Where would you put solar panels?

In the mountains you blow up to make the battery.

on top of irrigation canals

@demotter "powering a diesel generator for electricity." With this, you contradict the opposite of your point.

Some Pacific Islands are switching to renewable energy because of the cost of importing gas and oil. Driving an EV makes a lot of sense or powering a diesel generator for electricity.

On every shade or roof we have. Like rooftop of every house, cattle sheds,deserts etc.

Agrivoltaics, roof top solar, and panels covering reservoirs and irrigation canals are brilliant ideas. In each case there is a secondary benefit in addition to generating clean energy. The cost of the panels themselves might be higher, but this is more than offset by the secondary financial payoff.

Yea. Even if you assume the panels only last 10 years instead of 25 they still save enough money in order to offset the extra installation costs. And once you have the first installation completed the. Swapping in new panels is much more simple. From a financial perspective the majority of solar installations are a no brainer really.

This is an excellent video! I am based in Japan and a part of the worldwide agrivoltaic community. I work closely with many of the persons and companies appeared in this video. We want to translate this video, putting Japanese subtitles first, to introduce it to the Japanese audience. If you agree, please let me know where I should contact to obtain your side consent and to know how we can proceed.

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@Lucas P fossil fuel bot

Hope and pray that your efforts serves to inspire the world into similar action!!!

@Lucas P it is founded on optimism, the asset and essenseof everyventure capitalist!!!

My blessings and thanks for letting us breath little longer!!!

There are some Indian projects for solar panels over irrigation canals. It reduces evaporation and provides power. The key to solar power is residential and grid storage. Hopefully flow batteries and liquid air storage will work for that.

Kevin 🌸the project you are talking about is in,,,,,,,, Vadodara in Gujarat,,,,,,, it was started and completed by 🌸 Narendra Damoder Das Modi ,,,,,,,, when Modi ji was Chief Minister of Gujrat State. Not only this and the other solar projects DW is talking hare,,,,, solar panels on farm land,,,,,, was preferred by progressive farmers in Gujrat State, especially in Anand and Nadiad District and they happily sold surplus solar energy to other farmers . These projects are also installed in Bengaluru by big tech companies. 🌸 All this happened before or after 2014 where they reached today, I don't know. 😀 Prime minister Modi is big Sun worshipper 😀. Infact all Sanatan Dharma followers worship 🌸Surya Narayan.

And cooldown the panels as well

@MegaJuniorJones He's not talking about the channels on the farm but the long large canals to bring water from dozens or hundreds of km away in a 10m wide channel.

California is now following India and adding PV on top of canals. These are not small water channels on farms in either India or California. Besides producing electricity, the PV panels can also reduce evaporation enough to make a difference. Water for cleaning the panels is readily available and runs back into the canal. There are roads along the canals already. Like agrivoltaics, this is a win-win.

Anyone can Google map anywhere in the world and see that virtually no rooftops in the world have solar panels. If we start there--covering every roof with solar panels, and then cover most car parking lots with solar, we'll have enough solar energy. And then we can work on road-sides and other unusable lands, and then agriphotovoltaics and other ideas.

Ask yourself why the roofs aren’t already covered in solar. Or someone in the industry. That should tell you something about why we need to put it in other places.

you must relize that you could easily earn 2 Megawatt from an agri pv installation and on the rooftop you could only get some kilowatt depending on the roof we ned both

Failure.. just like that Tesla thing that went bankrupt circa 2012.. haha we seem to just pick the losers.

@Michael Yun simple just move the countries to sunnier locations. Seriously the cloudy countries are windier.

One of the best and I think simplest way is to mandate solar panel on each house / apartment / factories etc at least in urban areas

@Archangel17 good point. Currently the loans come with much higher rates since these are unsecured assets. Unlike a house, a bank will not reprocess solar panels in case of non-payment. That’s why rates are double of a house (to accommodate risk) and very few banks offer the service. If we had similar Federal backing like what the FHA does for first time home buyers, installation prices would drop dramatically.

@VK RGFAN In terms of affordability, the mandate can force banks to provide cheap loans. Considering solar panels earn their investment back overtime in saved energy costs, there really should be a 'too expensive' argument. Though maybe a clause could be put in that you are excempt if you use/are going to use too little energy for the panels to be worth it. Though it is unlikely that minimum won't be reached by the vast vast majority. PV panels not able to withstand freezing temperatures is new to me, considering it is being used in area's with even quite some snowfall. Pretty sure you either have been misinformed or we are talking about freezing temperatures so low that human habitation will be nearly impossible/very harsh.

