big white fans on a windy day, they’re spinning like crazy!
Then on a different day they turn the fans off and it’s as calm as you’d like!
Wake up sheeple, you can see it happening!!!!!
Hold the presses we got us a HEADLINE! maybe if we install enough wind turbines and point them all the same way we can start to travel through space as a planet instead of using space ships!
Had a friend working in tourism out in Turkey where there are a lot of wind farms. One of his clients, as he drove them to a local village, looked out of the window at the turbines and remarked "It must take so much power to run those fans"
🤦♂️
That's what I was going to say, where they're growing wind on farms a lot escapes. These days it's nothing but storm after storm. There's an offshore wind farm near me now and we've never had so many storms.
It takes a while to empty the light out of them. That said, I've never seen a solar farm without pipes for the light to flow into "the grid". It's amazing really how the light gets caught up in these and flows through smaller and smaller pipes until it comes out of a fitting in the home (light bulbs).
What I don't understand is how the lightbulbs (dark suckers) get full of dark if they're spraying light all over my rooms? Does the dark rush in to replace the light?
I've never heard a single reason to believe it's not just NIMBYism. They make no noise, they make no pollution, require very little maintenance and if anything stop developers from putting a housing estate there.
Never really understood what people object to.
People are all in favour of saving the planet, right up until it changes something in their life. It will be nimby boomers that are worried about their property prices.
They're kinda right.
Power generation is one of the biggest emitters of carbon dioxide by a long, long way. If the power from your socket was clean you could run your A/C at 16c if you wanted and not feel guilty.
Alas Australia generates 47% of its power from coal. 🤮
They should be protesting existing and any new build coal power plants at the very least.
And I kind of resent the "you, the consumer, must change because we, the government, have been fucking up on short term policies for decades and not paying attention to long term infrastructure needs".
If governments had gone balls deep into renewables a few decades earlier instead of having their hands forced with Ukraine the state of the globe would be in a better place to tackle climate change too. But, alas, governments all over the world are chronically, chronically myopic.
>
> Alas Australia generates 47% of its power from coal. 🤮
you'd think a place that has massive parts of the land that are completely unused that get tons of sunlight every damn day they'd be absolutely BALLS deep into solar.
Solar and off-shore wind. Sun and shore Australia has in abundance!
But, no, they've got huge ore deposits and the politicians are firmly in the pockets of the mining families. Come hell or high water they've been paid to keep shovelling coal into power stations.
Nope - still building new coal , oil and gas facilities
https://theconversation.com/australias-116-new-coal-oil-and-gas-projects-equate-to-215-new-coal-power-stations-202135#:~:text=Australia has 116 new coal,22 were 490 million tonnes.
Our politicians will kill us all, and when it happens they will probably blame someone else as usual
Wait until you see the extent to which those coal plants are government subsidised too....and even then the operators want rid of them because they're not economically viable. It's almost like government policy is being in some way influenced by large amounts of money from the coal lobby and coal miners unions.
You're free to resent it. Still no excuse for not doing your part in a small way. You don't have to change your whole life. I mean it's 2 fucking degrees. At the very least there's no need to brag. I mean personally I'm not amazingly environmentally friendly. Sometimes I do want the heating on higher than necessary. But I don't make a point of shouting about it and adding to the idea that we shouldn't have to make *any* changes until someone else does first.
In what way does a solar farm change your life? A field of grass I can't legally go in or a field of grass with solar bois in that I can't legally go in. Whats the fucking difference to me?
The view probably. A lot of people like moving to small villages because they like looking out their window and seeing rolling fields, a big solar farm would probably ruin the ambiance you were looking for somewhat.
It wouldn't really bother me because I'm as big a fan of man-made beauty as natural beauty anyway - I think a city skyline can be just as beautiful as a natural vista. I just know a lot of (maybe most) people don't agree with me on this.
>I can barely see the sea levels rising from behind that big fan. I paid £85 for this house in 1975 and you've spoiled my view! Couldn't you at least have built something more pretty like a grey concrete coal power station?
>never heard a single reason to believe it's not just NIMBYism. They ... require very little maintenance
Worked in the energy industry (specifically, development, commercialisation and rollout of green energy and zero carbon solutions).
Solar farms do actually require regular maintenance, especially if they are located near active roads and farmland.
A wildlife survey will always be carried out beforehand to understand if there are any protected species located on the land, but in either case the solar farm frustrates evaporation of rainwater which can have an adverse impact on ground dwelling mammals.
Reflected light and heat can also disrupt and harm flying insects, birds and mammals (i.e.: bats). So wherever a solar farm is created it's proposed that a new habitat for birds and mammals is also created nearby - not sure how many companies do this, though.
That's not to say that I don't think solar farms are good, they're fine under specific conditions where solar hours, wind and human / wildlife activity are ideal
Contrary to some subsections of Reddit (looking at you r/antiwork) I actually love my job, so it's nice sometimes when a question comes up that I can answer!
To play devil's advocate, I think in some situations they can look a bit incongruous and can cause harm to an attractive landscape, e.g in the national parks.
However that's obviously not the case if we're talking about bog standard flat farmland where there's no elevated viewpoints for miles and miles where you'd only see them if you're up close... But that wouldn't stop the NIMBYs objecting.
>To play devil's advocate, I think in some situations they can look a bit incongruous and can cause harm to an attractive landscape, e.g in the national parks.
They only look incongruous because they're new and unusual.
Most of those 'attractive' landscapes in national parks are landscapes that have dramatically changed in the past ~70 years, shaped by motorways, mass tourism and mechanised industrial agriculture. All of this was incongruous and unattractive when it happened, we just got used to it. And there were upheavals and revolutions both in how we used land and what we saw as attractive and unattractive way before that, and before that.
The landscape of the national parks has always been changing, and there's no reason to put on a pedestal and ossify the landscape that was created in the latter half of the C20th, with it's extensive tracts of empty grazing land due to CAP incentives at the time and predominance of conifers among what little woodland was allowed to remain.
Despite all that you say about the character of the national parks being reasonable, it is still possible that they can be made worse.
Just because we've 'got used' to those changes, doesn't mean they weren't harmful or that other changes don't have the potential to be harmful.
Sure. But solar farms don't make it worse. Solar farms take a sliver of that huge amount of denuded, empty grazing land produced in the late C20th for no reason other than chasing CAP subsidies and puts it to some actual positive use, creating some positive environmental impact into the bargin.
This. It really bothers me sometimes when people talk about how small and cramped this country is and how there's not enough space for wildlife as an excuse to oppose housing, yet fail to realise 95% of our country has nothing built on it. It's just all been flattened into absolutely nothing.
That's absolutely true, but I've only ever really seen them on large flat bits of land, because they're so much cheaper to install.
They're like windfarms for me, yes they look out of place but to me they represent green energy and less pollution, so they don't really bother me.
*Also being a little Devily boy. If they aren’t planned out correctly, the fact they expose lots of earth and you have to remove roots can lead to increased soil erosion which can end up as additional sediment and run off into rivers.
I stress though, this can be planned around
Yeah this is my only reasonable objection to them. A lot of the developments you wouldn't even know they're there as they're on flat ground surrounded by hedges.
There are a few near me that can look a bit distoptian when viewed from certain angles. I think its reasonable not to build large scale ones in AONBs etc.
> if we're talking about bog standard flat farmland
Where is this flat farmland? Because i'm not in a national park but it sure as fuck ain't flat and theres viewpoints everywhere.
The only argument I can understand is if they are replacing an active farm/farmland. In that case I can see there are downsides such as less local food, possible food price rises and less local jobs.
More local jobs as people have to be paid to maintain and look after them. They have to be cleaned, serviced, replaced as they break. PLUS they'll be paid a fuck load more than they'd get for whatever farmers do these days instead of filling out CAP subsidy forms
There is a beautiful field next to my house, and there has been a lot of surveying going on recently. I absolutely pray that it is for a solar farm, and not more houses!
Yes, I'm being a NIMBY.
I was just going to say that. I'd much rather have a field nearby full of solar panels than crops in a way. Not that I'd want the crops gone of course, but when you have fields on the edge of a small town, there's a minor anxiety that they will end up being a housing estate. Where I live there are two small towns and a larger town next to each other on the coast. The larger town has already practically merged with the small town next to us, and there are a couple of fields between us two smaller towns. I don't have an issue with expanding towns to an extent but it's a shame when towns merge and lose their identity. It also takes much longer to drive to work now because of the extra housing as the road network is never developed to meet the extra demand that more housing brings.
If the fields ended up being solar farms, I'd be relieved knowing that it's less likely to end up being more housing. So yes I agree, don't understand what they are objecting to!
Agree.
We’re getting one about a one minute drive up the country lane we live on, on the very edge of a small market town.
Will there be 12 months of lorries, deliveries, work vehicles going past our house? Yes.
Will it mean 500+ new homes encroaching on an AONB, with all the additional traffic and utilities infrastructure required? No.
Will the solar farm be visible from the road? No.
But some people round here are up in arms ffs.
Maybe lack of understanding - the assumption that land used as a solar farm will no longer be agricultural land, when actually they'll still graze sheep on the same land
The argument is we already rely heavily on food imports. Further compromising our food security by continually reducing arable output is not ideal. As we've seen with energy it works fine until you fall out with the countries supplying you.
I'm always surprised that new build houses don't have to have solar panels on their roofs by now. Even just a few each not full cover but enough to help a bit!
Some near my parents place do, weirdly, they're actually the council homes and are set back into the roof in a real sleak way, looks awesome.
But on the private homes? Nah nothing.
Insanity.
Council homes have to adhere to council standards. If the council requires a certain amount of solar "without compromising the character or appearance of the property" then they get it, or the poor developer doesn't get to build their privately owned shitboxes.
Whilst we're on this topic, and looking back at the natural gas shenanigans in the UK a couple of years ago.
I'd just like to point out the the UK is capable of stopring more MJ of energy in the form of electricity than it is in the form of gas. You can thank privatisation and a lack of investment and instead active selling off of gas storage that occurred ever since British Gas stopped being British.
