In Colorado, a marriage of solar energy and farming

https://www.ksjd.org/2024-12-31/in-colorado-a-marriage-of-solar-energy-and-farming-provides-a-model-for-a-more-sustainable-future

by dr_dshiv • 2 years ago

191 115 2 years ago

ksjd.org

ashoeafoot• 2 years ago

expected solar driven nitrogen reactor fixation mention cause thats the trinity.

nelsonic• 2 years ago

Please elaborate for the uninitiated.

aaronblohowiak• 2 years ago

Make fertilizer from solar energy

evilduck• 2 years ago

The comment is referring to finding something to replace the Haber-Bosch Process, which is mostly fossil fuel driven, which makes most of our food itself dependent on fossil fuels.

corysama• 2 years ago

How about solar powered liquid fuel for tractors?

https://youtu.be/NngCHTImH1g?si=XVLJAfkJi3MqZN1d

https://youtu.be/ekEdq6PhC0Q?si=Wpr_DKcAvtX-Tsi-

IncreasePosts• 2 years ago

Hey. I live literally 30 seconds from this place, and know Bryce. Cool dude!

I do wonder why solar panels in fields aren't more common, as opposed to rooftop solar. It seems like such a burden doing all those one-off jobs aren't worth it compared to the ease of just putting more up in an easy to access location on the ground. Especially since most people aren't set up so they can go off grid with their panels in case the grid goes down.

elihu• 2 years ago

The big utility-scale solar plants tend to be on the ground in big fields. I think the preference for rooftop solar for individual houses comes mostly because it's convenient for suburban installations, as they don't usually want to give yard space and the panels would be in the shade anyways. Roofs aren't being used for anything useful, so that's where the panels go. In a rural setting there's less incentive to install on a roof, but you still might put them there anyways if that's where you get the best sun.

I suppose people might also be afraid of theft or vandalism if the panels are accessible to random passers-by without a ladder.

Veserv• 2 years ago

To add-on, utility scale solar generation is the majority of generation and has consistently outpaced small scale generation in growth.

Starting at 11,233 small scale out of 26,482 in 2014, ~42.5%, versus 73,406 out of 236,090 in 2023, ~31% [1].

So, despite a ~6.5x increase in small scale generation over 10 years, ~19% compounded annual growth, utility scale generation increased by ~10.66x, ~24% compounded annual growth.

[1] https://www.eia.gov/electricity/annual/table.php?t=epa_03_01...

zdragnar2• 2 years ago

Land is expensive in many places. Go somewhere it is very cheap, and you'll find fields of windmills and the occasional field full of solar panels.

In fact, Texas had a 350 megawatt install taken out by a hail storm earlier this year. It made the rounds in the news and even here on HN if memory serves. That's still not even close to the big projects though. Vista Sands in Wisconsin has a 1.3 gigawatt install planned that will cover nearly ten thousand acres.

The only reason residential rooftop solar became the industry it did was the massive subsidies handed out to consumers to make it financially viable. Without that, larger field installs and off-grid setups would be the bulk of what you hear about in most of the country.

badestrand• 2 years ago

The only reason residential rooftop solar became the industry it did was the massive subsidies handed out to consumers to make it financially viable.

Savings per Watt can be a lot larger for residential though, as you save the all-in price of electricity (electricity price + transport fees + other fees + taxes) while solar farms only earn the wholesale price.

adgjlsfhk12• 2 years ago

rooftop solar in the summer is more efficient since it shaddows the roof, reducing cooling demand. in meant areas that is enough to pay for the extra install cost.

pfdietz3• 2 years ago

The cost of land is a minor part of the cost of a PV field. As for wind, it uses only a small fraction of the land in which a wind field is placed, because the turbines have to be spaced so they don't interfere with each other.

bmicraft• 2 years ago

ten thousand acres

That's 40km² btw

nakedneuron• 2 years ago

Scaffolding also comes with a price tag. A substantial amount of material (usual metal) goes into that.

simonjgreen• 2 years ago

In UK it’s extremely common. I think economic demand is a large factor though. Energy generation prices in US are significantly lower than over here. For example I am paid a variable export rate for solar energy from my home that varies between £0.0468 and £0.2621 per kWh. That’s significantly more than the gentleman in this article is receiving, like an order of magnitude more most of the time. Solar installers over here can’t keep up with the demand.

