Solar farms vs. farms (for food)

How’s this for a stumper?

The Toronto Star has an article about the debate about solar farm development  on prime agricultural land under the new Green Energy Act FIT rates.  Short summary, solar industry types (led by CanSIA) and farmers hoping to develop some of their land into solar farms are protesting rules for Feed-in tariffs that will restrict solar development on prime agricultural land.

Weirdly enough, it’s a debate where everyone is right, their position is reasonable and none of the claims really run counter to the others.  Strange.  This is my very over-simplified version of the positions and stakeholders:

Farmers: It’s their land and they can do what they damn well please with it.  If they can make more money by turning the land over to electrical production for 20-25 years, no one should have the right to stop them.  The land isn’t harmed, the soil and ground water isn’t contaminated, and the potential outcome of leaving the land fallow for that long could be to significantly improve the potential yield of the land in the future.

Solar Energy Industry Types: The amount of farm land that might end up being used for solar energy around 1/10th of 1%, but this represents the small number of very large scale projects that Ontario’s Solar Energy Industry really needs to develop the scale required to become internationally competitive.  Banning or limiting these projects will diminish the success of Ontario Solar companies and entrepreneurs, and it will cost Ontario many high value green jobs.

Government, Farm minded people & Environmentalists: Prime agricultural land should be used to grow food, solar energy development should take place elsewhere (rooftops, low quality land etc).  They want to avoid this:

Single Land Use - Solar Farm in Germany - Nearly total ground cover

When I first considered this, I thought that they should include an exemption for solar farm development that uses sun trackers – that is, allow this:

At first, my take was, allow this:

Dual Land Use - Solar Panels installed using sun trackers on a farm in Spain, farm is still producing food.

Trackers allow for the land to continue to be used for agriculture, can co-exist with pasture land easily, and are ideal for putting allot of solar power into small spaces like the wind-breaks between fields.  Also, they’re a fairly mature technology with lots of expired patents, so any metal shop that could make an automotive frame can make the things fairly easily.  Lots of the companies on the market don’t actually ship the trackers, they ship the controller that detects the sun and controls the movement, and licence the design and manufacturer to local contractors.

As an added benefit, you get significantly more power per day from the same panels because they’re kept at the optimum angle to the sun (where as fixed panels like the ones in the first picture are close to optimum only for an hour or so each day).  Field results from tracking vary, but 40% to 50%  more energy for the same panels is a safe number to use as a ball park when going from fixed to tracking systems.  With an efficient panel, the extra value of the energy can more than pay for the cost of installing and maintaining the panel, especially in Ontario with the feed-in tariff.

However, thinking on it a little more, I’m not sure I’d actually want to see an exemption specifically for trackers if the ban on farm development went through.

That puts the government in the position of picking and choosing technologies (and defining what is and isn’t a tracker) and it stifles innovation.  Instead, it seems reasonable to require that solar farm projects should not use more than a specific amount of any given farmer’s usable farm land.  Nobody would argue that a farmer shouldn’t have panels on his roof, and it follows that a small row of panels along the wind break between fields or a few sun trackers in among a cattle pasture wouldn’t be something we’d want to ban either.

But it’s less clear what the rule should be if a farmer with 200 arces wants to turn 4 of them into a solar farm.  It’s 2% of that farmer’s land, but could end up contributing significantly more than than 2% to his income.

It’s not a clear cut issue, and whatever the Ministry of Energy and Infrastructure decide, if they’re smart (they are) they’ll keep it simple, won’t pick and choose winners, technologies and won’t ban anything – rather, they’ll put a reasonable and transparent process where solar development on agricultural land is considered on a case by case basis, with clear guidelines of what the goals of the process are.  The occasional project that plans to completely cover hundreds of acres of farm land will know that it has a high bar to to jump, and the farmer than wants to turn a pasture into a little extra profit won’t have to worry.

Developing a Solar Farm Questions Part II

In my previous post I answered some questions people had about developing a solar farm, but in this post I’m going to take a different tack.  I’ve spoken to a few people over the last few months who fit this stereotype.  They have land, they think they can get some money, and they would like to see if developing a solar farm makes sense.  There’s nothing wrong with being at the beginning, but it’s daunting when you don’t know what you don’t know.  So what I’ve told people is that there are a basic set of questions that they need to answer before they can really proceed.  Figure out what you don’t know, and you can start.  Right?

An example of an installed solar farm.

So, here are some of the questions you need to figure out if you’re thinking of developing a solar farm:

1. Is the site I’m considering close to high voltage transmission capacity?  How close?  Is there a transmission substation nearby?  Is there capacity on the lines for additional power generation to be connected?

Substations are always easier to connect to than just power lines, and in solar farm development, easier means cheaper.  People have asked me how close is close enough, and the truth is that I have no idea.  Labour costs, permits, right of ways to put in power lines and other factors will affect this, but you need to install some fairly expensive overhead power lines to connect a solar farm to the rest of the grid.  How much costs will change, but this is a cost.  So, you absolutely need to start by contacting whoever manages the actual power distribution lines in your region and find out if you can connect.  It’s sad how often the answer is “no”.  (I’ve been told annecdotally that anything over 25 km is too far away, and that really you want to be within 5 to 10 km from the connection point, with a clear line to run the power lines.  The person who quoted this to me wasn’t developing a solar farm, but it sounds reasonable.)

2. Who manages the local zoning for development in my area? What is the land classified as now? Who manages environmental impact assessments for my area? Who might have veto power over this project? What additional costs might environmental factors add to my site?

