Thread

What California is learning from solar panels built over irrigation canals

372 points · 744 comments · Jtsummers

nbf_1995 · 1790086541 · focus · HN ↗
It seems like it would be more effective to simply put all the solar panels in a field, and construct a cheap shade over the entire canal no? The supports in the picture are massive and don't look cheap. Also I would imagine the solar array uses more copper than a similar capacity array just built in a field. You can't daisy chain multiple miles of solar panels together, so you need an extra power line to run alongside the whole thing.
Put the solar panels in a field: The solar array uses less copper. The shade supports don't have to hold up solar panels: Shade supports cost less.
The best reasoning they give is that California has insane permitting requirements, and it takes 1/6 the time to build on developed land compared to undeveloped land.
1. schnevets · 1790111056 · focus · HN ↗
  Anecdotally speaking, I have heard of a massive California solar farm in an undeveloped area that has serious vandalism problems. Junkies will find ways through the fencing at night, strip copper and other materials from panels, and cause thousands in damages and lost energy just to extract enough scrap for a fix.
  Nothing short of a face-to-face security response will deter these criminals, so there it is a challenging cost-benefit balance. At least panels in parking lots and other developed spaces have the benefit of witnesses. I'm sure a 20 foot climb up a steel beam over running water is a decent deterrent as well.
  1. yongjik · 1790127716 · focus · HN ↗
    A few years ago, some foreigners entered a subway depot in South Korea, drew graffiti, and left the country before they were caught.
    South Korea put a notice on them on Interpol. At least one was arrested (at an airport in Romania), though I couldn't find any follow-up article on what happened to him. I hope he got to tour the inside of a South Korean jail.
    A society should be willing to put resources to protect is public infrastructure. In the long run, it will also be cheaper than fixing the same thing a hundred times, everyone enjoying second-grade service, or both.
    no-name-here · 1790129943 · focus · HN ↗
    The U.S. locks up a far, far, far higher rate of people than any other advanced economy. The U.S. locks up people at 5x the rate of South Korea. Whatever the difference is, it’s not because the U.S. is unwilling to punish people.
    <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarceration_rate" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarcera...
    bluealienpie · 1790131809 · focus · HN ↗
    The issue is that the US perceives poverty as personal issue rather than public issue. If my neighbor has no housing their likelihood of becoming addicted is way higher than if we simply gave them a house to live in, and far cheaper than constantly policing them.
    trollbridge · 1790164345 · focus · HN ↗
    I think is a very unfair allegation to make against homeless people. Most are not drug addicts.
    Drug addicts, however, have a hard time holding on to a house, apartment, etc and will often decide to exchange a stable living situation for another drug fix.
    Giving houses to drug addicts means: - a non drug addict doesn’t get to get that house - the drug addict now has a house to use drugs in, not take care of, and generally destroy
    The answer is for drug addicts to be placed in a rehab program until they aren’t an addict anymore.
    ajmurmann · 1790131863 · focus · HN ↗
    The issue in the US is that punishment is comparatively harsh but relatively few criminals are punished and punishment is usually quite delayed. Studies show that timely, consistent punishment is much more effective.
    phil21 · 1790131880 · focus · HN ↗
    > The U.S. locks up people at 5x the rate of South Korea. Whatever the difference is, it’s not because the U.S. is unwilling to punish people.
    The difference is in consistency in enforcement and general background crime rate.
    If you have a nearly guaranteed chance of getting caught doing something, the punishment almost doesn't matter. If every single time you went over the speed limit you got a $500 fine 100% guaranteed, there would be effectively zero speeders ever. If you have a 1 in a million chance of getting caught but the punishment is 10 years in prison - there will still be plenty of speeders all over the place.
    Humans do not do well with estimating risk on low probability events. We are all just big children in the end. Consistency in consequences are what actually matters, not overly harsh punishment.