robertclaus• 2 years ago

I would assume spacing becomes quite sensitive for this to work well, but cool idea!

energy1232• 2 years ago

"A lot of the cost of the solar array is the people — installing the solar panels and all the wiring that goes into it. Inverters and the transformers and the switchgear. None of that changes"

Reminded me of Charge Robotics' mission: https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/charge-robotics

xbmcuser4• 2 years ago

Yeah this came as a big shock to me as I was hearing acquaintances say their solar and battery install would payback in 3-4 years compared to 15-20 years timeline I read on hackernews etc. Turns out the cost of equipment is so cheap now that in countries with cheaper labour and other costs they can get a similar system with install at 1/3 the price.

bruce5114• 2 years ago

I'm currently getting 16% return on capital invested, just with domestic savings. Thats an annualized return over all capital spent, including panels, equipment and labor.

Thats more or less what I expected.

So yes, your locality matters. As does your current consumption, cost of electricity, and so on.

Prices are also falling quite a bit as time passes.

marssaxman3• 2 years ago

How long ago did you hear that it would take 15-20 years to break even? When I had solar installed on my house in Seattle back in 2013, they estimated it would take seven years, but it was actually closer to six. Equipment is only cheaper and better now.

defrost2• 2 years ago

Here in Australia in a semi rural non big city town there are a lot of professional grade DIY installs.

The area has many FiFo (Fly In Fly Out) mine site workers and farmers all of whom are capable of fixing panels to roofs and racking batteries .. the wiring and looms are either "done by a mate" or done from a sketch on the back of envelope, or reading the sheet of instructions that come with an order.

The important part, safety, comes at the end when one of the few working town electricians (or an "off duty" mine electrician) checks the wiring for safety and compliance and signs off on the work for a fee.

Like many things the total cost is sweat equity + mail order prices + professional inspection and sign off (for insurance and peace of mind).

edm0nd• 2 years ago

Today, Kominek estimates that he earns $20,000 annually by selling energy to subscribers.

so how much did he have to get a loan for to pay for 3.2k solar panels + install + make the land suitable for em?

Seems like that will take a long time to recoup (if ever).

sci_prog2• 2 years ago

This is a cool concept and I love the idea but the math on the money earned from the 3276 solar panel doesn't add up. The article says the farm owner makes about $20,000 a year from the solar farm.

I'm assuming that each solar panel is 2 by 1 meter, which would mean that it produces about 400 watts (20% efficiency at 1000 watts per sq meter coming from the sun). You can use this calculator to estimate how power you can produce at the given location for a given system size in kilowatts: https://pvwatts.nrel.gov/pvwatts.php

The system above is 1310400 watts or ~1,310 kW, which according to the calculator produces about 2 million kWh/year.

If he makes $20,000 that would mean that he gets paid only $0.01 per kW of power. And even if my assumption above about the size of each individual panel is off by a factor of 2 and they are only 1 sq meter in size (which I think they are not because the article states that the solar farm can power about 300 average households, which require the annual power output to be more than what I estimated above) that would make $0.02 per kW of power. How is it possible that the amount earned per kW is so low when the utility companies in Colorado charge about $0.14 per kW (effective rate)? And who is actually the customer here and where is the money coming from? I'm just curious to learn more.

boredatoms• 2 years ago

I guess the transmission lines themselves is where the costs are

gpm• 2 years ago

I took $20k to be profit after costs (except maybe personal labor and land), not revenue.

thephyber• 2 years ago

Is there anything about farming that makes financial sense?

Most farmers (even in developed countries) are cash poor and most farmers are deep in debt.

The ones that aren’t can quickly become so given a little bad luck. Farms have to hedge against bad yields to protect against undesirable weather.

Family farms only make financial sense if there is a lot of free labor (slavery, indentured servants, or unpaid labor of children).

shermantanktop• 2 years ago

Or if they can act as a quasi-shell corporation for an agribusiness concern to cash in on tax breaks. And at that point, if the family makes any money at all, the parent corp will surely find a way to harvest that too.

