RE: https://horche.demkontinuum.de/display/2196d4ee-7669-dbc1-1f9e-200464952498
Wow.
In addition to this, apparently farm yields INCREASE if you mix ground-dwelling crops with overhead PV panels, which provide shade/humidity traps for the plants and livestock.
Untersucht werden Auswirkungen der Agri-PV-Anlage und der Verwendung unterschiedlicher PV-Module auf die Lufttemperatur, Luftfeuchte, Lichtverfügbarkeit, Windgeschwindigkeit, sowie resultierende Änderungen der Qualität und der Menge des Hopfenertrags.
@BashStKid @cstross
Some farms locally could do with roofs and gutters over parts of their fields, flooding reduced yield, sometimes to zero, and damaged soil. And roads.
Later, drought occurred. Now, leading half the rain off the field doesn't inevitably assuage a later drought, but one might hope to put some in an aquifer.
And half might not be enough - it was _very_ wet.
But.
@BashStKid This is #Devon #rain #floods #fields #food there are roads narrow enough to surprise visitors partly due to the high banks, hedges etc.
Too much rain for them.
While one may stop the rain running out of the field, it forms a puddle, lake, unmanageable anaerobic mess, within the field, where crops were hoped for.
Reducing the water landing in the field, whatever one does with it, is worth thinking about, I think.
#rain #floods #food #solar #roof #drainage #gutters #farm #fields
Depends on whether the crops were already getting too much sun, vs. barely enough. The places where solar panels improve yield are places where it's dry and hot. *
Places that are plenty shady and humid already, can lose production due to panels. But if the extra shade doesn't cause your crops to develop fungal diseases, the lost harvest can be balanced out by the electricity as an alternate source of income.
@Kathmandu @cstross
* eg Gobi Desert
I also wonder how this may vary if the ground goes Nitrogen-deficient, fixed N often being a constraint to growth in last summer's conditions.
@ravenonthill @cstross Any time we want to start factories with good union jobs making solar panels, it's not any more difficult than finding the money.
(And there's a shortage of productive investment opportunities.)
Solar PV as a technology is not defined by Chinese Communist Party policy.
@graydon @cstross Biden was working in that direction. Many of his economic programs were very good. He got no credit for them and the public complained that his good economy was bad.
Meantime, I intend to keep nagging people about slavery in China because it looks very much like we are heading for a global renewables market with slavery at its base. I regret to say that slavery seems to be making a comeback in many forms and many places.
https://adviceunasked.blogspot.com/2026/01/xinjiang-slavery-and-solar-panels.html
https://adviceunasked.blogspot.com/2026/02/slavery-and-solar-panels-bibliography.html
@ravenonthill @cstross At the Main Street level, and below, it was a bad economy. (Elite consensus to refuse to pay for labour is a real thing, and probably not fixable short of running the guillotines round the clock for a year.)
Saying "Argh, slave labour! unclean!" is correct, but wildly unhelpful. (Narrative of helplessness, supports fossil carbon "solar bad, actually" narratives, etc.)
"We should make these ourselves in ethical ways", perhaps helpful.
@graydon @cstross I think we need to keep talking about slave labor. And, yes, we should absolutely propose alternatives but we need to keep talking about it. The slave system in the United States was not abolished because of economic inefficiency; it was abolished because the slave holders were trying to spread it and because northerners were horrified by the reality of slavery.
(Added: miserliness promotes slavery, which is part of why I am critical of it.)
https://www.reddit.com/r/HistoryMemes/comments/1fp8m9r/comment/lovmkjc/
@ravenonthill @cstross The US attempt to abolish the slave system did not work (it failed, completely) in the case of the US Civil War, which is why the US slave system is run by government entities in forced labour institutions called prisons. Such attempts generally can't work because we live in a system under selection, not a moral universe.
Effective opposition to slavery has to combine greater distribution of agency and greater power (including economic). Otherwise is gets crushed.
@graydon @cstross that is also one of the arguments China uses to excuse their expanding slave system. And it is expanding. They've gone from polysilicon and plant fibers (yes, cotton) to all kinds of car parts and especially parts for those electric cars that are doing so well in international markets.
The US founders thought that slavery was going to wither on the vine, then the cotton gin was invented. I fear the sudden global push for renewables may work similarly in China.
@JamesWNeal @cstross yeah you do not want 100% absorption, you want as much heat rejection as possible because panels produce more power when they're cooler.
It's an interesting concept but certainly not something being deployed at scale now. The image is probably slop or an unrelated stock photo.
@cstross not just in the desert, also in temperate regions like France:
Data from agrivoltaic canopy trials in France, developed by energy producer TSE and the French National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food and the Environment (INRAE), indicate measurable temperature, water-balance, and yield effects that reinforce the role of managed agrivoltaics in farm-level climate adaptation.