    Barbing · 1790135492 · focus · HN ↗
    Yes, this is why “death penalty for everything“ wouldn’t suddenly eliminate crime.
    orthoxerox · 1790149090 · focus · HN ↗
    No, but it would gradually lower it. However, the rate of violent felonies to misdemeanors would rise rapidly (cf. Chen Sheng and Wu Guang uprising).
    ben_w · 1790150843 · focus · HN ↗
    Depends how effective the enforcement is; but anyone who wants to repeat Pol Pot is someone to run from quickly, if they get anywhere near a position of power.
    peterfirefly · 1790176346 · focus · HN ↗
    He killed people for such crimes as wearing glasses, knowing French, and being able to read.
    ImJamal · 1790196467 · focus · HN ↗
    Many crimes are committed by repeat offenders so it would eliminate a decent chunk of crime. Over 60% of violent criminals in the US get rearrested for another crime. Almost 40% of nonviolent criminals get rearrested for another crime.
    <a href="https://www.ussc.gov/research/research-reports/recidivism-among-federal-violent-offenders" rel="nofollow">https://www.ussc.gov/research/research-reports/recidivism-am...
    Barbing · 1790262209 · focus · HN ↗
    That is very interesting and I have to think some more about it. Thank you.
    no-name-here · 1790138126 · focus · HN ↗
    What would that look like - increasing the number of US police officers by 2x etc. to ensure they catch every person who commits any crime? Reducing the rights of those accused of a crime to ensure they don't skate?
    conductr · 1790139911 · focus · HN ↗
    I think you have to start with increase policing so that there’s a high chance of being caught. In the US, 2x is nowhere near enough given the size and number of street lights available to vandalize.
    We have literal high tech surveillance equipment being vandalized at scale with not many people getting caught. Referring to the Deflock movement
    xvedejas · 1790142617 · focus · HN ↗
    Neither. The US has a problem with incompetency in policing. Part of that stems from the prevalence of far-right ideology that is common among US police but not common in peer developed countries. Far-right officers are ideologically disposed to not being effective, either because they prefer punishment to procedure, or because it's in their interest to keep crime high.
    Fix those two issues and the same number of officers will catch many more criminals.
    mschuster91 · 1790145499 · focus · HN ↗
    Or maybe what constitutes a crime should be rethought (e.g. there is no reason at all to keep the "war on drugs" going, it clearly has failed), and instead focus on prevention?
    That way you'd get a massive reduction in crime without having to invest into more police officers.
    no-name-here · 1790150460 · focus · HN ↗
    What would ‘prevention’ look like? (As many other commenters seem to be pointing to many other crimes being as a result of people being on drugs, yes.)
    mschuster91 · 1790151792 · focus · HN ↗
    > What would ‘prevention’ look like?
    1. Give people housing.
    2. Give people housing.
    3. Give people housing.
    4. Expand access to mental and physical healthcare so that everyone can get access to the care they need.
    5. Remove the hurdles placed in front of social welfare programs. When people don't have to steal to make 10 bucks just to have something to eat or their next dose of whatever drug they're shooting up, that takes a lot of petty crime away.
    6. Provide (access to) public toilets everywhere.
    7. End the "war on drugs". Provide legal ways to access high-purity substances, either via dispensaries and allowing people to grow their own (for low risk stuff such as cannabis), or via pharmacies (for mid-risk stuff that already has pharmaceutical supply chains such as cocaine), or via dedicated centers for higher risk stuff such as heroin.
    > As many other commenters seem to be pointing to many other crimes being as a result of people being on drugs, yes.
    with the drug-related crimes, it's not just about the crimes being done in the pursuit of money or drugs... it's also about cleaning up the streets. Organized crime makes enough money purely from drugs (especially cocaine) that they can commandeer entire nation states, with their militia often being much stronger on paper and in practice than the official military, and the constant infights between cartels and gangs is endangering everyone around them.
    trollbridge · 1790164090 · focus · HN ↗
    >1 2 3. Give people housing.
    That’s already been done in my area and really doesn’t make a huge difference. Some people are so antisocial they are difficult to house (causing fights with neighbours, burning buildings down and so forth). But yes, it does help to have both abundant inexpensive housing and also programs for people who can’t afford it.
