Paving over farmland

I know a solar farm developer that was originally going to go with Thin Film for his installation, but to get the power capacity he would have wanted, he would have had to literally cover almost the whole farm land.  The ground was naturally contaminated with sulphur as it happened, so it wasn’t usable farm land, but I know allot of people who spend time thinking about land use (Bureau of Land Management in the US, Ministry of Agriculture here in Canada for example) who worry about this possibility.  That’s one of the reason I love tracking systems – you get up to 44% more power per day, and you can dual use the land.  These pics from an orange orchard in Spain are the prettiest examples I’ve seen – they used to use diesel generators to power the water pumps.  (These are not ours, but we’re looking at that brand of tracker.)

PV Panels on Sun Trackers in an Orange Orchard

Pretty, eh? Here’s another.

Sun Trackers in an Orange Orchard

The Daily Show and Other Notes

For those who missed it, last week The Daily Show with John Stewart did quite a few segments on alternative energy and had T. Boone Pickens and Thomas Friedman on the show. (Links to the segments at the bottom of the post.) Talk about alternative energy going mainstream.  If we can get Colbert on board, we’ve won.

Time to drop the “alternative” from alternative energy me thinks.

On another note, Spain is nice, although I realize that maybe I’m working too much lately. I took my parent’s dog for a walk yesterday, looked around at the beautiful blue sky sunny day and thought, “Wow, look at all that great DNI.” Perhaps not a sign of a balanced life.  (DNI – Direct Normal Irradiance, meaning direct sunlight, as opposed to diffuse scattered light.)

Great solar resource, but also a beautiful sunny day.

Oh well, here are the videos (US links work internationally):

Interview with T. Boon Pickens – US link Canada Link

Interview with Thomas Friedman – US link Canada Link

In Spain Until the 18th

I’m going to do my best to update this blog while I’m away – I’ll be in Madrid until the 18th. This is a working trip though, so I’ll still be around.

I really need to add though, thank you everyone for your outpouring of support for – we have had so many people write us to wish us well after reading Tyler Hamilton’s article in the Toronto Star. Thank you everyone. Seriously, you people are amazing.