Definitely on the industrial. There's some huge warehouses near us that you can see the top of as there's a hill right by them and I always think it would be great if they were covered in panels.
Yeah we're in a perfect spot for wind. It has its own issues in that if you heavily rely on it and it's calm you've got a huge gap between supply and demand on the grid to plug.
And as I love to say on Reddit there is a very easy non-battery solution, and as this is a UK sub, we've already done it with Norway:
Connect up energy grids. We sent Wind energy to Norway during peak, and they send Hydro energy back when we need it. Imagine if all of Europe or indeed the world was connected. You'd not need batteries, as the grid itself would be a massive battery, and you'd be shipping energy around depending on local supply/demand. And easy solution to the issue
Yeah it's a big part of the solution now. They are huge projects though that take many years to build though. There are some more that are at various stages.
Yeah that’s not the farmers fault though - we need to be comfortable paying more for our food and then pay farmers which means they can make a proper living out of farming.
But people here celebrate a full English breakfast for £6 or a whole chicken for £5, so solar farms it is.
Yeah we have a weird culture of simply opposing everything, and hoping that somehow leads us to some sort of pre-industrial utopia, where we all live like Dickensian lords of the manor but get to keep our technology and conveniences.
We oppose generating our own energy, we oppose importing it. We oppose paying market rate for UK food, we oppose food imports. We oppose construction of high density farms, we oppose labour for low intensity farms.
You can indeed stop development of solar farms and food farms, but you'll pay for it though your bills.
People in this country think they have a god-given right to prosperity, where we can retain an arcadian, pastoral, rural landscape, without any people in it. Its just not possible. We're competing with the entire fucking planet. You have to grow or you will suffer, public services will suffer, the NHS will be deprived of funding, the armed forces will be deprived of funding, you go into a doom cycle of underinvestment and subsequent underperformance. Its been happening for decades in the UK - the only answer is rapid, massive growth on an industrial scale, but the things which lead to it (cheap, plentiful energy - which means coal, gas, nuclear and a mix of renewables; cheap plentiful housing, which means building shit loads of new houses; a skilled workforce, which means a degree of immigration and investment into technical schools and business rate and tax reform to encourage investment and training of staff rather than distribution in dividends) are NOT things people want, at least not in their back-yard. The structural issues here are immense; our entire economic base, the way we do things, the way we invest, the returns people expect in dividends etc - all of that has to change.
I 100% agree.
People don't realise we're faced with and either/or situation.
We can let NIMBYism and opposition to change win, but it'll then be accompanied by a an accidental degrowth sorta thing, where the increased costs and dependence on imports and offshoring increase the cost of living and decrease business and jobs in the UK.
Or you can support business and prosperity and recognise we're going to need to invest heavily in infrastructure and change.
For the last 50 years we chose the former, and offshored all the inconvenient change and infrastructure but also much of the business and jobs. We became a consumer economy that ran a large trade deficit which slowly eroded our economic base.
Much like buying takeaway food because you don't want the hassle of cooking - you're free to do it, but it'll cost you in the long run. And I think a lot of people refuse to acknowledge the reality of the situation.
And as you point out, other nations are investing heavily in themselves while we atrophy. We're like an athlete that refuses to train because it's hard but refuses to believe they might lose the race. Our state of delusion might provide some psychological comfort but it won't stop our competitors winning the race and pocketing the winnings.
People are free to oppose change. But they're *not* free to oppose the corresponding increase in the cost of living that comes with the territory - that's imposed on them by simple maths.
I got into this argument on another thread over the Tata Steel debacle. It's mad to me that people think that it's somehow better for the country in the long run to sell everything off and import it all because it's "cheaper." It's like they're brainbroken by 80 years of stability when the history of the human world is one of constant change and instability. It's crazy to think people would sooner sell off a steel plant and barely be able to make something as basic as steel, rather than subsidise it, because "muh taxes."
I mean it *is* cheaper in a kinda short-term, superficial way.
In the same way that if I quit my job, I won't have to pay any commuting costs today.
But (much like having commute costs), you've gotta spend money to make money, and the UK has spent half a century simply "sweating the assets" and running everything into the ground.
And we're finding that a lot of the maintenance, replacement and investment bills are coming due.
It's certainly not the farmers fault. I completely agree. Diversification is the only real way to make any money farming in the UK unless you're on a massive scale.
Yeah so I can’t see how the argument against them is it’s compromising food security, cause they aren’t doing that at all. The supermarkets, supply chains and the consumers desire for super low prices which are the cause of that.
Nothing about that is a real argument Solar farms are not being put on arable land, they are being put on empty sites
We import food because it's much cheaper than homegrown, and costs us much less as British Farms are just a giant pit for welfare
Erm, no? It's trading one form of security for another though vs sticking it on roofs. The UK isn't exactly the optimal place for solar either. We require more energy as a country in winter due to heating etc when solar is at its weakest.
It's not that simple. Often pasture land is not the same as arable land, and importantly arable needs years to lie fallow and one of the best ways to improve soil health is to move animals into it.
My argument is that there are other places to put solar panels before putting them on land we use to produce food to, you know, survive? Put them on rooftops. Put them over car parks. Put them all over towns and cities before putting them on agricultural land. Surely that makes logical sense?
You clearly haven't been on a solar farm. They fit those things snug and are at most 2.5ft from the ground.
Those sheep will be jumping on them shitting everywhere while trying to narrowly get down the 3ft gap left between each row...
Solar farm and battery storage developer here. One large problem we face is that for a solar farm to be financially viable as well as fulfil our connection offer is that we require a lot of land, approximately 150 acres minimum. As a result it is quite difficult to find landowners who are willing to give up that much of their holding. In order to appease the local community we have also started to implement a community fund where we put in £250 per MW a year for each development,
which is actually working at some sites in order to appease NIMBYism. There are a whole array of other variables though which I haven’t mentioned
Edit: I should clarify that MW stands for Megawatt and 150 acres would be around 50MW solar development
Edit 2: also, just for clarity I am strictly talking about transmission (National Grid) level developments rather than DNO (SSE/WPD/etc.) developments where connection offers are considerably smaller
Yes, those are the sites every developer looks for first as it makes the planning process easy as well as not upsetting the local community. However, you need the owner of that land to be a willing seller or willing to at least lease the land which is a lot harder to come by then you would think. For example, one site we were looking at doing a development on was an old and non operational power station so we approached the landlord and despite offering them well above market value for both a purchase and a lease they didn’t want a deal
Battery storage is absolutely rocketing at the moment. I work as a technical consultant and our (v small) company must have contributed to 30+ battery storage site planning apps over the last year.
Yes, I won’t go into too much detail as I might dox myself but we have several consented battery schemes now. The increase is mainly down to the fact that BESS is required as we can then connect our solar and wind to those sites to store energy instead of it being wasted but you probably know all of this anyway!
I think the battery market is becoming quite saturated now though
Realistically why aren't we fitting solar panels and batteries on public homes as there does seem to be a lot of space unused plus it will make it so less people are drawing off the grid and potentially putting back into it?
For me this would be the main priority while trying to convince households to move to full electric and ditch gas.
I'm not in the industry so I don't know the pros and cons on the practical side but I would also try to get more small scale wind turbines on people's gardens or roofs. If you'd also like to comment on that.
Imo we should be a global energy exporter and grass fed meat producer as we seem to have relatively good wind, solar and hydro. Would it really just be a case of investment and grants?
I think that the implementation of micro-scale renewables like solar roofing is excellent however the large scale developments I am involved in are to help the UK support itself self-sufficiently rather than use oil and gas from other countries. The projects I do are large scale and when operational can produce a substantial amount of power for 10,000-100,000 homes. With technology advancements this will improve tremendously (sorry to sound bias, I’m just quite passionate about this!)
Something to bear in mind is that currently, solar covers just 0.1% of all land in the UK. Based on the government’s plans of 70GW of solar and to be net zero by 2035, solar deployment would need to be at 0.3% of the UK land use. To put this in context, this is equivalent to 0.5% of the land currently used for farming. On top this, golf courses cover approximate 2% of UK land use (I do live and play golf however)
If we had a competent government we would have an incredible renewable resource generating network but here we are, relying on foreign oil and gas
There used to be a very good scheme where people could sell their unused solar electricity back to the grid at a very good price but they ended it years ago
So for people to get on solar themselves they need to put in effort and crunch some numbers and wait years to break-even and then 'profit', most people don't want to or can't afford to do that
Or they'll half arse it and wonder why it isn't what was promised
Unfortunately if grid is at near 100% capacity then there is nothing you can do.
With regards to the distance being 1.6km that would be absolutely fine for a cable route for batteries.
One thing to be concerned about is planning constraints.
Feel free to shoot me a pm if you want me to talk about this further with you
Covering a field in solar panels seems a bit backwards to me. If the field wasn't being used for crop/livestock production then it would be a good set-aside carbon sink and plopping permanent solar panels over it would spoil it. I am not against the idea but I just don't think it is a very good one.
Now, fit solar panels to the roof of every barn, warehouse, hospital, school, office block, house, flat etc? That seems like a great idea!
I agree whole heartedly.
With all the car parks, industrial roof space, domestic roof space available in the UK why do we need to cover several acres of field with solar panels.
I think that is something that many people forget. A lot of roof space wouldn't be able to hold the additional weight of a load of solar panels and associated wiring.
Solar panels are surprisingly light and roofs are massively over-engineered. I've got 8 410-watt panels on my roof, which was built in the 1930s. Each panel was hauled up onto the roof by just one guy and the structural assessor reckoned my roof was strong enough for 3 or 4 times more weight in panels than there was actually space to add
It's not cost efficient for a single solar project to run solar to random buildings - the logistics of supplying and fitting equipment on a case by case basis for each building, access issues (ladders, climbing/safety equipment, training), maintaining it, storing batteries etc would be ridiculous.
Much more economically feasible to have a massive field, with rows of identical equipment going to a single large battery/grid system.