Hilift• 2 years ago

That isn't an issue with farming. It's the competitive pressures of the electricity market in the US. Most of the US is currently powered by natural gas, which is about five times less expensive in the US than in Europe. Colorado is a bit different, they still have 33% from coal (US wide coal is 16%). The quick and easy solution would be for electricity to be more like the rest of the world and more expensive. Europe will actually be much worse soon due to a price cap is expiring at the end of this month.

kenhwang• 2 years ago

~400W/panel @ 20% efficiency is pretty much spot on for my home rooftop solar panel specs, so your math checks out there.

$0.02/kW does seem a bit low. Looking at my bill, it looks like I got paid ~$0.03/kW last month in California where my retail price is $0.17/kW off-peak. Looking at the current price charts for electricity, they're also currently ~$0.03/kW, so the numbers do check out since we're supposed to be paid the current wholesale price.

Electricity just doesn't cost all that much to generate, most of the cost comes from transmission and storage.

sci_prog2• 2 years ago

Thanks for sharing this! That was the exact info I was looking for, didn't know the wholesale price was so low. But it does make sense that transmission and storage is what is inflating the retail price.

danans2• 2 years ago

Electricity just doesn't cost all that much to generate

... from renewable resources.

Fossil energy can cost quite a bit to generate, but of course it comes with storage built in.

ledgerdev5• 2 years ago

I have heard from a couple farmers that some venture energy corporation will pay a yearly fee to put panels on the farmland, which is probably the 20k/year he gets paid from a corporation like that. I doubt he's selling the power directly, nor was able to invest money for all those panels. He just get's a check every month. He also doesn't know the risks he's taking allowing that.

edit: I might be wrong on this, reading this on their site they have some significant donors. "With additional funding from the Walton Family Foundation, the Cielo Foundation, and donations from a myriad of individual donors and businesses in 2023"

aniviacat• 2 years ago

He also doesn't know the risks he's taking allowing that.

I don't know either; what are the risks?

adrianN3• 2 years ago

When it's very sunny and your solar panels produce a lot there are many other solar panels also producing a lot, so electricity is generally cheap.

danans2• 2 years ago

If he makes $20,000 that would mean that he gets paid only $0.01 per kW of power. And even if my assumption above about the size of each

As others have mentioned the off peak daytime wholesale rate for electricity is often just a few cents per kWh. Let's say 3-4c/kWh.

The other few cents above your calculated rate of 1c/kWh likely go to pay off the principle and interest on the financing for the system, plus any profit for the company maintaining and servicing the system. If the farm owner paid for the capital costs and maintenance directly themselves, their share of the returns would probably be higher.

But they would probably prefer to focus on farming crops.

bruce5114• 2 years ago

I think the 20k number is something of a throw-away, and not really explained.

For example, is that 20k gross revenue (check from utility) or net revenue (after deducting financing costs?) Is he getting free grid power at night as well? Is he using power on the farm itself?

It's a pity the article didn't go down this road a bit, but since it didn't, I guess the 20k number (described as an "estimate") is really just a measure of scale.

Indeed, one gets the impression that the finances part is possibly not the main focus of the farmer (much less the article.) The farming land is being used by non-profits and research groups, he's not actually farming the land himself.

But it sounds like this is just a small part of his farm (4 acres), so perhaps more of a pilot project and finding out how to best use the land, before rolling out on a bigger scale.

xbmcuser4• 2 years ago

It's a business they would be depreciating the cost of panels. He is probably making $20k profit

TheSpiceIsLife3• 2 years ago

(There’s a typo in your profile)

kraftman• 2 years ago

There was a link here a few weeks ago about UK energy that said that only about 30% of the cost of energy is the cost to produce, the rest is the infrastructure and the costs to pay some suppliers to stay online in case they are needed.

ledgerdev5• 2 years ago

I used to think this was a wonderful idea, with the greatest of intentions, what could possibly go wrong? Turns out it's inevitable that a hail storm hits or mother nature somehow will break/cracks those panels, allowing heavy metals to leach into the soil and make it unusable for farming in perpetuity. This actually happened to a guy I spoke with during lunch one day.