@Dave Harnett *Many sites will be unsuitable* Most regions/houses would be just fine, you can always include the possibility to ask for an exception in the house's permit request with the specificied reason (eg. shaded roof area due to trees). Also in larger regions where it would be that usefull (like a place with very little sunshine, ie. Alaska, ...), you'll get regional exceptions. *Manyconsumers would buy the cheapest possible setup that satisfies the mandate, resulting in bad experiences, fires, and hurt solar's reputation.* The mandate can easily set a minimum standard, so this really isn't an argument at all. Moreover most people would go for the most cost-effective setup they can afford, not just the cheapest. The mandate even can include that banks have to provide cheap loans for those solar panels. *Setting a city-wide mandate with a deadline would cause a massive spike in demand for domestic installations.* Which is why you'd only mandate it for new buildings or those undergoing extensive renovations. This way you spread out the impact. I am not saying this absolutely would be a good idea (though imo it defiitely could be an option), however your couner-arguments just hold no merit at all.

Not everyone can afford if, second point Solar energy can’t withstand harsh weather conditions such as freezing temperatures, so it won’t work everywhere.

Neither good nor simple I'm afraid. Many sites will be unsuitable, and would result in a lot of e-waste for a little harvested energy. Manyconsumers would buy the cheapest possible setup that satisfies the mandate, resulting in bad experiences, fires, and hurt solar's reputation. Setting a city-wide mandate with a deadline would cause a massive spike in demand for domestic installations. It'd be a golden opportunity for unqualified opportunists to fleece consumers. Attempts to enforce the mandate (by who?) would only harm sentiment toward the green movement.

We in India have covered the canals and large water bodies with solar panels and we are doing it for the past decade and above, floating panels is already in use for may be 5 years and agri voltaic is also in use ....

Calif is looking into putting solar panels over the aqueduct to keep water from evaporating and to generate electricity.

yes but the scale has been very minor. India china and others still rely heavily on coal and other disastrous sources for energy we hope they work on renewables on emergecy basis

Panels are even more useful at hydropower because of energy storage. You can use the dam as a gravity battery.

Dams already are in use as gravity storage! Wake up!

@Martin Gottschalk I can still see it being useful in that it offsets some of the hydro need, allowing more water to remain in the reservoir, allowing you to save it for the less sunny time of the year. And it prevents some evaporation which also means you've effectively stored more energy.

small potatoes

@madcow 3417 +1 on the lower reservoir. Capacity is needed to get a proper volume of water back up. Not saying it can't work, but it's quite complicated and very location dependent! In the USA, I think that Appalachia is particularly well suited for this type of system. It could be a great way to generate electricity locally while moving away from coal

On the parking of Pari Daiza located in Belgium they put solar panels above most of the parking lot. So the space needed for the cars isn't wasted and the cars stay cool on a warm day. (we went last sunday, wich happend to be a sunny day!) Do this with all the open parking lots of cinema's, theme parcs etc... And you also use otherwise wasted space ;)

Yes 👍 especially in the USA where parking lots are huge around supermarkets mall's etc

in the US there are about 2 billion parking spaces. I think it is a perfect match to place PV-panels above these parking spaces. If a parking space is 10 m2 (and per parking space there is an additional 10 m2 on access road), that would make an area of 40.000 km2 of area. depending on surrounding buildings and or trees, there would still be a huge area suitable. When driving through Arizona, it really struck me that all cars on the parkinglot of a shoppingmall were located around a tree hoping to get a sliver of shade.

Thanks for this show about agrivoltaics. I have never heard of this before. Shading crops with solar panels so the agriculture is better. Very cool.

Floatovoltaics on salt or brakish water could also be used to collect evaporating water. This free desalinisation process would add to the efficiency for no significant costs.

Once again DW produces great content. Thank you!

This was a good report. Yay for solar finally getting the attention it deserves

I've been saying this for thirty years. The best places to put solar panels is ABOVE areas that don't need sun so much. Water storage areas, parking lots, fields of shade preferring crops. Honestly, it should be flat out illegal to build a parking area for more than 10 vehicles without a solar 'roof'. The only problem is the end-of-life disposal of solar: They're almost entirely non-recyclable, or the process is even more toxic than creating them is.

@De Eas 2days every week no electricity for past 12 years have learnt even that?

@Mohan Nair enjoy the darkness, my friend

@De Eas never nuclear,extensive solar installations!!!

So nuclear, then?

That is fantastic and commendable foresight. Would love to see an early and resounding success for such views!!!

Once I saw that one of the reasons why it might be a not such good idea to create a solar farm in the space, and beam the energy down, is that it can be used as a weapon. It might be harmless to people, but probably not to electronics.So, it is not a crazy idea that any government would add the possibility of target the beam to another places.

I’d love to build happy solar cow huts for my family’s dairy farm. Our pastures are vast and largely empty. It would be nice to put photovoltaics to work on the land while also giving shelter to the cows when they are not frolicking.

Nice video, its really heartwarming to see these systems gaining attention. A bit over-the top dramatic editing for my taste, but guess it works for a wider audience.

The problem with solar is storage - there’s plenty of space to put panels. These ideas don’t solve the primary issue, which is better, cheaper energy storage.