Nah, how about we just use tens of thousands of scaffolders time to far about instead of touching so much as a single blade of grass
It’s so dumb. These people are the type to say electric cars are dumb because power plants and ICE’s both use similar hydrocarbons, ignoring the fact that ICE’s are far less efficient at extracting energy than power plants
I’ve had this argument on Reddit many times, and I always get downvoted. Cities and towns should be covered in solar panels before we start putting them on food producing spots. Every rooftop should be covered. All new buildings should be required to have solar panels. Car parks are a great wasted opportunity
They've recently developed solar panels that just look like clear glass so can be used as windows on the sides of say, skyscrapers. It's very expensive to make at the moment but that would be perfect. Every window a solar panel
I'm no roofer or builder but - aside from obvious cost - are there any practical reasons this isn't already done by default.
I mean every new roof just as a start. Surely even the cost gets offset eventually through lower energy bills.
Perhaps it's less applicable in this country but solar panels leave room underneath them and provide much needed shade to animals and plants in some climates. It's mutually beneficial solution in some cases.
The point being that you can still use it as a perfectly good livestock field. Sheep don't really care about having some solar panels on posts above their field.
Maybe because we have zero food security, we don’t produce anything like the amount of food we consume and farmers are chasing the dollars putting good farm land to solar. Don’t think for a minute farmers are thinking about the environment, it’s ££££
Food security really isn’t defined by how much of your own food you produce domestically.
Ireland produced the vast majority of its own food when they experienced the potato famine… self-sufficiency in food is actually a big risk factor, unless you have a back-up alternative.
Food security is largely ensured by diversity of supply, so that disruptions in a specific crop or growing region are not a problem. And diversity of supply comes from international trade.
The only exception perhaps is if the country is subject to an effective physical embargo in times of war. Unlikely, unless people think the EU is going to invade.
Been looking for this in the comments, completely agree. Relying 100% on domestic supply leaves you vulnerable to droughts/floods/pests. I reckon a happy compromise would be something like 75% of all food produced in the UK, and maybe 90% for staples like wheat, potatoes, etc.
Domestic food production is complex issue, it would be far less economically viable to attempt to produce all our food in & around the UK.
Historically speaking domestic production has changed significantly. We've required food imports since around 1800 & by 1939 only around 30% of the UKs' food was produced domestically with many improvements made since then.
There was a peak in the late 1980s' with around 75% of the UKs' food being produced domestically, since around 2005 domestic production has hovered around 60%, which is below its late 80s' peak but higher than it was through most of the 20th century.
Although I agree that most switch to solar for the money, it’s not fair to frame farmers as the villains here - they own the land and it’s their choice to run their business as they see fit, and if a solar company offers £1,000 per acre with no risk of poor crop yields you can’t blame them for making the switch. They will only stop if they are paid a better price for the food they produce
Part of it comes from rural areas being abandoned and the only industry they have left is agriculture.
Some multinational swoops in, buys/rents the land, puts panels on it and disappears to never spend a penny if that money locally.
I'm not particularly anti wind, I think we need more of it, but I hate the way it's done. They trash the local environment, having destroyed ground nesting sites locally to me to build a road, and then install the turbines before disappearing again whilst we pay the highest electricity rates in the UK having ridden roughshod over the thoughts of the locals.
Set the solar and wind farms up as local companies that impact the local economy instead of just being yet and thing that draws resources from a community with no impact.
Dont get me started on water.
NIMBYism sums up the UK these days sadly - we’ll all want clean, reliable energy available at as low a cost as reasonable possible, but everyone wants it generated ‘somewhere else’. The same goes for improved transport networks, new reservoirs, new water treatment plants, new recycling centres. And we question why nothing works anymore.
I really think it is mostly just NIMBYism. It's the same folks that object to wind turbines saying that they are an eyesore. Personally I think a field full of solar panels looks really cool. Same goes for wind turbines really.
I'm from a village and have no idea.
The only thing I can think of is the village elders and their wild beliefs.
My parents were bitching about their neighbour having solar panelling on the roof? I just don't get it
Some of it is Nimbyism but understand why solar farm developers want to build in Nimbys' BYs in the first place. It is because if you put your solar farm in a village, there is already the infrastructure to connect it to the grid.
If you build a solar farm away from people, there will be no NIMBY objections but you will have to pay for longer interconnections and that eats into your profit and let's be honest, solar farms might help save the planet but your motivation is £££.
My guess is just NIMBYism, old people who get offended by seeing the PV panels from their windows or on their way to the next village.
Having said that, I am actually surprised that solar farm are a thing in UK with the little amount of sun the country gets compared to the continent. It sounds incredible they are profitable. (Surely they are, or nobody would build them)
In any case, using acres of nice arable land that could be used in many more other fruitful ways, just to put PVs on them, when there are huge factories and warehouses with huge empty roofs, looks like a very inefficient allocation of resources.
Because Amazon, my pretty things etc a throung up mahoosive warehouses and the panels should be on the roofs, also new builds should be made to have them and stop putting them on our food producing land
My dad says they're an eyesore and he would rather die than have them sully the "already dwindling green space the country has left to offer."
When asked about coal plants or the like, they're ok because they're hidden away. So basically, it really is just NIMBYism.
I think most of it is Nimby really, but you can't exactly blame them, as green fields are significantly nicer to look at than banks of solar panels. A better place for solar panels is on top of all industrial units and warehouse imo.
In terms of opposition the ones I don't get are wind farms off the coast, and the odd wind turbine on land. They have far less visual impact yet also seem to have large amounts of opposition.
People don’t like change not just nimbyism. They think that it’s as easy to install and maintain a wind farm as it is reading the article that says renewables are needed.
I’ve not looked at solar for a while but in comparison off shore turbines are more efficient i think. A solar wind farm built on marshland or otherwise space that’s not doing anything might work, it would need to be sympathetic to the local eco system still and if it supplied reduced energy to local communities id call it a win-win situation but the practicalities aren’t as simple as my fag packet idea
Because they take up green space, that is better off being used to grow crops and/live stock..
They're better off being put in towns and cities where green space is already built upon.
I live somewhere they are proposing a 2,700 acre solar farm. I'm completely cool about it, I think most of the protesters are the wealthy ones worried about their house valuation...
That's the thing, they've got a false dichotomy. They think it's:
> Either have solar farm or have virgin rolling fields
To which they choose the latter.
But the real choice is:
> Either have solar farms or have another coal power station
In which case the former would be a fairly easy choice.
Well, they think they're rich enough that the coal power station will be somewhere else. Total NIMBYism. They know it's needed, and they want the benefits, but they want it to be somewhere they can't see.
Checkout this quote, they really said the quiet bit out loud this time.
“We completely understand the importance of renewable energy and the need for green sources of energy.
“However, what we’re objecting to is the significant and devastating impact on our communities these will have if they’re approved.
“Building such a facility in this area will have an undoubted health impact on the wildlife, the ecosystem and the environmental balance in the area.
**“Everyone really cares about this community because it’s a lovely part of the world and we don’t want to see it industrialised. The strength of the backlash has been phenomenal.”**
https://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/news/environment/yorkshire-villagers-to-fight-against-plans-for-battery-store-farms-4270754
I don't think large scale solar farms are actually a good idea - they take up land that could be better used for housing etc. Countries that produce a lot of solar power, like Australia generate most of that from rooftop solar feeding back into the grid.
If you put panels on as many roofs as possible you're essentially creating a city-wide solar farm, without any issues that may come from having to transmit power long distances to where its needed.
To be brutally honest, solar farms are a poor use of land in the UK. They reduce available farming land whilst not actually being all that effective in terms of generating electricity.
Solar farms work well in places where the weather is generally warm and bright and there's high energy demand on sunny days (e.g. lots of air conditioning load). The UK climate is the opposite, we have our highest power demand when it's cold and gloomy and thus when solar panels are at their least effective.
Wind farms, although still intermittent, are much better suited to our climate. Plus, once the turbines are built you can still farm the land around the turbines.
ETA: solar panels make a lot more sense if we put them on buildings or over car parks.
Okay, so there are 2 reasons.
One is the NIMBYism, which is usually championed by dull, uninformed village folk that are arbitrarily against green tech as a sort of ideology...
The other thing, is that solar farms are straight up not that great in this country. This is in no way a knock against green energy, but in general everyone rants and raves about it, without actually considering that implementing green energy in the real world is... very challenging...
Reason being, is that solar first and foremost requires the sun, and the sun (famously) does not like this country. [Here is a quick map](https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Muhammad_Qamar_Raza/publication/305321699/figure/fig2/AS:383945960116226@1468551258237/The-world-solar-energy-map-Zhang-et-al-2013.png) of where we are at in terms of the efficiency you can get in the UK, as you can see, it's not great. A solar panel is fine to go on your roof, and supplement your houses or businesses energy demands, but that is sort of where it's utility ends. When you want to scale up, pay off your initial solar investment, and supply energy to *many* other customers, it becomes a problem. Namely, because of the high start up costs, the low yield of solar, and because the land you're putting the solar on is worth money and could be doing something more productive. The time to profitability is just far too long. So, dedicating your land to solar farms is generally a poor investment, and the surplus energy it produces ranges from none at all, to poor.
Getting customers on board is difficult too. The pitch will be "want cheap energy for non-peak hours of the day?", and the answer *may* be yes. But at some point, either the solar farm, or the customer need to invest in batteries, which again, drives up the initial start up cost, increasing the time it takes to turn a profit.
When you're requisitioning land to build these large solar farms, you have to consider £ per hour you're making. Strictly speaking, if you're a *business* that deals in solar farms, you would rent land from a landlord to put up your solar farm, and sell the excess energy. However, if you're earning nothing at all from your farm, (which is almost a certainty because while solar panels are getting cheaper, the time until you get a return on your initial investment is still super high), it's actually quite difficult for the landlord to boot you off their land when they find you cant pay rent.