So seeing the actual reality over a longer timeframe of solar farms, and wind turbines (those huge blades made of not friendly chemicals last only 10 years, do you know how they are disposed of?), have greatly reduced any excitement I had for solar/wind as environmentally friendly longer term sustainable solutions. I guess it's sort of good to diversify but they most definitely aren't "earth friendly" as advertised. Fusion seem our only real hope.

bcraven• 2 years ago

I'm not sure wind turbines are quite as bad as you assert:

https://www.nationalgrid.com/stories/energy-explained/can-wi...

ledgerdev5• 2 years ago

That seems like a pretty biased source, how about these actual cases at the top of google search? We are just getting started perhaps 10 years into this, now imagine this after another 100 years? And of course maybe they can technically be "recycled" now but it's not actually happening in a significant way yet.

https://www.texasmonthly.com/news-politics/sweetwater-wind-t... https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2020-02-05/wind-turb...

For now we have to be realistic, but hopeful that some better use than landfills can be found and be viable.

adgjlsfhk12• 2 years ago

not sure where you're getting 10 years for windd turbines from, but it's closer to 20. they also aren't nasty chemicals. it's fiberglass and epoxy and are disposed the same way pretty much everything is disposed of, putting them in a pit in the middle of nowhere.

ledgerdev5• 2 years ago

I would actually consider epoxy pretty nasty. 10 years for actual use is pretty accurate, 20 years is extremely optimistic. They are just buried or piled up somewhere, not burned as far as I know.

adrianN3• 2 years ago

Solar panels don't contain heavy metals as far as I know.

ledgerdev5• 2 years ago

Some do, perhaps they were older panels this farmer had on his land.

nicoburns• 2 years ago

CdTe solar panels [0] do, but it's a bit of red herring because almost nobody is using those panels for large scale installations (they're mainly used where being "thin and light" is important. The common crystalline silicon panels [1] don't have any major toxic components.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cadmium_telluride_photovoltaic... [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crystalline_silicon

numpad0• 2 years ago

Solar panels are giant photodiodes. Heavy metal doped silicon. a-Si something or SiGe or GaAs or InP or whatever pairs and trios of toxic metals. Generally more toxic more electronically open to trade therefore broader spectral response and better performance. You can't do, say, Al substrate PtFeCu semiconductor, that's not going to make sense.

They're not merely similar to a photodiode, but using giant photodiodes as batteries is literally the idea.

There are some versions based on toxic organic chemicals in place of toxic inorganic elements, few and far between, and I guess the technology will eventually move onto engineered nanoparticles later in this century after they've cracked fusion, but that hasn't happened yet.

kragen• 2 years ago

They typically contain copper, silver, lead, and tin, but those don't leach out of them at a significant rate, and of those four heavy metals, only lead is a real toxicity risk even if you digest the panels in acid instead of leaving them out in the rain. Another comment suggests that the dopants in the silicon are the relevant heavy metals, but those are present at parts-per-million levels, locked inside the silicon's diamond-structures crystalline lattice, and passivated with silicon dioxide, so that's not plausible either.

The most likely explanation is that this is a lie.

dyauspitr• 2 years ago

You can always insure them.

asdefghyk• 2 years ago

I'm very skeptical about claimed benefits. Ive lived and worked on a farm and my parents were long term farmers for decades.

To be convinced I would need to hear the benefits from many more (commercial ) farmers. The quoted farm is a hobby farm, small scale farm.

What are the risks in such installations ?

sandworm101• 2 years ago

The risks are the investment in foundations and trenchwork necessary to install the panel support infrastructure. There are companies doing interesting things with low-mounted high-density installations that would be more efficient and require less infrastructure.

adrianN3• 2 years ago

Where I live, the chief risk (aside from the usual risks of investments) are spending years and years fighting bureaucrats and NIMBYs to get the necessary permissions to put solar panels on land zoned for agriculture.

KaiserPro3• 2 years ago

The biggest risk is that you need to plant differently to take advantage of the solar panels.