What most people don't realise, is that photosynthesis was an optimum temperature range. That range changes, between species, based on anatomy.
@cstross I was watching a video about this in China desert, and kind of by accident, they found that the panels provide a place for dew to condense.
Then it runs down the panel and that causes enough dew drops to concentrate in one spot to irrigate the base of the panel for plants to grow.
Without the panels the drew had no where to condense and when it didn't accumulate enough drops to sustain plants.
Kind of an interesting side effect
You’ve got more sheep rearing expertise than me.
A sheep farmer told me that the amazing improvements in fleece yield and quality that Australian farmers see under solar panels don’t apply here in NZ because our sheep have facial eczema.
How could I respond to that??? Is there some misunderstanding about the climate under panels in NZ that’s different to AU?
@futuresprog I think their argument is based in the idea that we have more humidity here, so in Australia having moisture under the panels would be a welcome thing but here it has the potential to create an environment that supports facial eczema spores.
I mean that sounds within the realms of possibility but also very much like reckons and not something that will have been studied.
A far bigger danger for facial eczema is generally higher temps and wetter summers from climate change.
@futuresprog Additionally, FE is generally picked up during low grazing (eg it lives in the base of the pasture). If the panels increase pasture growth you'd be less likely to be grazing the base.
Also, grass that grows in shade is less palatable so the grass directly under the panels won't be grazed as hard.
Finally, FE creates photosensitivity, so if you have sheep with it in your flock, they will absolutely love having easy shade to hide in.
Does that help?
@futuresprog PS I doubt that solar panels would necessarily improve fleece yield and quality here except by having generally healthier sheep.
Given how robust our sheep are and how little their fleece is worth compared with Australian merinos, I can see the $$ benefits to us being less than for them.
Thanks! That’s really useful and informative. A lot more than I already knew.
Higher humidity, exacerbated by climate change, more moisture under the panels, as you’ve explained, could make it all worse.
We will hopefully see some real data out of the Tauhei solar farm in Te Aroha when they have been running for a few years. Should come online later this year and they expect to have sheep under them.
Te Aroha though, probably more for sheep milk than fleece?
@futuresprog Yeah, Te Aroha is in the humidity band that has higher FE likelihood than here. We get it, but anywhere north of central plateau is worse off.
I think dairy results could be translated to fleece, given the quantity and quality of both are reliant on the wellbeing of the sheep. Fleece from humid areas isn't high quality anyway, it tends to be yellow, so I think focusing on the dollar value returns on healthier animals might be the key, such as meat and milk.
@cstross
yup
argi-solar
or
agrivoltaic are real things, does work, intercropping is real, shaded forage is good livestock management, (increased dairy production, reduces stress, )etc etc
wholly desertified landscape recovery mixing solar with cachements is well under way in seriously depleted chinese landscapes, blah blah
I just can't argue this stuff with folks who can't get their heads around it.
So, I don't bother.
I've un-tagged Charlie,Am sure he gets plenty of noise in his feed.
That said;
yeah the article is kinda trash
that whole 'unexpected!' thing.
said so yday
no, not unexpected, modeled and anticipated well over half century back.
pv solar is a win, always was.
even solar heat harvesting is very real & productive, and always has been
old & hard to find expose' on early days of solar:
Ray Reece's "The Sun Betrayed"
https://archive.org/details/sunbetrayedrepor00reec
it's an old & ugly story
@davep
well
sure.
our electric utility outfits can shoulder a lot of this as well.
they love their coal plants.
every grid tied array *reduces* grid loading.
where's the fun in that?
The fun bit?
every installation I worked on in .WV yrs ago
the linecrews? the reg 'blue collar' folks? who did the final tie-ins?
Into It!
Excited about it.
the khaki&poloshirt white hardhats with the clipboards?
eh, , , not so much.
@davep
indeed
no argument
kinda always was.
look
oil cos, utility cos *love* pv solar, telcoms as well.
can deploy anywhere, provide current relative to the ground state, which is a massive win for galvanic corrosion, and a host of other annoyances that plague built infrastructure. No matter the per-watt cost.
why they invested
but they have no interest in 'us' using it
truth:
pacific nw pot growers kept retail pv solar alive for decades
there's a fun story there
Just for fun:
The Solarex Solar Breeder in Frederick, Md
Shortly before demolition
I social engineered my way onto the abandoned grounds one afternoon.
I remember it's construction.
Was to be the 1st of 5 nationwide
Nope
was to be located upriver near Berkeley Spngs, WV where the silica came from
but 'investors' wanted it near DC
1st, ARCO(defunct), later, BP, made sure it went nowhere.
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