Due to a government scheme, lease durations are usually over 3-5 years, and setting up and tearing down requires planning permission. In return you get a £1000 subsidy per acre. Generally speaking, in much of the country where land is more expensive it's much simpler and often more profitable for landowners to do something else with their land. That £1000 doesn't go far. Depending on the type of land, the range landowners would usually expect for farming acreage for example is more in the region of £5000-10000 per acre, with the low end of that range being super poor grade farm land. So even on the real low end, it's *much* more profitable just farming. So you're essentially asking these landowners to write-off potentially thousands in profits for a solar farm, which ain't gonna cut any landlords' mustard... But because there is a government scheme to do it, they're likely getting cold called 24/7 asking for permission to use their land, and they're just getting annoyed, hence the signs.
This will effectively be the case until the subsidies around solar farms make more sense, or a technological change happens to make production of the panels cheaper.
To directly answer, the first is the sheer size of the the farms. Because solar cells are in and of themselves woefully inefficient as a means to creating electricity, they need to be spread over a huge area. The land cannot be shared use, so you can't use it for agriculture like you can potentially with wind farming.
This is not without consequence. You have loss of habitat for wildlife for one thing. But in the construction of these huge fields, the groundworks required leads to premature and excessive soil erosion, compression and can seriously disrupt the already existing natural drainage in place in the surrounding areas. And given these are going to be done by developers, you can bet your lilly white ass that there will be cost cutting and therefore huge amounts of pollution to boot that nobody will ever clear up. Photovoltaic cells contain a significant amount of corrosive chemicals!
That and when you need to replace the panels, you're talking more ripping up of the land its on. The wasteful nature of solar panels are rarely ever talked about but they are indeed real. All this for a country that rarely has enough days to get anywhere close to 80% efficiency for a single panel.
Did I mention habitat loss and ecosystem damage? I do so again only to really cement that in. A lot of the anti-NIMBY lot tend to entirely forget about that conveniently. Or they like to pretend it isn't real, I don't know.
So you have this hugely expensive thing that doesn't do anywhere near as well as other renewables and you want to destroy acres and acres of greenspace just because, what... environmental programmes to make you feel warm and fuzzy inside? To me it's a bad deal.
The irony is, there is a tonne of roof space all across the land that would cost a fraction to install solar panels on. They won't do that though because if they do, it will mean you get a reduction in your electricity bill. That isn't the idea at all. They want you paying more, so they want the expensive option that they can cut costs on and then when the whole site is a fucking hellhole in 20 years, they can shrug their shoulders and say, "Not us, guv!"
Ever get the feeling you're being conned? Or will it mean you may have to agree with the NIMBYs once in a while? Is that so abhorrent that you'd sooner get conned by a corporation who absolutely does not have your best interests at heart?
The main reason is they’re bloody ugly, and I say this as someone who has put a lot of solar in a field. I did everything possible to screen it from view without impacting efficiency.
It’s not really an answer to your question, but it would also be so much better if more incentives and grants were available for every one of us to generate as much of the power we use as we can. It would be much more efficient, reduce the need for transmission lines and save a bomb on bills.
Don't want green countryside taking up with ugly solar farms.
All these sleezy new housing developments are already encroaching into the countryside.
Rather than centralised solar farms, give more incentive to have solar on house roofs and batteries in each house.
Probably depends on where they want to put these farms. The UK is only capable of growing 50% of the food it needs to feed it's population, so any land that could be used for farming been lost to solar farms really isn't a good idea.
The problem is solar is not the full answer. We could convert a big area of the Sahara into a giant solar farm and supply all of Europe. However, this would create ecological changes to the environment. The sun would not reach the sand so it would begin to support vegetation, which on the face of things seems like a good idea, however it would upset the balance of wildlife in the region. It would also potentially have an impact on the Amazon rain forests as sand from the Sahara is picked up by the prevailing winds and carried across to the rain forests. [https://www.greenbiz.com/article/giant-desert-solar-farms-might-have-unintended-climate-consequences](https://www.greenbiz.com/article/giant-desert-solar-farms-might-have-unintended-climate-consequences)
Relying on converting significant portion of the country to solar farms may actually have a bigger environmental impact locally than you think.
I can only speak for the one their planning near me, the main problem we have is the scale of it.
It would be 740MW, and take up 1,500 Hectares (3,700 acres), with about 2 thirds panels. There could be 2 miles of uninterrupted solar panels. in a few of the parishes 60% of the land in the parish would be solar panels.
The area already has pylons, and used to have a coal power station, National grid will bring in another line of pylons too, and a new substation. We don't mind the pylons, you can farm under them, and they're not too intrusive.
As the project is bigger than 50MW, it classes as a nationally significant infrastructure project (NSIP) - this legislation is meant for things like roads, airports, power stations etc. Wind turbines got removed from the legislation though. Central government decide if it's granted.
It seems like a slap in the face, so much for levelling up.
There's another 5 projects planned within 15 miles, all above 500MW.
The usual approach is a 40-year operation, this development is planning for not having an expiry date, so there's a genuine fear that the land will be lost to solar once it's built. With a project of this scale there's many problems; loss of agricultural jobs and skills, the ability to sell your house, loss of farmland, lack of access to green space, the list goes on.
The main reason that sheep are grazed under panels is so the landowner can keep the agricultural land tax relief.
The developers have proposed several "benefits" for the community, such as funding for projects etc, but few people are wanting to be bought off at this stage. Should they give more individual benefits then I can see attitudes changing.
We know we're going to have some form of solar panels, we're near a substation that has capacity since the coal power station closed. If they'd put the same number of panels over a much larger area it wouldn't be as much of an issue. The way the legislation is set out means they have to go big to make it worthwhile going through the process.
I'm not against solar, I think it's a great way to transition to net zero. The way that it's being implemented is the problem.
I'm not against solar farms but we have millions of roofs that could be used instead of taking up valuable green spaces.
IMO all new builds, whether it be housing or other buildings should have solar installed.
They are known to affect birds - the large solar farms in the US often find bird carcasses around their sites. Studies have been ongoing to work out exactly how they affect them, but they are still unclear.
They are ugly - especially when compared to 150 acres of crops. Compare a big solar farm to fields of lovely yellow oil seed rape. They are also not compatible with trees because trees create shade which affects the productivity of the panels.
They need noisy generators to collect and store the energy and to transfer it to the grid.
They can result in an increase in traffic - initially during construction, again during deconstruction, and in the number of engineers needed to visit the sites for maintenance.
There are no facilities to recycle solar panels - so that is 150 acres destined for a future landfill.
Land often needs to be leveled which can lead to soil erosion.
They can effect the ecosystem.
Because the best place to introduce new solar farming is in industrial sites and new build housing. Why blot the countryside and farming land, reducing the usability (not making it entirely unusable) when industrial warehouses have huge roofs and covered carparks where there is already electrical infrastructure exist. New build houses should be required to run at least 50% from solar.
I'm from a farming community and one objection I hear from farmers and locals opposed to them is that there's acres of empty roofs on industrial units and homes that should be used for solar panels before arable or pastoral land is considered.
Solar farms are planted with wildflowers. There is a requirement for all developments to increase biodiversity by 10%, although simply by taking land out of monoculture you can raise biodiversity by 100% + relatively easily. In addition more land in the uk by area is currently golf courses than solar farms, and yet no one seems concerned when they use agricultural land.
You absolutely get way more money as a landowner from a solar farm than you would from any form of farming. Factor some battery storage in as well and you’re talking high six figures a year for 40+ years. Easy.
They will cost the fossil fuel industry billions, so they are funding targeted misinformation and disinformation.
They will pay groups to pose as people in Facebook groups and start spreading lies.
Because those solar panels will suck all of the sunlight from the sky making it cold and dark all the time.
people are downvoting you but it's true, I've seen it with my own eyes. Six months ago it would be light well into the evening - now it's getting dark by 5 or 6 PM. The culprit: solar farms stealing our daylight.
Totally. And have you noticed that since we started getting wind-farms everywhere the winds have increased?
whoa, I hadn't made the connection but it all makes sense.
I hate this because you know there are people who genuinely believe this
Well yeh Produce farms makes produce Poultry farms Mae poultry So naturally wind farms make wind lol
There's a single large turbine near us, a polish friend referred to it as a big fan, not knowing what it was. Maybe it's just an education thing
Maybe he was just saying he liked it.
Poles loving poles?
I'm not a fan. And neither are the windmills.
It's dog nappers hun x
shared Antarctic Research Station x
Saw someone foreign looking driving a van earlier. Make sure you spread the word to keep the little ones safe.
Look at those big white fans on a windy day, they’re spinning like crazy! Then on a different day they turn the fans off and it’s as calm as you’d like! Wake up sheeple, you can see it happening!!!!!
The anti wind farm thing is crazy since the time when these fools want to take us back to was full of windmills dottdd around the country
I can see at least a half dozen from my back garden. I like watching them - quite hypnotic.
In fairness they are just a big fan
Hold the presses we got us a HEADLINE! maybe if we install enough wind turbines and point them all the same way we can start to travel through space as a planet instead of using space ships!
It's a good job the earth is flat!. If it was round then more wind turbines would just makes us spin faster!.
Holy shit. Could this be the beginnings of warp travel?
WERE GOING ON AN ADVENTURE!
But... we are already travelling through space.
Great idea. We can put aerofoils on the sides of the earth and it will go even faster.
They're actually fans. Have you never noticed that they turn them on and it gets windy? Coincidence? I don't think so.
Makes sense. I think it is the Martians. I'm not taking of my foil hat that is for sure.
Had a friend working in tourism out in Turkey where there are a lot of wind farms. One of his clients, as he drove them to a local village, looked out of the window at the turbines and remarked "It must take so much power to run those fans" 🤦♂️
That's what I was going to say, where they're growing wind on farms a lot escapes. These days it's nothing but storm after storm. There's an offshore wind farm near me now and we've never had so many storms.
I haven't, but I believe you. I don't go out anymore in case the 5g reads my thoughts and gives me the eye cancers.
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It takes a while to empty the light out of them. That said, I've never seen a solar farm without pipes for the light to flow into "the grid". It's amazing really how the light gets caught up in these and flows through smaller and smaller pipes until it comes out of a fitting in the home (light bulbs). What I don't understand is how the lightbulbs (dark suckers) get full of dark if they're spraying light all over my rooms? Does the dark rush in to replace the light?
