Here comes the sun
And we say, it’s all right
If the world is going to combat climate change, and it should, solar energy will be a big part of that. Maybe the biggest part. Solar already accounts for 75 percent of renewable electricity capacity, and will climb an additional 25 percent of new renewable capacity soon, according to the International Energy Agency.
However, a drawback is habitat destruction. It matters. And it’s not insignificant. A lot of space is needed.
Just one megawatt of capacity requires at least five acres. Two hundred megawatts requires about 550 football fields.
Deserts are good places to put this stuff, and solar panels certainly exist in those remote unpopulated areas. But efficiency is lost when electricity travels across transmission lines, and deserts aren’t generally close to power grids.
This has forced solar companies to get creative.
As such, panels are now being installed on top of big box stores, yachts, and floating solar farms. (If deserts are mostly unpopulated—by people—then oceans are even less dense in people per acre.)
Parking lots also fit the bill location-wise, because they’re already there. And not only do the solar canopies charge EVs while shoppers browse, they also provide shade on otherwise hot, summer days, whether shoppers drive EVs or not.
DSD Renewables has added solar canopies to 16 parking lots at Rutgers University in New Jersey as part of the nearly 200 megawatts of solar capacity it has installed since 2019, which includes a 6.5-megawatt canopy at Caesars Entertainment Casinos in Atlantic City.
“It’s quite a statement . . . but also lowers their operating expenses,” said Ben Jones, VP of design and engineering.
Retired golf courses are also likely targets. Less land clearing is required and they’re relatively flat. In effect, they can be seen as an environmental two-fer, in that they reduce water consumption and replace it with energy production.
Calverton Links Golf Course in Long Island has been mothballed for nine years, but is now home to nearly 23 megawatts of solar capacity. The key is finding courses at a decent price with close proximity to cities.
Floating solar has also become a real thing in many countries. While costs can be up to 40 percent more than landbased solar, the arrays are larger. Hundreds have been erected on lakes and reservoirs in India, Colombia, Ghana and elsewhere.
In Red China, a massive floating array includes 500,000 panels generating enough electricity to power 100,000 homes. A study published by Nature Conservancy found that 6,000 such local systems worldwide could be entirely self-sufficient with floating solar.
Decommissioned fossil fuel sites with ready access to local power grids and landfills are also excellent candidates.
“What a wonderful story . . . to say, ‘Everyone disregarded this piece of land, but now we’re utilizing it again to power the future,’” says Thomas Byrne, CEO of New York-based CleanCapital, which owns and operates 300 megawatts including a solar farm on a former steel plant in Buffalo, N.Y.
If necessity is the mother of invention, it could be said that creativity is the brother that drives competition, and with the space requirements of solar, it may be what determines the future of the industry.