    It does have to be paired with police enforcement that doesn’t tolerate living on the street or in a park when housing is available.
    It also becomes a problem when people who live in such housing abuse it, such as operating drug dealing out of it.
    >4. Expand access to mental and physical healthcare so that everyone can get access to the care they need.
    We tried that too. It’s great for people like me. Some people refuse to access mental health or addiction rehab services. So the access is there.
    >5. Remove the hurdles placed in front of social welfare programs. When people don't have to steal to make 10 bucks just to have something to eat or their next dose of whatever drug they're shooting up, that takes a lot of petty crime away.
    There is zero public support to give drug addicts extra cash to go buy more drugs.
    Other than that, benefits are generous - I can say definitively nobody is going hungry. Some people will still refuse to apply for benefits. I stayed a few days in a hospital and my hospital roommate refused to apply for any benefits because he didn’t want to give the government info they could use to try to get the child support he owes. (The hospital sent a social worker in every few hours to try to persuade him.) Should such a person be given benefits including cash benefits?
    >6. Provide (access to) public toilets everywhere.
    We have that too. You need staff to clean them and it’s not fun to clean up after an antisocial person.
    >7. End the "war on drugs". Provide legal ways to access high-purity substances, either via dispensaries and allowing people to grow their own (for low risk stuff such as cannabis), or via pharmacies (for mid-risk stuff that already has pharmaceutical supply chains such as cocaine), or via dedicated centers for higher risk stuff such as heroin.
    There is no public support for a heroin dispensary.
    > As many other commenters seem to be pointing to many other crimes being as a result of people being on drugs, yes. with the drug-related crimes, it's not just about the crimes being done in the pursuit of money or drugs... it's also about cleaning up the streets. Organized crime makes enough money purely from drugs (especially cocaine) that they can commandeer entire nation states, with their militia often being much stronger on paper and in practice than the official military, and the constant infights between cartels and gangs is endangering everyone around them.
    Well, around here drugs are so cheap it’s not a big deal to pay for them. Now we just have loads of drug addicts who are strung out all the time, and in addition they can’t earn income with small time drug dealing like they used to. A fentanyl habit is cheap (maybe $10 a day) which is easily financed by selling eg your children’s food stamps card.
    The public is not going to support the government paying people to shoot up drugs all day.
    SoftTalker · 1790182826 · focus · HN ↗
    I think you've hit the point with "don't tolerate" the antisocial behavior, once you've put the avenues for assistance in place. If you're homeless, or addicted, and you accept help to get over those things, great. If you reject it, that choice should not be tolerated, and you should be bused to the county line and trespassed.
    elil17 · 1790150822 · focus · HN ↗
    My thoughts:
    - Harsh prosecution and punishment of corruption and white collar crimes, combined with publicity. How can you expect someone to respect the law if they routinely see those in power over them (the police, their employer, their senator, etc.) get away with criminal activity?
    - After setting up safeguards to enforce privacy protections, vastly increase the use of camera-based traffic enforcement. For example, create separate traffic enforcement agencies so that police don't have access to camera data. Use trajectcontroles (Dutch word for a system where multiple cameras on highway entrances/exits track your license plate and ensure your average speed was below the limit), cameras that detect texting while driving (pioneered by the UK), microphone-linked cameras in residential areas that detect modified exhausts (pioneered by Taiwan), and HOV-lane enforcement cameras. Keep traffic officers focused on ensuring that everyone has a valid/viewable license plate. The result should be a system where committing small traffic violations is not normalized.
    - Reduce the punishments for most crimes. Large punishments are cruel, expensive to dole out, and less effective than consistent enforcement + small punishments.
    - Set high expectations for police officers and create a culture of accountability. Fire those who are playing on their phones and arrest those who are committing crimes. You probably need independent oversight agencies to be able to do this.
    - Make police highly visible - bright yellow high-vis vests and cars (pioneered by Antwerp) ensure that police are there to deter crime rather than hide and catch it.