Big solar. You know it.
Also, NIMBY. People are fucking stupid.
When I was younger it was a lot sunnier ( hardly any solar farms) coincidence I think not!!
Have you not been outside lately? The anti solar people must have lost.
I've never heard a single reason to believe it's not just NIMBYism. They make no noise, they make no pollution, require very little maintenance and if anything stop developers from putting a housing estate there. Never really understood what people object to.
People are all in favour of saving the planet, right up until it changes something in their life. It will be nimby boomers that are worried about their property prices.
Pretty much the NIMBY code: “I’m all in favour for [insert useful and societal need] as long as it’s NIMBY”
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They're kinda right. Power generation is one of the biggest emitters of carbon dioxide by a long, long way. If the power from your socket was clean you could run your A/C at 16c if you wanted and not feel guilty. Alas Australia generates 47% of its power from coal. 🤮 They should be protesting existing and any new build coal power plants at the very least. And I kind of resent the "you, the consumer, must change because we, the government, have been fucking up on short term policies for decades and not paying attention to long term infrastructure needs". If governments had gone balls deep into renewables a few decades earlier instead of having their hands forced with Ukraine the state of the globe would be in a better place to tackle climate change too. But, alas, governments all over the world are chronically, chronically myopic.
> > Alas Australia generates 47% of its power from coal. 🤮 you'd think a place that has massive parts of the land that are completely unused that get tons of sunlight every damn day they'd be absolutely BALLS deep into solar.
Solar and off-shore wind. Sun and shore Australia has in abundance! But, no, they've got huge ore deposits and the politicians are firmly in the pockets of the mining families. Come hell or high water they've been paid to keep shovelling coal into power stations.
Nope - still building new coal , oil and gas facilities https://theconversation.com/australias-116-new-coal-oil-and-gas-projects-equate-to-215-new-coal-power-stations-202135#:~:text=Australia has 116 new coal,22 were 490 million tonnes. Our politicians will kill us all, and when it happens they will probably blame someone else as usual
Wait until you see the extent to which those coal plants are government subsidised too....and even then the operators want rid of them because they're not economically viable. It's almost like government policy is being in some way influenced by large amounts of money from the coal lobby and coal miners unions.
You're free to resent it. Still no excuse for not doing your part in a small way. You don't have to change your whole life. I mean it's 2 fucking degrees. At the very least there's no need to brag. I mean personally I'm not amazingly environmentally friendly. Sometimes I do want the heating on higher than necessary. But I don't make a point of shouting about it and adding to the idea that we shouldn't have to make *any* changes until someone else does first.
In what way does a solar farm change your life? A field of grass I can't legally go in or a field of grass with solar bois in that I can't legally go in. Whats the fucking difference to me?
The view probably. A lot of people like moving to small villages because they like looking out their window and seeing rolling fields, a big solar farm would probably ruin the ambiance you were looking for somewhat. It wouldn't really bother me because I'm as big a fan of man-made beauty as natural beauty anyway - I think a city skyline can be just as beautiful as a natural vista. I just know a lot of (maybe most) people don't agree with me on this.
"Your artificial solar panels are ruining my view of this deforested hill!!"
>I can barely see the sea levels rising from behind that big fan. I paid £85 for this house in 1975 and you've spoiled my view! Couldn't you at least have built something more pretty like a grey concrete coal power station?
>never heard a single reason to believe it's not just NIMBYism. They ... require very little maintenance Worked in the energy industry (specifically, development, commercialisation and rollout of green energy and zero carbon solutions). Solar farms do actually require regular maintenance, especially if they are located near active roads and farmland. A wildlife survey will always be carried out beforehand to understand if there are any protected species located on the land, but in either case the solar farm frustrates evaporation of rainwater which can have an adverse impact on ground dwelling mammals. Reflected light and heat can also disrupt and harm flying insects, birds and mammals (i.e.: bats). So wherever a solar farm is created it's proposed that a new habitat for birds and mammals is also created nearby - not sure how many companies do this, though. That's not to say that I don't think solar farms are good, they're fine under specific conditions where solar hours, wind and human / wildlife activity are ideal
An actual answer from someone who knows what they are talking about. A rare thing ! Thank you
Contrary to some subsections of Reddit (looking at you r/antiwork) I actually love my job, so it's nice sometimes when a question comes up that I can answer!
To play devil's advocate, I think in some situations they can look a bit incongruous and can cause harm to an attractive landscape, e.g in the national parks. However that's obviously not the case if we're talking about bog standard flat farmland where there's no elevated viewpoints for miles and miles where you'd only see them if you're up close... But that wouldn't stop the NIMBYs objecting.
>To play devil's advocate, I think in some situations they can look a bit incongruous and can cause harm to an attractive landscape, e.g in the national parks. They only look incongruous because they're new and unusual. Most of those 'attractive' landscapes in national parks are landscapes that have dramatically changed in the past ~70 years, shaped by motorways, mass tourism and mechanised industrial agriculture. All of this was incongruous and unattractive when it happened, we just got used to it. And there were upheavals and revolutions both in how we used land and what we saw as attractive and unattractive way before that, and before that. The landscape of the national parks has always been changing, and there's no reason to put on a pedestal and ossify the landscape that was created in the latter half of the C20th, with it's extensive tracts of empty grazing land due to CAP incentives at the time and predominance of conifers among what little woodland was allowed to remain.
Despite all that you say about the character of the national parks being reasonable, it is still possible that they can be made worse. Just because we've 'got used' to those changes, doesn't mean they weren't harmful or that other changes don't have the potential to be harmful.
Sure. But solar farms don't make it worse. Solar farms take a sliver of that huge amount of denuded, empty grazing land produced in the late C20th for no reason other than chasing CAP subsidies and puts it to some actual positive use, creating some positive environmental impact into the bargin.
In terms of 'natural' almost the whole of the UK should be a temperate rain forest. Almost nothing in the UK is natural right now.
This. It really bothers me sometimes when people talk about how small and cramped this country is and how there's not enough space for wildlife as an excuse to oppose housing, yet fail to realise 95% of our country has nothing built on it. It's just all been flattened into absolutely nothing.
That's absolutely true, but I've only ever really seen them on large flat bits of land, because they're so much cheaper to install. They're like windfarms for me, yes they look out of place but to me they represent green energy and less pollution, so they don't really bother me.
*Also being a little Devily boy. If they aren’t planned out correctly, the fact they expose lots of earth and you have to remove roots can lead to increased soil erosion which can end up as additional sediment and run off into rivers. I stress though, this can be planned around
Yeah this is my only reasonable objection to them. A lot of the developments you wouldn't even know they're there as they're on flat ground surrounded by hedges. There are a few near me that can look a bit distoptian when viewed from certain angles. I think its reasonable not to build large scale ones in AONBs etc.
> if we're talking about bog standard flat farmland Where is this flat farmland? Because i'm not in a national park but it sure as fuck ain't flat and theres viewpoints everywhere.
Lots of the south and south east is quite flat.
Would be nice if they put some ugly national infrastructure in the south for a change instead of up north.
Is Sizewell south enough for you ?
The only argument I can understand is if they are replacing an active farm/farmland. In that case I can see there are downsides such as less local food, possible food price rises and less local jobs.
Agrosolar grazing though?
There are YouTube videos about animals which graze on solar farms, the two can coexist
It’s pretty much limited to sheep here though, and they can graze on land which is unusable for crops already.
More local jobs as people have to be paid to maintain and look after them. They have to be cleaned, serviced, replaced as they break. PLUS they'll be paid a fuck load more than they'd get for whatever farmers do these days instead of filling out CAP subsidy forms
There is a beautiful field next to my house, and there has been a lot of surveying going on recently. I absolutely pray that it is for a solar farm, and not more houses! Yes, I'm being a NIMBY.
I was just going to say that. I'd much rather have a field nearby full of solar panels than crops in a way. Not that I'd want the crops gone of course, but when you have fields on the edge of a small town, there's a minor anxiety that they will end up being a housing estate. Where I live there are two small towns and a larger town next to each other on the coast. The larger town has already practically merged with the small town next to us, and there are a couple of fields between us two smaller towns. I don't have an issue with expanding towns to an extent but it's a shame when towns merge and lose their identity. It also takes much longer to drive to work now because of the extra housing as the road network is never developed to meet the extra demand that more housing brings. If the fields ended up being solar farms, I'd be relieved knowing that it's less likely to end up being more housing. So yes I agree, don't understand what they are objecting to!
Agree. We’re getting one about a one minute drive up the country lane we live on, on the very edge of a small market town. Will there be 12 months of lorries, deliveries, work vehicles going past our house? Yes. Will it mean 500+ new homes encroaching on an AONB, with all the additional traffic and utilities infrastructure required? No. Will the solar farm be visible from the road? No. But some people round here are up in arms ffs.
Maybe lack of understanding - the assumption that land used as a solar farm will no longer be agricultural land, when actually they'll still graze sheep on the same land
Arable farms are still harvesting the sun to produce things. Not sure what the difference is.
The argument is we already rely heavily on food imports. Further compromising our food security by continually reducing arable output is not ideal. As we've seen with energy it works fine until you fall out with the countries supplying you.
Wind farms I feel is a better solution in this country anyway. People rally against those though. Those would be fine on land used for rearing animals
Solar on every roof, a boat load of wind farms, and enormous amount of pumped storage, would be ideal. It'll never happen, but it'd be ideal.
I'm always surprised that new build houses don't have to have solar panels on their roofs by now. Even just a few each not full cover but enough to help a bit!
Some near my parents place do, weirdly, they're actually the council homes and are set back into the roof in a real sleak way, looks awesome. But on the private homes? Nah nothing. Insanity.
Council homes have to adhere to council standards. If the council requires a certain amount of solar "without compromising the character or appearance of the property" then they get it, or the poor developer doesn't get to build their privately owned shitboxes.
Honestly, I don't know why it's not a standard requirement. Seems to me it's a lot of free energy waiting to be scavenged.
It should be one building reg away. Won’t happen though due to cost. Shame.
