At what altitude? 100 feet?
pv-magazine-usa.com
Have you been to west Texas? Besides oil wells there is not much there. Ive seen gravel pits with more character. Why not cover it with solar panels?Here’s some pictures of an existing large scale solar system built in the desert. This is what they are doing and what they want to do to other locations. Such a sterile barren place compared to what was there. This is not minimizing man’s impacts upon nature.
Pictures of the Tucson, AZ facility are off of the PV Magazine website. There’s a quote from this article that you should note….”Rooftop solar leads to less land use, less costly transmission infrastructure buildout, and less electricity line losses when compared to centralized utility-scale power.” So let’s cover our buildings with solar. It’s the smart solution!
The link below is to an article in PV Magazine regarding a possibility tax on solar power exports but this is where those Tucson pics came from.
Arizona proposes solar power export tax
Solar assets that export electricity out of the state would be taxed 12.5% per every dollar of revenue made from the sale of electricity.
I like the one with the solar chimney. I wonder which is more efficient: the panels or the chimney? But, wow, some of those images show far more massive sprawl in covering the terrain than I would have thought. I didn't realize they had such ginormous installations already.
That depends partly on the mounting. If panels must be mounted flush with the roof slope, then certainly they will not always be in the ideal position. But what is stopping the development of mounting brackets that accommodate other angles? Even wind-loading concerns should be addressable in some manner, such as the addition of a cowling as a shield. Obviously, this would add to the expense of the installation, but I guess much depends on the cost/benefit ratio. Using up lands currently dedicated to wildlife when the concrete jungles have not first been saturated seems unwise. Even if twice as many panels are required for rooftop solar as compared to placement on wilderness land for the same electrical output, there are other factors to consider, such as the fact that much less infrastructure and line loss will occur when the electricity is manufactured at the point of use versus at some remote location. The cost/benefit ratio suddenly complicates when one considers this.
Shade.
That depends on which angle one is trying to accommodate. If it's a matter of converting the roof's pitch to better reflect one's latitude, shading might be uninvolved. But if one is trying to mitigate against conditions where the roof slope is not south-facing, then you do have a point.
True, but there is a lot of land that is not practical to live on as Eggo pointed out. Water is a huge issue out west. Austin, Tx housing is very expensive because you need access to water. There is a lot of land without water access.
A thermal is what happens when air is heated.
Well, let's do the math.