    - Provide actual public services so that people have a chance to succeed. A variety of unpleasant behaviors (e.g. public defecation, being disruptive/yelling in public, public drug use/intoxication) are things that no one wants to do - they are driven by a lack of, for example, homeless services, mental health services, and drug treatment services.
    - Reprioritize enforcement (looking at you, drug task forces). Expand the legal definition of entrapment and stop doing so many B.S. sting operations.
    avazhi · 1790152943 · focus · HN ↗
    > Harsh prosecution and punishment of corruption and white collar crimes, combined with publicity around these efforts. How can you expect someone to respect the law if they routinely see those in power over them (the police, their employer, their senator, etc.) get away with criminal activity?
    Yeah bro, your average diseased LA junkie is definitely watching MSNBC and reading the WSJ in between rounds of fentanyl and shitting on the side walk.
    59percentmore · 1790160355 · focus · HN ↗
    It's about a general sense of accountability. It actually does trickle down.
    trollbridge · 1790163617 · focus · HN ↗
    My state has tried this (very low sentences, often just a few days in jail, if that) and it doesn’t help the repeat offender rate at all.
    Likewise, virtually everyone poor has access to mental health services, healthcare in general, addiction help and so on. That doesn’t do any good for people who refuse to use it. Sometimes a court orders someone to attend their mental health provider appointments, drug rehab, etc as terms of a sentence.
    Reprioritising enforcement for drugs hasn’t helped either. It just means fentanyl is everywhere. It turns out some drugs are actually bad.
    As far as “make police enforce visible plates” - that simply leads to more high conflict situations where the person they pull over is going to run; do you want more police chases ending in a violent arrest?
    rjmunro · 1790168593 · focus · HN ↗
    "My state"?
    elil17 · 1790170229 · focus · HN ↗
    > My state has tried this (very low sentences, often just a few days in jail, if that) and it doesn’t help the repeat offender rate
    Doesn't do anything unless you also get consistent about catching people
    >Likewise, virtually everyone poor has access to mental health services, healthcare in general, addiction help and so on.
    Really? If so, that's amazing. What state in the US has actually given all people access to mental health services and addiction help.
    > Reprioritising enforcement for drugs hasn’t helped either. It just means fentanyl is everywhere.
    Fentanyl is a thing because strict enforcement necessitates drugs that are more compact/easier to hide. Many other countries still have heroine.
    >As far as “make police enforce visible plates” - that simply leads to more high conflict situations where the person they pull over is going to run; do you want more police chases ending in a violent arrest?
    I would suggest focusing on impounding vehicles rather than chasing people.
    trollbridge · 1790220233 · focus · HN ↗
    Lots of states in the U.S. have a comprehensive Medicaid system where someone not otherwise covered by insurance can access healthcare. In some states it is better than others. My own state happens to be exceptional.
    That doesn't mean you can force everyone who needs mental health services to go actually avail themselves of them.
    You can't impound a vehicle without stopping the person driving it first. Most people don't use non visible plates anyway; they would first steal tags from another vehicle.
    ben_w · 1790151607 · focus · HN ↗
    It would look like an AI-driven surveillance state, combined with near-immediate consequences which are individually slap-on-the-wrist penalties and only become severe if they are repeated.
    AI, not human, because the actual incidence rate for a lot of crimes is much much higher than most people realise, including for extremely severe cases:
    • Statistically speaking I think it's something like most Americans commit three felonies per day, but that's probably mostly drugs which IMO should be liberalised anyway.
    • For an example of extremely serious crimes, and again statistically speaking, your first day in highschool, your first class on that day, you likely met someone who had been sexually assaulted by a family member.
    Increasing a human police force to the scale needed to catch all crimes is theoretically possible (the Stasi basically operated at this scale even if they only thing they cared about was sedition) but is a terrible idea.