@GKETT883 Theoretically yes. Practically however is something else. Nuclear would have to be used as a base load, but if solar and wind produces too much during the day, something needs to be curtailled and that is usually the more expensive generation, in this case nuclear. Which would push its costs even higher. Especially if grid storage becomes competitive (expected around 2030-35), there is not much interesting to using nuclear as a baseload, unless it can become siginificantly cheaper than current new nuclear powerplants are.

Wrong, solar can be used for peak usage. (During the day) and nuclear can be used at night

There are currently quite a lot of storage options in development/initial deployment that should do the job just fine. It just needs some time to grow, iron out the kinks and scale up. Most of these don't use lithium, so that can be kept for other applications (EV's, laptops, smartphones, ...). The expectation is that by around 2030-2035 storage+pv or wind will be cost competitive with gas, coal, nuclear, ...

zinc bromide batteries, lithium is a fad

More people need to see this! Thank you so much

The panels could provide needed shade and shelter in urban environments too, above sidewalks and roads and parking lots, and be used to power lights and water pumps, etc.

I'm for shadowed parkings and pumping water when energy is produced. For light that would mean storing the energy in batteries, and this is a bad solution because batterie suck. They are costly to produce, and I include environmentally costly, and then they have a short lifespan before dying. Everybody that had installations to light their gardens, or have a remote controlled barrier on solar energy are rapidly dealing with dying lights and have to manually open their fences (a more complicated operation than if they had a non-motorized fence to begin with)

Depends on climate and location. Here in Western Australia we have unlimited space and sun but huge distances to the market for power and produce

I think renewables are an idea whose time has come. They make sense financially, climate change effects are increasingly visible and we have learnt in the past few months that energy is not only an economic or environmental issue, it's also a national security concern. I'm cautiously optimistic.

@buildthis99 Go tell the world. You might even get a Nobel prize for that information, I mean, solar panels are in fact counter productive and we are wasting billions of dollars? That's huge, that will make headlines. Or it would if it were true anyway

@Jonathan Taylor fossil fuels are also heavily subsidised... Take all subsidies away and renewables are far cheaper

@JT1989 This is because of subsides net metering and tiered energy allocation.

@Alberto Ferreiro I've seen several video's about it and have been trying to push the idea for years. Alarmist do not want us to use it because its too good an idea and does not give money to china.

Awesome content - Thank you!

I would love to see more solar going around the country. but that's going to take a massive amount of resources. And even then, we need other types of power sources too in order to handle the changes in Demand with the power grid. Solar doesn't exactly have an on/off switch for those sudden changes.

We would need to supplement with batteries, natural gas generators, and dams when demand is higher than solar and wind production but it would still cut down on our dependence on fossil fuels.

The fact that we can fulfill all the energy needed just from using rooftops and empty lands to put the panels amaze me, and it is also if we are not including the rest of renewable energy sources.

@Blowin Kk Solar is only useless in a black-out if you can't shut your house of from the grid, else it can still produce power for your house. Though you probably will need a small battery (0.5-2kWh should more than suffice) as a buffer to use it in an effective way in case of a black-out. In fact with black outs in the US (not really common in the EU), it usually were houses with solar panels and a back up battery that still had uninterrupted power.

@YZ Rippin We can already recycle PV panels, that is even mandatory in the EU.

@Buffalo Soulja 20 years is a long time and it's not even when you need to replace it. 20 years is the typical period when the manufacturer guarantees a certain level of output. Usually around 80-90 percent. The panel still works after 20 years.

You gonna pay for all these panels too, batteries as well? Btw they will all need replacing every 20 or so years so better start saving. What a great financial burden for a children to inherit for the sake of 1.5 degrees lol

You guys always pick such good music. It'd be nice if you could list credits to the music used. Thanks!

I would like to have more information on some issues, particularly, cooling the panels with bodies of water means warming the body of water in turn. On a large scale this might have adverse impacts. And secondly where are we going to store excess power for the night? With hydropower it would be feasible to have dual reservoirs and use excess day energy to pump water in the higher reservoir and let hydro generate power during nights. But the biggest issue is still energy storage with PV.

and Geothermal Energy.. solar pannel don,t change climate.. production .. the rare minerals ? and are for life ? and all the reflexion of the pannels,, a q.. for the scientists..

An uncovered stretch of deep water absorbs ~95% of the solar energy that hits it (the remaining 5% is reflected). The net effect of covering it with a solar panel will be to reduce the heating effect by ~15%

Well produced video and full of useful information about solar! The future of energy is solar! Thank you for sharing! ☀🔌⚡🚘

Floating solar panels on reservoirs would be awesome

If all homes and buildings could have solar panels on the roof, that would be very impactful but very difficult to accomplish socially.