Planting for forage is much harder than growing a field for hay/soy/beet/other feed crop.

obviously you can't use normal combines to harvest between the rows, so you need different, custom, equipment to harvest at scale.

akamaka• 2 years ago

For those interested in the economics of this project, the details are available in this publication:

https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy24osti/88816.pdf

Summary: This particular research project won’t quite break even purely on market-rate electricity sales, due to having 2x the installation cost of utility scale solar. If high value crops are successfully grown, there are scenarios where it could break even after including profits from crop sales.

zbyforgotp• 2 years ago

Yeah - that’s what I thought. The original article sounds like motivated reasoning - solar farms don’t look like “green technology” so there is that great need to make them more palatable and project like this cater to that need instead of economic calculation.

ggm2• 2 years ago

If he did any energy consuming processes to aide farming such as drying wheat to harden it and increase market price, or had greenhouses which needed heating, or a dairy adjunct which needed cooling, then his rate of return as cost avoidance and improved profit for the Ag. side could be a lot bigger than the 1c/kW to sell power back.

Basically, heat energy is time shifting be it coolth or warmth. And heat and cool cost money.

Farmers in Oz are using droids to spray and weed, so battery charging could be another cost avoidance.

Or cold store for produce to sell at advantageous prices in winter. Basic arbitrage gains to permit the farm yield to maximise against predictable price variance.

Colorado has rich people. Grow microherbs out of season.

Farms often have a lot of less viable land for primary production. They could deploy flow batteries which have size costs, but massive mwh return and scale very nicely and last a very long time. Even just water pumping shifts energy into storage. Farms are giant machines for converting sunlight and water into produce anyway, this is a good fit: it's the same energy source, shifted.

maeil• 2 years ago

Even just water pumping shifts energy into storage

Could potentially reuse elevated water tanks? Guess the cost of the pumps might make the savings on the structure very small, and no idea if the amount of energy would be significant to a farm.

ggm2• 2 years ago

As i understand it mostly the best use of pumped water is gravity fed watering for stock, or crops. Pumped hydro is great at dam size scale but the losses exceed battery. What it's got is the sheer gwh scale - snowy 2.0 will run for days and days riding out a dunkelflaut with a lot of gw fed out. 2.2 gw and 150 gwh usable. (They claim more but it's disputed)

I don't think a farm needs that. Better to pump the water to a headstock keeping cow troughs full, or for crop circles.

Not a farmer or an engineer. Happy to be corrected.

impossiblefork• 2 years ago

It also fits well with some ideas from Denmark to find new catalysts to allow intermittent processes to make ammonia from solar power, with the idea that the ammonia when mixed with water can be used as fertiliser.

Solar power + intermittent synthesis methods fits really well together for a less centralised economy.

pfdietz3• 2 years ago

The simplest way to make nitrogen fertilizer from excess electrical power is by electric discharge to make NOx.

I remember a science museum exhibit of a simple spark device. It was in an enclosed box to prevent gases from escaping, and the air inside was noticeably brown from all the accumulated NO2.

Something like that: https://sciencedemonstrations.fas.harvard.edu/presentations/...

Commercially, a similar process was used for a while a century ago, the Birkeland-Eyde process. It passed air through an arc. It was phased out because it wasn't competitive with the HB process using hydrogen from fossil fuels.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birkeland%E2%80%93Eyde_process

cubefox• 2 years ago

In this headline, no verb

dr_dshiv5• 2 years ago

“Having shade on the ground is a climate adaptation. I hate to say it, but I've kind of given up on the thought that we're going to fix climate change whatsoever,” said Komenik. “Climate change is going to happen. It's going to be rapid. It's going to be terrible. So we need to figure out how to adapt to that changing climate.”

Only because geoengineering is off the table. If you take climate change seriously and want to avoid it, solar radiation management is pretty much the last remaining option for prevention. Here’s a nice article for an overview: https://climate.benjames.io/someone-is-going-to-dim-the-sun/

epolanski2• 2 years ago

The simplest geo engineering is planting trees, but I see very little rush from government, privates and agencies into doing the simplest thing.

peterpost2• 2 years ago

You can't capture even a percentage of what we've been emitting in Carbon over the last 100 years or so with trees.

Planting trees is good thing to do but not even getting close to a solution.

dr_dshiv5• 2 years ago

Iron fertilization is arguably simpler— don’t need to own the land and it can be scaled.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_fertilization

The use of mass timber for construction is a great way to make sustainable forestry sequester carbon for the long term.

https://research.fs.usda.gov/treesearch/66069

Cloud seeding via containerships is another low cost, high impact method: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marine_cloud_brightening

But if we really want the ability to pause climate change, we need to do some more research on Stratospheric Aerosol Injection: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stratospheric_aerosol_injectio...