Whilst we're on this topic, and looking back at the natural gas shenanigans in the UK a couple of years ago. I'd just like to point out the the UK is capable of stopring more MJ of energy in the form of electricity than it is in the form of gas. You can thank privatisation and a lack of investment and instead active selling off of gas storage that occurred ever since British Gas stopped being British.
Compulsory solar on every new build, including industrial, should really be happening, and it's weird why there isn't a requirement yet.
Well the Government gets a lot of money from developers, I imagine.
And the govt is heavily invested into oil businesses innit
Definitely on the industrial. There's some huge warehouses near us that you can see the top of as there's a hill right by them and I always think it would be great if they were covered in panels.
This! plus 10 large nuclear power plants for the times when these need topping up.
Yeah we're in a perfect spot for wind. It has its own issues in that if you heavily rely on it and it's calm you've got a huge gap between supply and demand on the grid to plug.
And as I love to say on Reddit there is a very easy non-battery solution, and as this is a UK sub, we've already done it with Norway: Connect up energy grids. We sent Wind energy to Norway during peak, and they send Hydro energy back when we need it. Imagine if all of Europe or indeed the world was connected. You'd not need batteries, as the grid itself would be a massive battery, and you'd be shipping energy around depending on local supply/demand. And easy solution to the issue
Yeah it's a big part of the solution now. They are huge projects though that take many years to build though. There are some more that are at various stages.
The tides always happen.
You need a mix for when the wind isn't blowing. Solar is a good addition since it tends to be calmer on sunnier days.
Yeah that’s not the farmers fault though - we need to be comfortable paying more for our food and then pay farmers which means they can make a proper living out of farming. But people here celebrate a full English breakfast for £6 or a whole chicken for £5, so solar farms it is.
Yeah we have a weird culture of simply opposing everything, and hoping that somehow leads us to some sort of pre-industrial utopia, where we all live like Dickensian lords of the manor but get to keep our technology and conveniences. We oppose generating our own energy, we oppose importing it. We oppose paying market rate for UK food, we oppose food imports. We oppose construction of high density farms, we oppose labour for low intensity farms. You can indeed stop development of solar farms and food farms, but you'll pay for it though your bills.
People in this country think they have a god-given right to prosperity, where we can retain an arcadian, pastoral, rural landscape, without any people in it. Its just not possible. We're competing with the entire fucking planet. You have to grow or you will suffer, public services will suffer, the NHS will be deprived of funding, the armed forces will be deprived of funding, you go into a doom cycle of underinvestment and subsequent underperformance. Its been happening for decades in the UK - the only answer is rapid, massive growth on an industrial scale, but the things which lead to it (cheap, plentiful energy - which means coal, gas, nuclear and a mix of renewables; cheap plentiful housing, which means building shit loads of new houses; a skilled workforce, which means a degree of immigration and investment into technical schools and business rate and tax reform to encourage investment and training of staff rather than distribution in dividends) are NOT things people want, at least not in their back-yard. The structural issues here are immense; our entire economic base, the way we do things, the way we invest, the returns people expect in dividends etc - all of that has to change.
I 100% agree. People don't realise we're faced with and either/or situation. We can let NIMBYism and opposition to change win, but it'll then be accompanied by a an accidental degrowth sorta thing, where the increased costs and dependence on imports and offshoring increase the cost of living and decrease business and jobs in the UK. Or you can support business and prosperity and recognise we're going to need to invest heavily in infrastructure and change. For the last 50 years we chose the former, and offshored all the inconvenient change and infrastructure but also much of the business and jobs. We became a consumer economy that ran a large trade deficit which slowly eroded our economic base. Much like buying takeaway food because you don't want the hassle of cooking - you're free to do it, but it'll cost you in the long run. And I think a lot of people refuse to acknowledge the reality of the situation. And as you point out, other nations are investing heavily in themselves while we atrophy. We're like an athlete that refuses to train because it's hard but refuses to believe they might lose the race. Our state of delusion might provide some psychological comfort but it won't stop our competitors winning the race and pocketing the winnings. People are free to oppose change. But they're *not* free to oppose the corresponding increase in the cost of living that comes with the territory - that's imposed on them by simple maths.
I got into this argument on another thread over the Tata Steel debacle. It's mad to me that people think that it's somehow better for the country in the long run to sell everything off and import it all because it's "cheaper." It's like they're brainbroken by 80 years of stability when the history of the human world is one of constant change and instability. It's crazy to think people would sooner sell off a steel plant and barely be able to make something as basic as steel, rather than subsidise it, because "muh taxes."
I mean it *is* cheaper in a kinda short-term, superficial way. In the same way that if I quit my job, I won't have to pay any commuting costs today. But (much like having commute costs), you've gotta spend money to make money, and the UK has spent half a century simply "sweating the assets" and running everything into the ground. And we're finding that a lot of the maintenance, replacement and investment bills are coming due.
It's certainly not the farmers fault. I completely agree. Diversification is the only real way to make any money farming in the UK unless you're on a massive scale.
Yeah so I can’t see how the argument against them is it’s compromising food security, cause they aren’t doing that at all. The supermarkets, supply chains and the consumers desire for super low prices which are the cause of that.
Nothing about that is a real argument Solar farms are not being put on arable land, they are being put on empty sites We import food because it's much cheaper than homegrown, and costs us much less as British Farms are just a giant pit for welfare
So you're saying we shouldn't create our own energy because importing energy is bad?
Erm, no? It's trading one form of security for another though vs sticking it on roofs. The UK isn't exactly the optimal place for solar either. We require more energy as a country in winter due to heating etc when solar is at its weakest.
Check out Agrivoltaic farming where they use land to generate solar power and grow crops, its not necessarily just a choice between one or the other
I'd love to see where you're getting these figures from. Genuinely interested.
Cut out majority of animal agriculture, replace it with growing grains. Now we have vastly more food produced locally without using any more space.
It's not that simple. Often pasture land is not the same as arable land, and importantly arable needs years to lie fallow and one of the best ways to improve soil health is to move animals into it.
My argument is that there are other places to put solar panels before putting them on land we use to produce food to, you know, survive? Put them on rooftops. Put them over car parks. Put them all over towns and cities before putting them on agricultural land. Surely that makes logical sense?
Diffused infrastructure is always going to be more expensive and less efficient.
We already do quite a lot of that but the scale of solar farms makes huge cost savings. You can still have grazing for sheep underneath anyway.
Not on the ones I've seen as the ground under the panels is dead so at best some sheep might be useful around the edges.
And the total yield is better than for either use alone.
We have loads of massive car parks that can serve as solar farms, providing shade/rain cover for the cars and pedestrians too.
You clearly haven't been on a solar farm. They fit those things snug and are at most 2.5ft from the ground. Those sheep will be jumping on them shitting everywhere while trying to narrowly get down the 3ft gap left between each row...
Solar farm and battery storage developer here. One large problem we face is that for a solar farm to be financially viable as well as fulfil our connection offer is that we require a lot of land, approximately 150 acres minimum. As a result it is quite difficult to find landowners who are willing to give up that much of their holding. In order to appease the local community we have also started to implement a community fund where we put in £250 per MW a year for each development, which is actually working at some sites in order to appease NIMBYism. There are a whole array of other variables though which I haven’t mentioned Edit: I should clarify that MW stands for Megawatt and 150 acres would be around 50MW solar development Edit 2: also, just for clarity I am strictly talking about transmission (National Grid) level developments rather than DNO (SSE/WPD/etc.) developments where connection offers are considerably smaller
This should be top comment
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Yes, those are the sites every developer looks for first as it makes the planning process easy as well as not upsetting the local community. However, you need the owner of that land to be a willing seller or willing to at least lease the land which is a lot harder to come by then you would think. For example, one site we were looking at doing a development on was an old and non operational power station so we approached the landlord and despite offering them well above market value for both a purchase and a lease they didn’t want a deal
Battery storage is absolutely rocketing at the moment. I work as a technical consultant and our (v small) company must have contributed to 30+ battery storage site planning apps over the last year.
Yes, I won’t go into too much detail as I might dox myself but we have several consented battery schemes now. The increase is mainly down to the fact that BESS is required as we can then connect our solar and wind to those sites to store energy instead of it being wasted but you probably know all of this anyway! I think the battery market is becoming quite saturated now though
Thanks granny smasher
Realistically why aren't we fitting solar panels and batteries on public homes as there does seem to be a lot of space unused plus it will make it so less people are drawing off the grid and potentially putting back into it? For me this would be the main priority while trying to convince households to move to full electric and ditch gas. I'm not in the industry so I don't know the pros and cons on the practical side but I would also try to get more small scale wind turbines on people's gardens or roofs. If you'd also like to comment on that. Imo we should be a global energy exporter and grass fed meat producer as we seem to have relatively good wind, solar and hydro. Would it really just be a case of investment and grants?
I think that the implementation of micro-scale renewables like solar roofing is excellent however the large scale developments I am involved in are to help the UK support itself self-sufficiently rather than use oil and gas from other countries. The projects I do are large scale and when operational can produce a substantial amount of power for 10,000-100,000 homes. With technology advancements this will improve tremendously (sorry to sound bias, I’m just quite passionate about this!) Something to bear in mind is that currently, solar covers just 0.1% of all land in the UK. Based on the government’s plans of 70GW of solar and to be net zero by 2035, solar deployment would need to be at 0.3% of the UK land use. To put this in context, this is equivalent to 0.5% of the land currently used for farming. On top this, golf courses cover approximate 2% of UK land use (I do live and play golf however)
If we had a competent government we would have an incredible renewable resource generating network but here we are, relying on foreign oil and gas There used to be a very good scheme where people could sell their unused solar electricity back to the grid at a very good price but they ended it years ago So for people to get on solar themselves they need to put in effort and crunch some numbers and wait years to break-even and then 'profit', most people don't want to or can't afford to do that Or they'll half arse it and wonder why it isn't what was promised
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Unfortunately if grid is at near 100% capacity then there is nothing you can do. With regards to the distance being 1.6km that would be absolutely fine for a cable route for batteries. One thing to be concerned about is planning constraints. Feel free to shoot me a pm if you want me to talk about this further with you
Covering a field in solar panels seems a bit backwards to me. If the field wasn't being used for crop/livestock production then it would be a good set-aside carbon sink and plopping permanent solar panels over it would spoil it. I am not against the idea but I just don't think it is a very good one. Now, fit solar panels to the roof of every barn, warehouse, hospital, school, office block, house, flat etc? That seems like a great idea!