There are so many heavy metals in solar panels and I couldn't imagine how much of a disaster this could cause. It doesn't even make sense to do this though when you always have a ton of roof space. If anything it's likely going to be best to create a more distributed power network integrating panels/thermal/wind where applicable into/onto existing structures.

The 'dangerous' heavy metals in solar panels (and it aren't many) pose no risk to the environment as long as you don't grind it into smal dust or burn it at a high enough temperature. Moreover they are nearly fully recyclable.

This would be especially good because the places where there is lots of roof space are generally where electrical power is needed. 😉

These ideas are just amazing... They have real economic and conservation benefits.

Love this channel!

This kind of iniciatives are very interesting, and they should be done. But first all the roofs of homes/ buildings and parking slot must have solar panels

Yeah. The Sahara Desert in Africa, especially in the southwest of Algeria, between Algeria and Morocco, is sufficient to generate energy for Europe and Africa as a whole. It is strange that governments really do not take advantage of such an opportunity.

For years I have been walking around my city and always wondered why solar panels aren't placed in these locations: -5-9 story house rooftops? Here seagulls are nesting and seem like wasted space. - outdoor windowsill for every apartment block and private house. -Fences -Building walls

We Buy Old Solar Panels - Sell Used Solar Panels We give you the best price for your used solar panels and recycle them responsibly. We buy all major brands of residential, commercial and off grid used solar panels.

@Rtfa Zeberdee They are very much non-recyclable. The carbon footprint and environmental to produce them from mining, manufacture and shipping is not negligible.

@Rtfa Zeberdee they are not recycled and like windmill blades are like 80% toxic

It seems common sense on farmland, esp where rain is erratic, the panels can also be used to channel water into storage systems , it's a win-win

Maybe we should think of the floating pv similar to the "green house" pv plants. Can we space them out a bit more and grow plants beneath them? I am imagining something like a underwater "farm" in hope to give fish more areas repopulate and grow up. No big fishing should be allowed close to those floating platforms (maybe giving small fisher man licenses for fishing in exchange for help with the habitat project) Also you are talking about the pv cells being cooled by the sea, but shouldn't the goal rather be to limit the sun heating up the sea? I'm guessing that this is still happening since normally most of the light would be absorbed by the sea, converted to heat and now is converted to electricity and heat. I would just really like to see some measurements of the temperature at the top layer of water.

The roof of our houses should be clad in Solar Roof Tiles. A suburb of houses with these tiles would equate to an invisible power station that no one objects to being located near them.

I think a way more important issue is how panels are manufactured and how they are recycled, Solar panels are great but they need to be easily manufactured using readily available materials and have a reliable recycling system.

Hi Evan, we have touched on this topic in the following video: https://youtu.be/EWV4e453y8Y – let us know your thoughts in the comment section 🌍

A obvious place to put solar panels is in our buildings, in fact in large buildings like factories and supermarkets should be already mandatory to have solar panels installed.

Great twist at the end, just as we were starting to dream, of this brave, new-energy world. :)

There are a huge number of drawbacks to this. Many would be uneconomic. A better start would be to cover existing parking lots and maybe some of the biggest warehouse roofs.

In fact solar panels are not a new technology they developed in the late 19th century and in the early 20th there plans to build solar farms in the Sahara desert but before during and after WW1 at the time oil is the cheaper option.

@Asanda Mostly true. Apart from the equator part. That doesn't actually make any difference to annual energy output - you just angle the panel to compensate for latitude. It does affect seasonal variability though. Still, not too bad: The southern US, much of Europe, anywhere in the middle east, Australia, parts of China - there are plenty of populated places where the climate is well suited to solar.

You can't just put solar panels anywhere you like. They need to be as close to the equator as possible and they need to be angled towards the sun. They also need to be in a region that doesn't experience too much cloud covering. This means Deserts are the perfect climate for solar panels. Especially the Sahara since it's closer to the equator.

The modern panels are a great improvement though. Cheaper to produce, greater conversion efficiency.

@Phil Borer back in the day

We have the space in our own back yards, so to speak, because every roof every bridge every road everywhere every structure everywhere can have solar installed. It does two things. It keeps the wiring infrastructure close to the use. And it shades everything. Every parking lot needs solar every freaking parking lot. We don't have to put it in a desert put it on every house every school every building ever made everywhere. Are you getting the picture.

This sounds interesting, but one thing i know - It is definitely not cheap in Africa, In fact, it is so expensive and it looks like the cost will increase over the years as demand rises. This is a great initiative at the Government level to participate in, and when considering the "land issue", starting the project in a county where land is mostly privately owned, This increases the cost of setting up the project.

