Sunny Thoughts on Solar Panels

I’ve been watching/reading about all the Solar Farm controversy in Marshall County with a mixture of amusement and disappointment. While I don’t advocate unlimited rights to a property owner, I would advocate tipping the scale in favor of the owner’s decisions about use of their property. My main thought is how the more things change, the more they stay the same. This is a repeat of what happened when there was the discussion about wind farms in Marshall County a few years back. (Wind Farm Posts here and here.)

In both cases, spurious arguments are put forth, when I believe the real reason for disliking either of them is aesthetics. Those against them don’t like looking at them. As with wind farms, I can understand that and feel it is a valid argument. To each, there own… But it was a much more understandable argument regarding wind farms than solar panels.

The setbacks of 300′, 500′ or more being requested seem ridiculous. Marshall County isn’t a table top, but it is pretty darned flat. The high point in Marshall County is 895 MSL and the low point is 775 MSL with an average of 810 MSL per the Joint Highway Research Project by Purdue University. That’s not a whole lot of topographic relief and I’m suspicious that the low number is actually under water! That tells you that there aren’t many areas where a grove of 20′ to 30′ evergreens or mixed plantings wouldn’t hide what’s in the field from anyone on the ground; even from a distance. This would solve the concern some have expressed about the sun reflecting off the panels too. Large setbacks are usually used to protect against noise or odors, not visual issues that can be hidden by a vegetative buffer. These setbacks requested are meant to make property unbuildable unless it’s an excessively large tract of land. Admittedly, I’m pretty indifferent on the aesthetic issue, but I don’t know that a picked cornfield with an inactive sprinkler system sitting vacant from Fall until Spring is a particularly bucolic landscape view either. It is just one of those things that we live with and allow to the property owner.

There is the argument about chemicals from solar panels leaching into the soil. For the most part, new solar panels are solid state devices composed of silicon and glass, with trace amounts of gold, silver, copper and other valuable materials which people in the industry will be glad to retrieve and recycle. There is also the issue that most farmers are leasing land that is marginally productive as farmland, which requires large chemical applications to make them productive. Some of these properties were potato farms in the past, which required hundreds of pounds of fertilizer per acre. As part of this argument, I’ve heard, “Why not put solar panels up to cover parking lots and buildings first, before threatening farmland!?” If there was any merit to the chemical leaching argument, I would much rather have any bad things filtered through soil, rather than running directly into storm drains and thus, our rivers and streams. There’s enough of that coming off cars and trucks in parking lots and on streets. Not that I don’t see merit in solar panels for covered parking. But I assume it’s the same reason they don’t graze cows in solar farm fields. They would need to greatly beef up (pun intended) the support structures for cows rubbing against them and thus, even more so for cars.

There are those that express concern about the loss of farmland which currently produces food products. I would prefer to see some soil analysis and see solar farms placed only on marginally productive land, but much of the placement is based on access to the electric grid. To some extent this is self regulating with property owners making the economic decision themselves. I am sure, if the payout for farming was greater, the land would remain in crops. At it’s greatest proposed coverage, the proposed solar farms would only cover single digit percentages of the total Marshall County farmland available. Is this any different than allowing subdivisions to be built and lots to be sold for housing or industry? Plus, check out some of the interesting things Purdue University is suggesting for agrivoltaics. There are options to keep farms productive as food sources as well as for harvesting solar. They’re just two different ways of harvesting sunshine.

There are those that say solar is a boondoggle and wouldn’t make it without subsidies. Possibly, but farmers know how subsidies work as they are sometimes paid not to plant, told what to plant and subsidized for planting specific crops. They are well versed in how to play that game and how to achieve the best economic benefit from it. Are solar panels the solution to global warming? Hardly. Nor has much of what’s out there touted to change the weather ever resulted in the the reputed outcome. But let landowners take advantage of the rare opportunity to benefit from this one.

One thing that has come out in this that particularly scares me is the bonding or other means of providing for decommissioning of these installations at the end of their life. If we start down that path, where does it end? Drive around Marshall County and you will see abandoned silos, farm windmills, railroad beds on abandoned rail lines, railroad depots, grain elevators, former school buildings, houses, collapsing barns and unusable commercial buildings. That same argument could be used to say we should prevent any of those things happening again, but can you imagine the cost of construction if you had to plan/pay for end of life removal of EVERYTHING? Most construction puts significant funds at risk when the investment in these these things is made. The increased cost due to this increased risk would undoubtedly stop some expansions and new endeavors from happening. In the case of solar farms, you’re asking the companies involved to plan for the cost of removal 30 years from now. What does that look like and how would labor inflation costs balloon that? Building’s generally have lifespans of 2 to 4 times that. How does that even work!?

Again, I believe all of this amounts to spurious concerns, past the aesthetic issues. I’m not thrilled with the aesthetics of high voltage powerlines crisscrossing Marshall County, Those power lines are largely what makes Marshall County attractive to solar farms. But these things benefit my life. Stopping them means hurting other property owners and limiting their livelihoods. If we collectively care enough about stopping these things, then we should put our money where our mouth is and pool funds to purchase and control the property ourselves. Otherwise, be quiet and let progress move on…