Stratospheric Injection of Calcium carbonate is a very promising approach that would have the benefit of reducing ocean acidification.

belorn• 2 years ago

We have already been planting tress for a long time. In Sweden it is the law that after a forest is cut down it must either be replanted or have enough viable trees remaining for natural regrowth. For managed forests it is often a revenue increase to replant trees since it increase the efficiency of the land. The amount of tree planting that goes into environmental purposes are tiny compared to the amount of trees planted as part of the natural cycle of tree harvesting and regrowth.

However, cutting down tress and then replanting it do not capture a lot of carbon. Much of it either get burned or decompose into methane. Planting trees without protecting it from being cut down is not going to do much to compensate excess greenhouse gases that get created from burning fossil fuels.

capitol_• 2 years ago

The amount of coal that can be captured by planting trees doesn't compare in volume to the amount of coal we dig/pump up.

At best it will make the planet prettier and at worst it will simply be feelgood.

bouvin• 2 years ago

A far simpler geoengineering approach would be to stop emitting so much CO₂.

dr_dshiv5• 2 years ago

If that was simple, it would have happened. It’s not simple to stop—if governments stopped it over night, they’d be thrown out of power the next day by mass protests.

Technology is stopping it, though! The continued exponential growth of solar (~30% CAGR) suggests that we could get to 1% of the earth’s surface in solar in about 20-30 years. That would be more than all current sources of energy.

seanalltogether• 2 years ago

For farmers in regions with intense sun like colorado, I would imagine that some kind of solar netting would ultimately be the best solution for mixed agriculture. If you could hang a net like 10 feet off the ground that has tiny solar panels linked together to block out 50% of the sun, that would probably create an ideal environment for growing certain berries and vegetables.

HPsquared2• 2 years ago

Or even a kind of greenhouse structure?

kibwen• 2 years ago

Although elevated panels may provide sufficient room for people and sheep, they complicate mechanized agriculture.

I'd like to hear more about this. Do you need specialized tractors, harvesters, etc to fit under the panels?

bufordtwain• 2 years ago

I've been interested to see some small (1 acre-ish) solar panel installations popping up on local farmland near me in Northwest Indiana. I'm a bit surprised because although we get quite a few sunny days it's nowhere near Colorado levels of sun. So I guess the economics must be getting to the point where it's either profitable now or is expected to be profitable soon.

hsuduebc2• 2 years ago

I like it. I believe that this path of compromise is elegant way to implement these technologies which can take a lot of space to use.

But more importantly, it can demonstrate to those who argue that solar farms are taking up fertile soil that there are alternative ways to implement solar energy without using valuable farmland.

trenchgun• 2 years ago

It's more expensive than industrial solar farms.

Aesthetics over economics.

greekanalyst• 2 years ago

This is already happening in countries around the Mediterranean, such as Greece.

thelastgallon2• 2 years ago

While a great idea, we don't necessarily need this. 40 million acres are used to grow corn for ethanol subsidies (out of 93m total).

From ChatGPT:

Annual Energy Production (in watt-hours): 52,272 terawatt-hours (TWh)

Real-World Context (I didn't ask ChatGPT this question, it provided without asking!): (1) The total electricity consumption of the U.S. is about 4,000 TWh/year. (2) The energy generated from 40 million acres of solar panels could theoretically meet U.S. electricity demand more than 13 times over.

</chatGPT>

But, we'll need a lot less energy when we use solar/wind. We only need a third of the energy we use today, > 65% of the energy is wasted. So, solar panels on the same land used for ethanol production (and subsidized -- which is a lose-lose-lose idea) can produce 39x times US electricity demand (assuming ChatGPT calculation is correct).

thelastgallon2• 2 years ago

This is not just in US, ethanol/biodiesel subsidies waste hundreds of millions of acres all over the world.

Gabrys1• 2 years ago

Make your mind! Is it Kominek or Komenik? Mistyping your main character name 13 or 19 times (out of 32 mentions total) doesn't seem nice...

In Colorado, a marriage of solar energy and farming

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