You're better off utilizing the silicon and aluminium deposits present in the lunar regolith to build your space based solar cells. Plus the moon is located higher in the gravity well, meaning that you would expend minimal energy getting the materials to a GSO position.

remember you also have to switch between what you plant to protect the soil

"Whats the best way to build solar pannels without loosing much needed space?" Not sure if it was one of your documentaries or one of arte ..., but there are currently research efforts been made with solar pannels in a vertical orientation(here called solar fences // im Lot zur Erde stehend) as it seems to be even more efficient in conjunction with agricultural fields. The problem being with horizontal or slightly angeled panels, the water is not spread evenly and one would need additional watering mechanisms which would eat into the energy balance. What was new to me and never considered, was that there could be nearly a greenhouse effect for tomatos and other plants which otherwise would maybe get even too much sun. So it is not only about what is the best overall solution, but rather what is the best solution depending on the plant you want to harvest. I would expect depending on how you construct a solarpanel, you could direct rainwater also downbelow instead only towards the edges. Can farmers in europe get subsedies to establish such systems? The other buzzword currently in agriculture is regenerative farming, could these concepts be combined? I'd need more information on the longterm effects of floating solar pannels to its direct environment before taking a stance on those. One thing they deffinetly arent't and that is pretty. So those of us who at times look for some untouched nature wont like it to see every inch of inland lakes covered in solar pannels. Maybe that too should be factored in within our need for energy. Same argument surely would count for solar pannels within agricultur. Maybe we need somthing like exclusion zones. Like we could have in a 7 kilometer radius around cities these concepts established first, which would also make sense in terms where this would come in handy where to use it, but have your more rural communities protected from these, but keep them as more nature orientated and recreational without all these. I can see though the appeal to protect water from evaporation for areas where scarcity becomes an issue. The solar pannels in space may have a secondary use which i would want to be seen debated should it be feasable as i currently conceptualize them. Depending on how many of those there would be, we would microwave parts of the atmophere and that can't be all good, depending on who or what is flying threw it or at what on earth it is aimed at. Besides the technological challanges to protect them from solar winds, getting them up there and cosntructed and suchlike. I am not against them, but there definetlly needs to be international debate and regulation, soo good thing you made them a topic :) Costs for infrastructure i always see as an investment in the future and therefor i find myself rather agreeing with bold concepts are these than in the past with investments into say military, though that didn't age well(looking at you Putin -_-)

Greatly encouraging

One thing I’ve always though is cool about solar is that it doesn’t have an exponential relationship between size and output like other power generators. Take wind for example (which I love), making the blades 1/3 longer actually increases output by much MORE than 1/3. But for solar, doubling the amount of panels doubles the amount of generation. So putting 10 panels on the roof of a house makes exactly as much financial sense as covering a giant farm with thousands of panels. So the title of this video is 100% correct. Put. Solar. Everywhere!

I agree with the core of your premise - the huge benefit to solar is that it's economically _viable_ at a domestic scale. But I don't think it's fair to say that it makes "exactly as much financial sense" as a solar farm. There are still economies of scale - not with the panels, but with the rest of the system. 100 homes with 10 panels each means 100 installation contracts, 100 inverters, 100 high voltage disconnects, 100 current meters, 100 grid ties... That's to say nothing of the extra cost of maintenance/repairs on 100 small (mostly rooftop) installations compared to one large farm.

@Dave Harnett I’m glad they weren’t mentioned by the presenter as deserving further trials .

​@Richard Ward-Jackson PVs don't like dirt, abrasion, or mechanical stress. Roads produce loads of all three.

@Save Money Save the Planet I have personally made the calculation myself for a solar installation on a home where I live. Long story short, even with government subsidies, I would still be losing money over the lifetime of the panels compared to if I was simply plugged to my local power company. It should be said that power is cheap where I live, but still, my point is that it's not as black and white and solar panels are not as amazing as people want to believe. Solar power is also more localized than people realize, some areas simply would never recuperate the installation cost or the CO2 cost of making the panels because of lower solar potential.

This is simply a geometry illusion. Increasing the blade length (radius) increases the swept area by the squared term in pi R squared (formula for area of a circle). There are usually 3 blades, and adding length increases the structural loads due to lift, drag, and centrifugal forces at more than linear rates as well. As with airplanes, material limits are reached pretty quickly on the upsizing curve.

this is so cool! love it

The technology of solar is changing so quickly, it is hard to keep up with it!

We have agrivoltaics at CIAL in india also

Also, it's not a bad idea to legislate the installation of solar panels on the roofs of every home. The government can finance it and homeowners can maintain the panels and get bill discounts based on the power generated on their roofs.

if you put a solar panel on Every EV sold.. the solar panel can probably give the EV slightly longer range and if you run out of battery in a remote area, you only need to wait for your EV to "recharge" itself and you are on the road again. or if you dun need the longer range, the power can be used for your car's Air Con or heater in winter. or charge your devices in car.

We are releasing a video about EVs soon, so don't forget to come back and check out the channel. We release a video every Friday!

This would work well if this was commercially available. Solar panels are getting cheaper, so letting people innovate in their own backyards may be the quickest way to find what works. It’s the “American way” lol

Yes, the technique and equipment is available around the world.

