Solar 📍

While I certainly welcome lower-cost solar panels, and would most certainly include solar power when I own my off-grid homestead, I am deeply concerned about the tens of thousands, and soon to be hundreds of thousands of acres of land being developed for industrial solar farms across the state. Information both on solar farms and smaller, more appropriate uses of solar technology.

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Know Before you Go…..Solar

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Northview Diary: Know Before you Go…..Solar

With the wild proliferation of solar arrays across valuable farm land, scrub land, and pretty near everywhere else, and with solar companies approaching and pressuring farmers to lease or sell, it is important to know the potential ramifications of signing a deal.

Below is an excellent article, which brings up some issues I hadn't previously considered. We have been approached by at least seven or eight companies, so there has been a lot of research done by Northview folks. The solar company reps who call, write, or stop by in pickup trucks don't seem to like that very much.
Thematic Map: Catskill Creek Stream Access

Duanesburg adopts solar moratorium after already approving big projects� | The Altamont Enterprise

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Duanesburg adopts solar moratorium after already approving big projects� | The Altamont Enterprise

The thing is these solar farms take up enormous amounts of land and produce very little useful energy. Moreover of the energy produced by solar is being still produced as spinning reserve at fossil plants. 

I would rather see money going towards reducing emissions from existing power plants and retiring dirty old ones and greater efficiency, and subsidies for solar on homes and businesses. In many cases an existing gas or coal plant can be tweaked to increase output by better efficiencies creating all of the energy produced by solar farms. 

So much of the solar business is about green washing and scamming people who feel guilty about their high energy consumption, it's kind of like household recycling of bottles and cans - it feels virtuous - but has little impact on waste volume or consumption.

PVEducation

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PVEducation

As solar cell manufacturing continues to grow at a record-setting pace, increasing demands are placed on universities to educate students on both the practical and theoretical aspects of photovoltaics. As a truly interdisciplinary field, young professionals must be fluent with the science, engineering, policy, and market dimensions of this technology, in the context of a growing renewable energy economy.