    If all crimes keep their current penalties, a fully automated surveillance state bankrupts everyone almost immediately.
    foobazgt · 1790156042 · focus · HN ↗
    Yeah, as a human race, we've clearly reached the technological era where deep, ubiquitous surveillance is both technologically and economically feasible. For a few years now, I've been thinking we need a constitutional amendment to restrict the mechanisms, deployment, and use of mass automated surveillance.
    Human beings don't empathize well with situations nor people they never have to personally face. That's a well-lit path to fascism. We're one step closer to 1984.
    dghlsakjg · 1790181747 · focus · HN ↗
    > For a few years now, I've been thinking we need a constitutional amendment to restrict the mechanisms, deployment, and use of mass automated surveillance.
    The fourth amendment should really have been interpreted to cover this, but the courts have an unreasonable bias for giving law enforcement the benefit of the doubt
    foobazgt · 1790204771 · focus · HN ↗
    It'd definitely be my preference to lean on existing law where it makes sense (law is already too complicated). Unfortunately, IANAL, so I don't know what makes the most sense. Whatever we have doesn't seem to be doing a great job against the mass spread of cameras and abuse.
    trollbridge · 1790163304 · focus · HN ↗
    An acquaintance of mine experienced severe domestic violence (trying to choke him to death with an accomplice in front of his children + another witness).
    She got arrested for that since the law requires it for domestic violence and turned out she had skipped bail for a grand theft auto conviction. She served 3 days then got released because the county jail was full.
    Her conviction for domestic violence ended up being 6 days in another county jail.
    She has since been running around committing more crimes, including stealing her children’s IDs, birth certificates, social security cards, and using them commit welfare benefits fraud. Police took a report and won’t go pick her up since it’s a nonviolent crime despite her violent history.
    I’m not sure what’s needed (more police to say sorry, we can’t help you isn’t what’s needed), but having an antisocial person selling her children’s food benefits is not a good thing. Before anyone says she needs “services”, she already gets a guaranteed disability income, free housing, and her own food and free medical benefits including addiction rehab services.
    hacker-hacker-h · 1790172998 · focus · HN ↗
    Wow. Your single anecdote showing humans have created an imperfect system, and/or sometimes some people just don't want to live in society with others no matter what, once again has really shown me that we should only ever go after the symptoms instead of working on the real problems. More police! More jail time for everyone! Death penalty for minor offenses! More jails need to be built! Surely that will fix it this time!
    That was sarcastic in case you couldn't tell.
    trollbridge · 1790220317 · focus · HN ↗
    Domestic abusers need to be in prison until they can decide to stop being an abuser, full stop.
    Likewise people who abuse welfare benefit programmes and steal food from their own children in order to trade it for cash.
    There is simply no excuse for that, period, and it doesn't help anyone to tolerate it or be lenient on it.
    hackeraccount · 1790171750 · focus · HN ↗
    See Mark Kleiman's - When Brute Force Fails. The book mentions the Hawaiian HOPE project. The dealt with parolees by punishing violations with immediate mild punishment (i.e. you're back in jail over this weekend)instead of allowing violations to accumulate over time and then coming down on the person like a ton of bricks ( on your 10th positive urine test you go back to jail for a month).
    gottorf · 1790140523 · focus · HN ↗
    Your point only stands if you assume that Americans and Koreans commit crime at the same rate, which is eminently false. The high rate of incarceration in the US is directly downstream of higher criminality compared to other advanced economies.
    In fact, were Americans not constitutionally averse to stronger government, even more people would be locked up. People do stuff in America day after day that would not fly in Korea.
    watwut · 1790143090 · focus · HN ↗
    US has massively lomger sentences. It does not have that much higher ceime rates, but it loves to lock people.
    cjbgkagh · 1790144237 · focus · HN ↗
    The US has a substantially greater crime rate than South Korea.
    gottorf · 1790146651 · focus · HN ↗
    > It does not have that much higher ceime rates
    This is but one crime, but the homicide rate in the US is 5.9 per 100k, which is about 10x higher than in Korea.
    tovej · 1790148948 · focus · HN ↗
    That's just due to issues in regulating gun ownership, though.
    no-name-here · 1790151548 · focus · HN ↗
    I personally advocate evidence-based approaches to reducing gun crimes, yes. However even if we exclude guns, when I’ve previously looked at knife crime rates between US and UK, US was still was higher.