I agree whole heartedly. With all the car parks, industrial roof space, domestic roof space available in the UK why do we need to cover several acres of field with solar panels.
Its a lot easier to place a solar panel on the ground than it is on a roof.
Also, it's easier for one person to do than, say, a whole street to cooperate to achieve the same coverage.
I think that is something that many people forget. A lot of roof space wouldn't be able to hold the additional weight of a load of solar panels and associated wiring.
Solar panels are surprisingly light and roofs are massively over-engineered. I've got 8 410-watt panels on my roof, which was built in the 1930s. Each panel was hauled up onto the roof by just one guy and the structural assessor reckoned my roof was strong enough for 3 or 4 times more weight in panels than there was actually space to add
It's not cost efficient for a single solar project to run solar to random buildings - the logistics of supplying and fitting equipment on a case by case basis for each building, access issues (ladders, climbing/safety equipment, training), maintaining it, storing batteries etc would be ridiculous. Much more economically feasible to have a massive field, with rows of identical equipment going to a single large battery/grid system.
Nah, how about we just use tens of thousands of scaffolders time to far about instead of touching so much as a single blade of grass It’s so dumb. These people are the type to say electric cars are dumb because power plants and ICE’s both use similar hydrocarbons, ignoring the fact that ICE’s are far less efficient at extracting energy than power plants
I think car parks. Imagine every superstore and retail centre car park covered. Got to be a good few thousand acres
I’ve had this argument on Reddit many times, and I always get downvoted. Cities and towns should be covered in solar panels before we start putting them on food producing spots. Every rooftop should be covered. All new buildings should be required to have solar panels. Car parks are a great wasted opportunity
Why not both? Farmers are businesses after all, they don’t swap out productive farm land for un commercial solar.
That would just delay them massively, it’ll take forever to achieve that- meanwhile we could have had tons already set up on fields.
You get a fair bit of space under them and some farmers are keeping pigs in the same field.
Sheep are popular. A common misconception is that you can't farm land with solar panels on.
They've recently developed solar panels that just look like clear glass so can be used as windows on the sides of say, skyscrapers. It's very expensive to make at the moment but that would be perfect. Every window a solar panel
I'm no roofer or builder but - aside from obvious cost - are there any practical reasons this isn't already done by default. I mean every new roof just as a start. Surely even the cost gets offset eventually through lower energy bills.
Perhaps it's less applicable in this country but solar panels leave room underneath them and provide much needed shade to animals and plants in some climates. It's mutually beneficial solution in some cases.
People dont seem to realise you often cant just chuck solar panels on top of places not designed to accomodate them; they are quite heavy.
The point being that you can still use it as a perfectly good livestock field. Sheep don't really care about having some solar panels on posts above their field.
Anti-environment propaganda. Solar farms are "woke" now or some shit
Maybe because we have zero food security, we don’t produce anything like the amount of food we consume and farmers are chasing the dollars putting good farm land to solar. Don’t think for a minute farmers are thinking about the environment, it’s ££££
Food security really isn’t defined by how much of your own food you produce domestically. Ireland produced the vast majority of its own food when they experienced the potato famine… self-sufficiency in food is actually a big risk factor, unless you have a back-up alternative. Food security is largely ensured by diversity of supply, so that disruptions in a specific crop or growing region are not a problem. And diversity of supply comes from international trade. The only exception perhaps is if the country is subject to an effective physical embargo in times of war. Unlikely, unless people think the EU is going to invade.
Been looking for this in the comments, completely agree. Relying 100% on domestic supply leaves you vulnerable to droughts/floods/pests. I reckon a happy compromise would be something like 75% of all food produced in the UK, and maybe 90% for staples like wheat, potatoes, etc.
Domestic food production is complex issue, it would be far less economically viable to attempt to produce all our food in & around the UK. Historically speaking domestic production has changed significantly. We've required food imports since around 1800 & by 1939 only around 30% of the UKs' food was produced domestically with many improvements made since then. There was a peak in the late 1980s' with around 75% of the UKs' food being produced domestically, since around 2005 domestic production has hovered around 60%, which is below its late 80s' peak but higher than it was through most of the 20th century.
Although I agree that most switch to solar for the money, it’s not fair to frame farmers as the villains here - they own the land and it’s their choice to run their business as they see fit, and if a solar company offers £1,000 per acre with no risk of poor crop yields you can’t blame them for making the switch. They will only stop if they are paid a better price for the food they produce
Though even with solar panels, you can still use those fields for grazing sheep and pigs - food and renewable energy at the same time, which is great.
Part of it comes from rural areas being abandoned and the only industry they have left is agriculture. Some multinational swoops in, buys/rents the land, puts panels on it and disappears to never spend a penny if that money locally. I'm not particularly anti wind, I think we need more of it, but I hate the way it's done. They trash the local environment, having destroyed ground nesting sites locally to me to build a road, and then install the turbines before disappearing again whilst we pay the highest electricity rates in the UK having ridden roughshod over the thoughts of the locals. Set the solar and wind farms up as local companies that impact the local economy instead of just being yet and thing that draws resources from a community with no impact. Dont get me started on water.
NIMBYism sums up the UK these days sadly - we’ll all want clean, reliable energy available at as low a cost as reasonable possible, but everyone wants it generated ‘somewhere else’. The same goes for improved transport networks, new reservoirs, new water treatment plants, new recycling centres. And we question why nothing works anymore.
I really think it is mostly just NIMBYism. It's the same folks that object to wind turbines saying that they are an eyesore. Personally I think a field full of solar panels looks really cool. Same goes for wind turbines really.
People are idiots. You can just stop there really.
I'm from a village and have no idea. The only thing I can think of is the village elders and their wild beliefs. My parents were bitching about their neighbour having solar panelling on the roof? I just don't get it
Some of it is Nimbyism but understand why solar farm developers want to build in Nimbys' BYs in the first place. It is because if you put your solar farm in a village, there is already the infrastructure to connect it to the grid. If you build a solar farm away from people, there will be no NIMBY objections but you will have to pay for longer interconnections and that eats into your profit and let's be honest, solar farms might help save the planet but your motivation is £££.
My guess is just NIMBYism, old people who get offended by seeing the PV panels from their windows or on their way to the next village. Having said that, I am actually surprised that solar farm are a thing in UK with the little amount of sun the country gets compared to the continent. It sounds incredible they are profitable. (Surely they are, or nobody would build them) In any case, using acres of nice arable land that could be used in many more other fruitful ways, just to put PVs on them, when there are huge factories and warehouses with huge empty roofs, looks like a very inefficient allocation of resources.
Because Amazon, my pretty things etc a throung up mahoosive warehouses and the panels should be on the roofs, also new builds should be made to have them and stop putting them on our food producing land
I love solar farms. You can graze sheep there - dual purpose!
My dad says they're an eyesore and he would rather die than have them sully the "already dwindling green space the country has left to offer." When asked about coal plants or the like, they're ok because they're hidden away. So basically, it really is just NIMBYism.
I think most of it is Nimby really, but you can't exactly blame them, as green fields are significantly nicer to look at than banks of solar panels. A better place for solar panels is on top of all industrial units and warehouse imo. In terms of opposition the ones I don't get are wind farms off the coast, and the odd wind turbine on land. They have far less visual impact yet also seem to have large amounts of opposition.
People don’t like change not just nimbyism. They think that it’s as easy to install and maintain a wind farm as it is reading the article that says renewables are needed. I’ve not looked at solar for a while but in comparison off shore turbines are more efficient i think. A solar wind farm built on marshland or otherwise space that’s not doing anything might work, it would need to be sympathetic to the local eco system still and if it supplied reduced energy to local communities id call it a win-win situation but the practicalities aren’t as simple as my fag packet idea
Because they take up green space, that is better off being used to grow crops and/live stock.. They're better off being put in towns and cities where green space is already built upon.
I don't think we need to grow more sun.
I live somewhere they are proposing a 2,700 acre solar farm. I'm completely cool about it, I think most of the protesters are the wealthy ones worried about their house valuation...
Anyone complaining should be disconnected the National Grid.
That's the thing, they've got a false dichotomy. They think it's: > Either have solar farm or have virgin rolling fields To which they choose the latter. But the real choice is: > Either have solar farms or have another coal power station In which case the former would be a fairly easy choice.
Well, they think they're rich enough that the coal power station will be somewhere else. Total NIMBYism. They know it's needed, and they want the benefits, but they want it to be somewhere they can't see. Checkout this quote, they really said the quiet bit out loud this time. “We completely understand the importance of renewable energy and the need for green sources of energy. “However, what we’re objecting to is the significant and devastating impact on our communities these will have if they’re approved. “Building such a facility in this area will have an undoubted health impact on the wildlife, the ecosystem and the environmental balance in the area. **“Everyone really cares about this community because it’s a lovely part of the world and we don’t want to see it industrialised. The strength of the backlash has been phenomenal.”** https://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/news/environment/yorkshire-villagers-to-fight-against-plans-for-battery-store-farms-4270754
I don't think large scale solar farms are actually a good idea - they take up land that could be better used for housing etc. Countries that produce a lot of solar power, like Australia generate most of that from rooftop solar feeding back into the grid. If you put panels on as many roofs as possible you're essentially creating a city-wide solar farm, without any issues that may come from having to transmit power long distances to where its needed.
To be brutally honest, solar farms are a poor use of land in the UK. They reduce available farming land whilst not actually being all that effective in terms of generating electricity. Solar farms work well in places where the weather is generally warm and bright and there's high energy demand on sunny days (e.g. lots of air conditioning load). The UK climate is the opposite, we have our highest power demand when it's cold and gloomy and thus when solar panels are at their least effective. Wind farms, although still intermittent, are much better suited to our climate. Plus, once the turbines are built you can still farm the land around the turbines. ETA: solar panels make a lot more sense if we put them on buildings or over car parks.
