I think it is a great fecking idea.
This year in France you came back to the car in the Leclerc shopping centre carpark to discover it was like a hothouse after 45 minutes sitting in the 35 degree sunshine.
You find covered parking in other countries so might as well cover them with something semi useful.
Also know of massive solar farm down in Andalucia south of town of Arcos de la Frontera.
All the surrounding land is used to grow crops and you just have fecking absolutely massive solar paneled area that could be farmed.
Of course the greens hate farmers so they probably rather it panelled.
I saw they are trialling solar panels over crops in France too(https://www.euronews.com/green/2022/10/ ... t-the-same) and are considering mandating panels on farmland, beside roads and train tracks as well. It seems to be much more a move of desperation as they try anything possible to increase their energy output. They were also switching on all the nuclear reactors they could.
“ French politicians are also examining proposals to build large solar farms on empty land by motorways and railways as well as on farmland.”
From where I'm sitting, there's no desperation on show. These things have all been discussed for several years - essentially the whole of Macron's presidency. The "nuclear question" - specifically the unreliability of nuclear in recent years - has driven a switch to alternative sources, and as fossil fuels are a no-go option, that leaves renewables as the main contender.
France is known for its "cheap" nuclear electricity, but that hides a multitude of deficiencies in the system, many of which were highlighted by so many reactors having to be taken out of service over the last few years for "scheduled" maintenance (i.e. trying to squeeze another few years out of them). But there are many areas - like where I live, for example - where our electricity has always been "100% renewable" coming from a number of local hydro-electric plants, and supplemented more recently by wind turbines.
Across the whole of France, most of our winter electricity comes from imported hydroelectric supplies (produced in Switzerland and Northern Italy) because the nukes aren't able to cope on their own; and, as we've seen during the ever more frequent heat-waves, nuclear can't be depended upon in the summer either.
All-in-all, the situation has been under regular review for all of the nearly 20 years I've been living here, and the only real nouveauté this year is the launch of an app that warns the population of an greater-than-average (or even high risk) of power outages in the following three days for the different regions, so that people (and businesses) can adjust their consumption. So far, the few warnings we've had have been enough to cut the tops off the usual peaks and there have been no blackouts.
Got my first solar panel today, going to use it for charging the batteries in the tractors... one is stuck in a field and don't fancy bringing back the battery or lugging a booster over to it. Will try it shortly and hope the panel doesn't get robbed
KHD wrote: ↑Thu Dec 22, 2022 8:44 pm
Got it as a present, I think it was half a p1ss take but I'll give it a go anyway
15mm thick and 2.25kg ? For 0.5 of an amp? WTF is it made of?
Well, assuming your battery needs about 80A to be useful, you'll need at least 160 hours of decent sunshine, which equates to ... being able to turn the ignition some time in March! Or April.
But seriously: what kind of panel is that? I have one for hobby projects that gives me 0.5 of an amp, and it's only 250g and 2mm thick ... but it does a good job at keeping an old car battery topped up in between projects.