One thing people forget, it's currently only a maximum of 28% efficency... Imagine 50-80%? It'd be the equivalent of having a panel in full sun making less than a more effective one in the shade. With the potential to even run cooler.

Add thermal electric coolers to condense water out of the air using a small portion of the power to create a drip irrigation system dripping water from the solar panels themselves.

Can they legitimately decrease cost of power production? Are they feasibly recyclable? Do we have sufficient storage?

Why not also add sprinklers on the pannels. Triple advantage on a double harvest.

Amazing video.

Incorporate wave energy technologies, on the offshore floating platforms. Uneconomic by themselves, but could be worthwhile in a situation where structure and infrastructure are already there.

too many moving parts.

Rotating panels could optimize PV and plant growth?

One of the best places that I can think of placing solar panels is over parking lots. Everyone wants to park in the shade and the power is created near the consumer. What could be better?

Good idea. Cools the car interiors at the same time. getting in your car in the pouring rain. Also even put them on house driveways.

What about ease of access to crops with large farm equipment (tractors, etc.)? The panels require a certain amount of maintenance but is that always compatible with farming requirements? It’s a great idea but I wonder if the upkeep is a deterrent to large scale farmers 🤔

I know its becoming popular on French vineyards. Its producing better quality wine and generating an income European farm machinery is smaller than American so Im not sure it translates. But in France its getting a lot of traction over the last 5 years.

I've been wondering why we haven't done those farm implementations for a good decade or so. But for that problem, the cost and then the other hoops farmers would have to jump through is more than most farmers want to be bothered with I'd imagine. The whole idea will need to be subsidized. Same thing with homes but the cost is just too expensive for such. Right now the majority of us do good enough to pay for our electricity bill at a month's usage, let alone pay for 20 years worth upfront with a "promise" that it will pay off in 20 years and then make money. It's like another proposed pipe dream being sold to us all mainly because the $$ GAP.

Knotbone, I think you are talking about refraction which does not occur unless there is a change of medium. Plants need sunshine to grow properly, cover them with panels and there will be little of real value to harvest or for beasts to graze on. Also higher panels need much stonger structures a sthey will be more vulnerable during high winds.

@I A Reid put up high enough, light will bend around panels. I think it's called a parallax? So really as far as land consumption, it's miniscule unless you're worried about a pole positioned where you're not going to tractor anyway.

Not if you are living (sub)aquatorial and put them up yourself.

Knotbone, farms should be used to produce food, it's a terrible idea to cover useable farm land with solar panels, especially as solar power si apoor source of electricity. See my other post which explains why.

I remember many decades ago, reading that one of the Scandinavian countries were putting solar panels on the sides of roads and in the medians of roads. Is there a reason we can't put them along train tracks and along highways. How many thousands of miles would that be? How much electricity would that generate? Quite a few million barrels of oil, I'd say.

Busy roads produce nasty, sticky, oily, _waterproof_ residue that would necessitate very regular cleaning. I'd expect to see output fall by 10-20% per month between cleanings in a highway setting. You'd also need to ensure that the panels' coating can resist chemical corrosion from the hydrocarbons (and the solvents used to wash them off).

Hi. Well done! "Thinking outside the box" and constructive use of various niche generation opportunities is excellent, however you underestimate the inherent difficulties and risks in some cases. Solar panels floating at sea isn't something I'd invest in, firstly because the solar panels will be attacked by salt corrosion and quickly fail. Second, you mention "waves" as a problem just once, but waves are actually the main trouble. Not only will they saturate the panels in seconds, but just one bad storm could consign the whole solar array to Davy Jones's locker. This also applies to inland lakes and estuaries. As all surfers know, storms out at sea, even if they never reach land, can still generate 4 meter on-shore waves. This idea is a money loser. Fitting solar panels around farms is a good idea, but only practical around crops that don't require mega-machinery to plant or harvest. The panels will hinder evaporation of water, but condensation will collect underneath, which may be a problem. Your most useful idea is putting solar panels over car parks. The electricity can charge the cars directly, without the efficiency losses of converting DC to AC (for the grid), then back to DC to charge the car. They would also cool the sidewalks, turn open streets into person-friendly malls, and best of all, no-one need return to a stinking hot car. This idea could also help solve the tragic problem of children dying because their ignorant parents left them locked in the car for "five minutes", but got distracted, and remembered them a whole two hours later. The SPCA will love it too. Thanks for your hard work. Cheers, P.R.

put the panels close to existing transmission lines. minimize the transmission distance, because that is a big part of the cost and profit. on top of all buildings in urban centers especially, where the power is most needed.

I've often thought the panels could follow all of the infrastructure of roads and bridges.

You could, but why not first put them on rooftops and supply power where it's going to be used, and then add ones over roads if you still need more capacity?

Very cool video!