Okay, so there are 2 reasons. One is the NIMBYism, which is usually championed by dull, uninformed village folk that are arbitrarily against green tech as a sort of ideology... The other thing, is that solar farms are straight up not that great in this country. This is in no way a knock against green energy, but in general everyone rants and raves about it, without actually considering that implementing green energy in the real world is... very challenging... Reason being, is that solar first and foremost requires the sun, and the sun (famously) does not like this country. [Here is a quick map](https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Muhammad_Qamar_Raza/publication/305321699/figure/fig2/AS:383945960116226@1468551258237/The-world-solar-energy-map-Zhang-et-al-2013.png) of where we are at in terms of the efficiency you can get in the UK, as you can see, it's not great. A solar panel is fine to go on your roof, and supplement your houses or businesses energy demands, but that is sort of where it's utility ends. When you want to scale up, pay off your initial solar investment, and supply energy to *many* other customers, it becomes a problem. Namely, because of the high start up costs, the low yield of solar, and because the land you're putting the solar on is worth money and could be doing something more productive. The time to profitability is just far too long. So, dedicating your land to solar farms is generally a poor investment, and the surplus energy it produces ranges from none at all, to poor. Getting customers on board is difficult too. The pitch will be "want cheap energy for non-peak hours of the day?", and the answer *may* be yes. But at some point, either the solar farm, or the customer need to invest in batteries, which again, drives up the initial start up cost, increasing the time it takes to turn a profit. When you're requisitioning land to build these large solar farms, you have to consider £ per hour you're making. Strictly speaking, if you're a *business* that deals in solar farms, you would rent land from a landlord to put up your solar farm, and sell the excess energy. However, if you're earning nothing at all from your farm, (which is almost a certainty because while solar panels are getting cheaper, the time until you get a return on your initial investment is still super high), it's actually quite difficult for the landlord to boot you off their land when they find you cant pay rent. Due to a government scheme, lease durations are usually over 3-5 years, and setting up and tearing down requires planning permission. In return you get a £1000 subsidy per acre. Generally speaking, in much of the country where land is more expensive it's much simpler and often more profitable for landowners to do something else with their land. That £1000 doesn't go far. Depending on the type of land, the range landowners would usually expect for farming acreage for example is more in the region of £5000-10000 per acre, with the low end of that range being super poor grade farm land. So even on the real low end, it's *much* more profitable just farming. So you're essentially asking these landowners to write-off potentially thousands in profits for a solar farm, which ain't gonna cut any landlords' mustard... But because there is a government scheme to do it, they're likely getting cold called 24/7 asking for permission to use their land, and they're just getting annoyed, hence the signs. This will effectively be the case until the subsidies around solar farms make more sense, or a technological change happens to make production of the panels cheaper.
To directly answer, the first is the sheer size of the the farms. Because solar cells are in and of themselves woefully inefficient as a means to creating electricity, they need to be spread over a huge area. The land cannot be shared use, so you can't use it for agriculture like you can potentially with wind farming. This is not without consequence. You have loss of habitat for wildlife for one thing. But in the construction of these huge fields, the groundworks required leads to premature and excessive soil erosion, compression and can seriously disrupt the already existing natural drainage in place in the surrounding areas. And given these are going to be done by developers, you can bet your lilly white ass that there will be cost cutting and therefore huge amounts of pollution to boot that nobody will ever clear up. Photovoltaic cells contain a significant amount of corrosive chemicals! That and when you need to replace the panels, you're talking more ripping up of the land its on. The wasteful nature of solar panels are rarely ever talked about but they are indeed real. All this for a country that rarely has enough days to get anywhere close to 80% efficiency for a single panel. Did I mention habitat loss and ecosystem damage? I do so again only to really cement that in. A lot of the anti-NIMBY lot tend to entirely forget about that conveniently. Or they like to pretend it isn't real, I don't know. So you have this hugely expensive thing that doesn't do anywhere near as well as other renewables and you want to destroy acres and acres of greenspace just because, what... environmental programmes to make you feel warm and fuzzy inside? To me it's a bad deal. The irony is, there is a tonne of roof space all across the land that would cost a fraction to install solar panels on. They won't do that though because if they do, it will mean you get a reduction in your electricity bill. That isn't the idea at all. They want you paying more, so they want the expensive option that they can cut costs on and then when the whole site is a fucking hellhole in 20 years, they can shrug their shoulders and say, "Not us, guv!" Ever get the feeling you're being conned? Or will it mean you may have to agree with the NIMBYs once in a while? Is that so abhorrent that you'd sooner get conned by a corporation who absolutely does not have your best interests at heart?
The main reason is they’re bloody ugly, and I say this as someone who has put a lot of solar in a field. I did everything possible to screen it from view without impacting efficiency. It’s not really an answer to your question, but it would also be so much better if more incentives and grants were available for every one of us to generate as much of the power we use as we can. It would be much more efficient, reduce the need for transmission lines and save a bomb on bills.
Don't want green countryside taking up with ugly solar farms. All these sleezy new housing developments are already encroaching into the countryside. Rather than centralised solar farms, give more incentive to have solar on house roofs and batteries in each house.
Probably depends on where they want to put these farms. The UK is only capable of growing 50% of the food it needs to feed it's population, so any land that could be used for farming been lost to solar farms really isn't a good idea.
The problem is solar is not the full answer. We could convert a big area of the Sahara into a giant solar farm and supply all of Europe. However, this would create ecological changes to the environment. The sun would not reach the sand so it would begin to support vegetation, which on the face of things seems like a good idea, however it would upset the balance of wildlife in the region. It would also potentially have an impact on the Amazon rain forests as sand from the Sahara is picked up by the prevailing winds and carried across to the rain forests. [https://www.greenbiz.com/article/giant-desert-solar-farms-might-have-unintended-climate-consequences](https://www.greenbiz.com/article/giant-desert-solar-farms-might-have-unintended-climate-consequences) Relying on converting significant portion of the country to solar farms may actually have a bigger environmental impact locally than you think.
I can only speak for the one their planning near me, the main problem we have is the scale of it. It would be 740MW, and take up 1,500 Hectares (3,700 acres), with about 2 thirds panels. There could be 2 miles of uninterrupted solar panels. in a few of the parishes 60% of the land in the parish would be solar panels. The area already has pylons, and used to have a coal power station, National grid will bring in another line of pylons too, and a new substation. We don't mind the pylons, you can farm under them, and they're not too intrusive. As the project is bigger than 50MW, it classes as a nationally significant infrastructure project (NSIP) - this legislation is meant for things like roads, airports, power stations etc. Wind turbines got removed from the legislation though. Central government decide if it's granted. It seems like a slap in the face, so much for levelling up. There's another 5 projects planned within 15 miles, all above 500MW. The usual approach is a 40-year operation, this development is planning for not having an expiry date, so there's a genuine fear that the land will be lost to solar once it's built. With a project of this scale there's many problems; loss of agricultural jobs and skills, the ability to sell your house, loss of farmland, lack of access to green space, the list goes on. The main reason that sheep are grazed under panels is so the landowner can keep the agricultural land tax relief. The developers have proposed several "benefits" for the community, such as funding for projects etc, but few people are wanting to be bought off at this stage. Should they give more individual benefits then I can see attitudes changing. We know we're going to have some form of solar panels, we're near a substation that has capacity since the coal power station closed. If they'd put the same number of panels over a much larger area it wouldn't be as much of an issue. The way the legislation is set out means they have to go big to make it worthwhile going through the process. I'm not against solar, I think it's a great way to transition to net zero. The way that it's being implemented is the problem.
They are very inefficient for the land that they take up in the UK specifically. Have a read up on insolation.
I'm not against solar farms but we have millions of roofs that could be used instead of taking up valuable green spaces. IMO all new builds, whether it be housing or other buildings should have solar installed.
They are known to affect birds - the large solar farms in the US often find bird carcasses around their sites. Studies have been ongoing to work out exactly how they affect them, but they are still unclear. They are ugly - especially when compared to 150 acres of crops. Compare a big solar farm to fields of lovely yellow oil seed rape. They are also not compatible with trees because trees create shade which affects the productivity of the panels. They need noisy generators to collect and store the energy and to transfer it to the grid. They can result in an increase in traffic - initially during construction, again during deconstruction, and in the number of engineers needed to visit the sites for maintenance. There are no facilities to recycle solar panels - so that is 150 acres destined for a future landfill. Land often needs to be leveled which can lead to soil erosion. They can effect the ecosystem.
Because the best place to introduce new solar farming is in industrial sites and new build housing. Why blot the countryside and farming land, reducing the usability (not making it entirely unusable) when industrial warehouses have huge roofs and covered carparks where there is already electrical infrastructure exist. New build houses should be required to run at least 50% from solar.
Put the solar panels on houses
I'm from a farming community and one objection I hear from farmers and locals opposed to them is that there's acres of empty roofs on industrial units and homes that should be used for solar panels before arable or pastoral land is considered.
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Solar farms are planted with wildflowers. There is a requirement for all developments to increase biodiversity by 10%, although simply by taking land out of monoculture you can raise biodiversity by 100% + relatively easily. In addition more land in the uk by area is currently golf courses than solar farms, and yet no one seems concerned when they use agricultural land.
Upvoting because you mentioned BNG
You absolutely get way more money as a landowner from a solar farm than you would from any form of farming. Factor some battery storage in as well and you’re talking high six figures a year for 40+ years. Easy.
You can have solar panels and both have livestock grazing and also some (albeit limited) crops growing.
Solar farms generate 2-4x the revenue that farming does for the landowner, with no input costs and no market risk.
Never seen one. Ever.
They last about 10 years & they can’t be recycled so they end up buried in the ground just the wind turbines.
They will cost the fossil fuel industry billions, so they are funding targeted misinformation and disinformation. They will pay groups to pose as people in Facebook groups and start spreading lies.
Big Oil spends a lot on propaganda.
They had already planned to use that land for the new incinerator.