Figure our who can block your development, and start figuring out if they might. Start looking into environmental impact assessments as early as possible in the process and contact Green Energy friendly organizations for advice. People are constantly surprised at hidden costs here, and attention needs to be paid early and often. As for environmental factors, if you’re in desert, does your area flash flood? If you’re in Canada, does the ground freezing in the winter increase costs? What about snow?

I’ve heard solar panel sales people tell potential buyers that because they’re black, they warm in the sun and don’t accumulate snow. Total BS. First, “getting warm in the sun is code for “inefficient”. If sunlight is turning into heat, it’s not turning into electricity. Second, if you live anywhere where it snows, you know full well that what colour something is has no effect on how much snow builds up on top of it. Snow is an issue in solar farms in Canada, and I’ve heard some innovative ideas, but nothing actually deployed in practise.

3. How much sun do I actually get per year here? How many hours per month for each month, and at what intensity in kWh/m2? If possible, what is the ratio of direct to diffuse light?

Just about every country in the world has some version of this information available, in Canada it’s Natural Resources Canada, in the US it’s NREL.  However, what I strongly recommend is that you consult your local utility to find out what insolation data they recommend.  If your local power utility (or whoever manages the power grid you want to connect to) is at all interested in solar energy, then they will be able to recommend solar resource data.  If they’re not interested, don’t have solar resource data and can’t answer your questions, find out in anyone has connected a grid tied solar power project.  If no one has… yikes… good luck.  At the end of the day, if you have some sun, it’s probably ok, but the real factor is the price of electricity.  Higher price, solar makes more sense.

Calculating DNI can be harder, as not everyone tracks this data.  There are companies that will provide you with reports, and there is software you can download, but for some areas it can be a challenge to get an accurate number if you’re not in the US or Europe.  The company 3TIER will sell you a report for your area and you can download a sample report to see what they can provide.  I haven’t worked with them, and they seem to be expensive, but they look like they provide a detailed and independent report, which can make investors less nervous.  Also out there is Meteonorm, a software package you can download or order as a CD.  They let you download a sample version that has data for one city to allow you to evaluate the software.  I like this option as it’s much cheaper than 3TIER, but you would need to be sure that Meteonorm gave you all the details you felt you needed.

Busy week, so I’ll do a third part when I can.

Solar Farm Site Selection

I was putting this list together for a presentation that I’m giving next week, and I thought I would post it here too.  These factors are true for any technology, but they’re part of the reason I like our technology – high efficiency modules on sun trackers really make many of these issues more manageable.

Solar Farm

Don’t take this all to mean that there aren’t any sites out there for solar farm development – there are thousands of sites available – these considerations really just emphasize the fact that even if you’re out in the desert, it’s a mistake to treat land as essentially free.  This just stresses the need for efficient use of land for solar farms.

Below are some of the issues that a solar farm developer needs to consider when selecting a site.

Quality of terrain
Sloped land, excessively rocky or sandy terrain, uneven land etc can all significantly add to the cost of installing a solar farm.

Local weathering factors
Desert conditions often coincide with excessive dust fall, flooding and flash flooding, high erosion etc, and these can limit the viability of a site and in many cases can make a site non-viable.

Proximity to High Transmission Capacity Lines
One of the biggest hidden costs of a solar farm is the distance required to connect a system to high voltage lines capable of carrying the excess production.  The costs of even a few extra kilometres can completely destroy the profitability of a solar farm.

Local Transmission Capacity
Worse, in many places, power grids are not able to handle the excess capacity that a solar farm would introduce.  This has been a persistent problem in California, Spain, Ontario and the Middle East, and has led to hundreds of projects being cancelled or delayed indefinitely.

Conservation and Environmental Impact Issues
Large tracts of undeveloped land too often coincide with sensitive or protected areas or protected species.  Often the presence of a single protected species of plant or animal can halt or completely alter the development plans for a solar farm, and for example in California, the evidence of single endangered burrowing owl halted the development of a solar farm project worth hundreds of millions.  Thin films are especially bad as they really require the land to be completely covered to get a useful watts/acre ratio.

Agricultural Concerns
Most government agencies responsible for agriculture do not want to see farmers paving over their fields with solar panels.  Especially in Canada and Southern Europe, available land near electrical demand centres is usually agricultural land – this will turn into a bigger and bigger issue as time goes on.

Local Regulations and Ownership
It is surprising the number of issues that can arise, even in a friendly regulatory framework.  Objections from the military over concerns with reflections interfering with pilot’s vision or ground construction causing problems with radar installations, construction permits and agricultural land limits on depth of holes allowed on a site are examples of regulations that can effect a site.  This has been a consistent issue with site selection for solar farms everywhere.  Further, although this depends on local factors, land ownership of the solar farm land itself, or the right of way required for construction access and/or connection to high voltage transmission can severely complicate factors, especially when previously “worthless” land is suddenly perceived as valuable.

Land Prices Rise Quickly
Generally, solar farm developments tend to happen regionally, where several projects appear in quick succession.  The surprising limits to viable sites discussed above, combined with the high costs of developing solar farms tends to lead to higher land prices, higher property taxes and in worst cases, land speculation.

Smaller Solar Farms Save other Costs
Panel and land costs are not the only costs to consider – installation costs, cabling and O&M are all less costly in smaller solar farms.  As the scale gets bigger, this becomes more significant.

That’s a sample, trust me – talk to a solar farm developer and they’ll laugh at how oversimplified this list is.  That said, there are hundreds, perhaps thousands, of solar farms in the works all over the world.  Efficiency matters.  That’s all I’m saying.