Where can we put them? I would ask how do we produce them?

My first reaction was: the plants will probably filthy the panels with their oils, like when you park your car near trees and bushes

Require every home in America to have and be its own power plant, every home has solar panels and using space already taken. Everyone gets power and big companies wouldn't control us. Things we need shouldn't be private, power, water, healthcare are a couple of examples.

Frodaddy09, the real problem is that renewables are poor at supplying power and many expensive solutions to this deficiency are proposed but they will not be effective. Renewables are not the answer and time will show this. Indeed it is already evident but politicians are blind and push on regardless.

@vovalos in my view on things we all need, private industry should not be able to monopolize or profit alot off of, things like, power, water, and other things like healthcare. We make a new energy department that handles maintenance and safety. Like your local power company, they would have bases in each power area to take care of issues. No one household or person creates just for itself, it is all part of a local grid, everyone creates for everyone. Excess is stored or transferred elsewhere.

@Frodaddy09 who's going to do grid management? Who's generating power in your scenario when there's a big storm? Or do you expect everyone to generate their own power, but still pay half of what they pay today to maintain the grid and peaking plants that will pick up loads?

@I A Reid This would obviously need major funding, infrastructure development and everyone on board to get it done. In that world, it could work. Technology is only getting better.

Frodaddy09, Yes I did assume you meant stand alone home generation. However what you suggest is how electrical generation started, with small power plants feeding a small area. It soon became obvious that forming a grid and interconnecting was far better, cheaper and more reliable. Another flaw is that you can't run even small island grids with renewables, they are not suited. The only reason that we have so much renewables connected to grid sis that there is also conventional generators which keep the grid stable . Remove them and the grid would simply go out of frequency control and trip.

I will say here in the Mojave Desert, there is TOO MUCH sun for most plants. Too much heat, way too dry, too windy, and too high of an altitude, so less atmosphere to block sunlight - way brighter up here. Really, most people could not imagine how hot, dry, and sunny it gets here, and it goes on for hundreds or even thousands of miles. Imagine 3 months with temps at or over 100 degrees every day with no clouds. And this is the cooler part of the Mojave, near the mountains and ocean of Los Angeles. Here, most plants grow better in at least partial shade, or mostly shade, or full shade. So this is a good idea for desert locations.

Sounds brilliant place to start tbh.

solar panels in deserts provide shade and shelter to crop and animals - every roof looks good in solar panels (solar panels on every roof and parking lot)

Can we incorporate solar panels into roadways? On all public buildings? (Also, gardens on top of public buildings?)

Imagine all the heat reflected by the solar panels

Solar panels reflect little heat and absorb most of it. This is why they get hot.

They should build solar panels near the areas that mine for solar panel materials.

I live near the Pacific ocean, there are resident Orca whales all throughout the passages and inlets. They're highly dependent on specific species, salmon and others. A floating voltaic system would drastically interfere with the whales otters, seals, and birds that use the ocean for both food and nurturing their young. Extreme hazards should never be the standard for ecological damage. The current ocean temperature is already rising, affecting mollusks and aquatic systems, plants and fish. Those panels cool because of the absorption of the heat into the water. We don't need hotter ocean currents, we need cooling down.

What about having solar sails in space and beaming down as microwaves to a tower and converting those microwaves back to electricity? It's been done before many years ago. I don't think a sail high in the near outerspace is going to hurt fish.

And don't forget the oceans are becoming more acidic. Poor corals. Poor fish, Poor Orcas.

The whales love the cooling water outfalls of the nuclear power stations on the California coast.

No one was suggesting covering any rivers/passages with solar panels, they said reservoirs which are relatively devoid of life. None should be big enough to cause significant issues, you’d be surprised how little of the earth we have to cover with panels to generate all the electric we need. Nuclear’s probably the better option but solar is still an improvement than current.

not really. If they were heating up the water they wouldn't reduce evaporation, which they do.

Fantastic; two birds with one stone...we need to move fast to protect what earth we have left and to enhance biodiversity.

We put solar panels on the bomhofplas in my city, but it killed a lot fish due to lessening the amount of vegetation, not a great solution either.

The intro feels like an action movie

If anyone is curious a company just came out with a panel that's 90% more efficient in the same space. Solar panels are just like gas engines when they first came out. They will keep getting more efficient over time

Nice video.

Ok but I see a lot of problems here: 1 - The materials used. Despite becoming cheaper and cheaper as time passes, this comes with a cost. Most of the materials used for solar panels are obtained in countries like China were both soil and environments are very damaged because of the mining of rare earth materials. 2 - The water used. When displacing them near the seas I don't think it would represent such a problem but if we put solar panels in desserts or arid zones, places were water is really hard to obtain already, from where would we obtain the water for refrigerating this solar panels? I'm not very documented on this topic so feel free to tell me what you think. 3 - Used as sunlight blockers. Although I think it's a great idea to use them for blocking the sun in cities where sunlight becomes a problem, specially in summer, I don't think we should displace them in rivers or seas, and here's why: Deep waters are so important because not only is where most of the species live in a water ecosystem but also it's where plants and seaweeds live, which help giving oxygen to the water and keeping the ecosystem balanced. So if we don't let sunlight enter the water, this plants will die with the rest of the ecosystem. I think we should, if necessary, don't cover all of the space when putting the solar panels in the water but it will damage the ecosystem for sure. Despite all of this I'm pretty pro-solar panels and they are a really good solution in my opinion but I think these are important facts to take into account.

Point 2 is a non issue. The video proposes solar on surfaces where there already is water, not to pipe water to cool solar.

It makes sense to put them on reservoirs, not on the sea

Yea agreed, duckbill curve is also a major challenge that comes with the rollout of solar PV

I agree with you completely. I think they should be one form of how we get our energy but not the primary source.

Question... Can plants that oxygenate and clean the water grow under the pannels if a lake is covered?

Good question, Newsham! In the video, we only mention fish farms but research is underway regarding the water quality and biodiversity under these floating panels. According to the water quality study conducted by Hanze University of Applied Sciences, the oxygen content under the floating PV modules has changed only minimally within a year, as wind and sunlight still manage to reach the water under these floating photovoltaics. When it comes to biodiversity and the environment, Buro Bakker / ATKB researched and found that panels lead to lower wind levels on the water surface, which results in less erosion of the banks and therefore protects the vegetation and stimulates plant growth. Such studies are still relatively new – more studies need to be continued to examine the long-term effects in more detail.

Lakes lose so much water to evaporation. Shade would reduce the loss by magnitudes. Amazing idea.

If only this technology were affordable for developed countries. Maybe in G7 countries, this is a viable option, but here in Indonesia, this technology is very expensive. Maybe if the G7 country is willing to help developing countries implement this, we might save our planet.

There's a massive amount of international finance avaliable for green energy projects, and solar is cheaper than most alternatives. A well-designed solar installation should pay for itself (including financing costs) inside 10 years.

The only way space solar power can be economically practical is if you build the systems in space, using materials from space, and use the power for activities in space. That could very well happen someday, but it's a far-off prospect. Sort of like nuclear fusion, although at least we know that solar PV does work, and have plenty of experience with it.

Yea. I really don’t see space solar happening anytime soon. Not when there are still so many viable installation locations here on earth.

How big is the risk of PV leeching heavy metals and such?

Hi Lily, we talk about how green solar really is in this video: https://youtu.be/EWV4e453y8Y

How do the floating solar panels affect birds? I hope they can still access the fish without getting hurt

Good question, Lani-Skyy! There are currently 2 known types of direct solar energy-related bird mortality: 1. Collision-related mortality – mortality resulting from the direct contact of the bird with a solar project structure(s). This type of mortality has been documented at solar projects of all technology types. 2. Solar flux-related mortality – mortality resulting from the burning/singeing effects of exposure to concentrated sunlight. The nature and magnitude of impacts to bird populations and communities is generally related to location, size, and technology. You can read more about the topic in the following study: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960148116301422#!

Can you do a video on dumping grounds for spent and broken solar panels and wind turbines ?

More than 90% of the components in solar systems are recyclable. They are made of three primary materials – glass, silicon, and metal. To recycle these parts for future use, they must be disassembled, and the raw materials have to be isolated. This is a complex process that requires a lot of time and effort.

During wartime any standalone source of electricity that is tied to the grid or can be converted to the grid easily will be a valuable resource as well as ensuring sources of electricity cannot just be eliminated easily.

How do we deal with the heat produced because of the lower albedo of the solar panels? Will this drastically increase temperature?

If you look at a thermal camera image of a roof with solar panels, the panels are cooler than the surrounding roof. Which makes sense. The light that falls on the roof and gets absorbed just heats it up, while about 20-25% of the light absorbed by the solar panels gets carried away as electricity, leaving less to be radiated as heat.

Not sure how you made this video without mentioning integrated solar by companies like Solapave. Just re-using space we already urbanised - roads, paving, wall cladding. This way the energy is where it’s needed. AggriSolar works too but it’s very niche as to where it’s suitable. Water solar though, not a fan, covering large bodies of water stops algae growing which cleanse the water. So it stagnates. Water isn’t disappearing. Water that evaporates from one place falls as rain in another.

Its a bit of an oversimplification. Rain 100 miles away is no use to a reservoir thats disappearing

Pastures as well, especially in hot climates.

I don't see why they don't build on all new buildings & on top of all new houses

The European Commission is now forcing this as standard

In China's Shandong province, electricity grid operator had to ask residents to disconnect from their grid to prevent overloading. Now power storage has become a good business.

I heard we must stop to block all the fields with solar panels but need to put it on every rooftop. It's intended to make that a law