    A general comparison of crimes in SK vs US: <a href="https://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/compare/South-Korea/United-States/Crime" rel="nofollow">https://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/compare/South-Kore...
    Interestingly, embezzlement rate seems way higher in SK.
    graemep · 1790153819 · focus · HN ↗
    The non-gun murder rate in the US is about double that of the UK.
    I think the difference in the gun murder rate reflects other legal differences, such as those around carrying and storing guns more than the level of ownership. If you have to go home and unlock a safe to get a gun it gives you lots of time to cool down.
    skew-aberration · 1790148877 · focus · HN ↗
    Crime rates are not independent of incarceration rates and durations (bbviously, since incarceration is a mechanism to deter crime). We could say 'the incarceration required to reduce crime rate to x is much higher/lower in country y'.
    prmoustache · 1790153825 · focus · HN ↗
    How easy can you learn a skill while in jail? How easy do you find a job when you get out of jail?
    literalAardvark · 1790155249 · focus · HN ↗
    If it's a crime skill... Very easily. If it's a crime job, very easily.
    trollbridge · 1790164165 · focus · HN ↗
    The prisons here have programs where people who want to can complete high school and college degrees. I met a guy who had two degrees (he was in for life since he, well, killed several people.)
    KellyCriterion · 1790157689 · focus · HN ↗
    Because in US, most prisons are run by private companies. Lot of them are listed on the stock market.
    no-name-here · 1790151695 · focus · HN ↗
    <a href="https://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/compare/South-Korea/United-States/Crime" rel="nofollow">https://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/compare/South-Kore... puts US crime rate at 27% higher than SK.
    like_any_other · 1790154713 · focus · HN ↗
    Let's use a metric immune to over-policing and different definitions of "crime": <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intention... puts the US homicide rate at 11.8x higher than SK.
    59percentmore · 1790161167 · focus · HN ↗
    The reliability of underlying national murder rate data may vary. Homicide rates may be under-reported for political reasons.
    Homicides are also a fraction of violent crime, let alone all crime. Also, SK suicide rate is like 70% higher than US, and 50x their homicide rate; as a collectivist culture, it's not unthinkable to suspect that some of the people who would have been murdered in other countries are just shamed into taking themselves out instead.
    like_any_other · 1790188823 · focus · HN ↗
    > The reliability of underlying national murder rate data may vary. Homicide rates may be under-reported for political reasons.
    The reliability of incarceration data can also vary, but you didn't dismiss that. In fact, all data is unreliable, so should we just give up on comparisons entirely? Unless you have a specific reason to think US/SK numbers are wrong, what you've done is provided a fully generic counterargument: "well data isn't perfect, therefore I am right and you are wrong."
    > Homicides are also a fraction of violent crime, let alone all crime.
    Typical feigned intellectual helplessness. Knowing nothing else, if the homicide rate is 2x higher, the most reasonable extrapolation is that violent crime in general is also 2x higher. And we use homicide because it's harder to fudge - if I used crime in general, your complaint would have been over-policing or different definitions instead.
    > Also, SK suicide rate
    How is suicide relevant to the incarceration rate? Especially when it's legal in both US and SK: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_legislation" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_legislation
    59percentmore · 1790261674 · focus · HN ↗
    You presented the data as authoritative when it's clearly not, by the admission of its own compilers. This is a simple thing to disclose if you're certain that the portions your argument relies on are sound. Burden of proof lies with you.
    >, if the homicide rate is 2x higher, the most reasonable extrapolation is that violent crime in general is also 2x higher.
    Not at all. Different societies have different net values (e.g., violence as a political tool or as a means to some economic end) which will influence the deadliness of violence. So will the nature of the weapons that are available. It's reasonable to expect a trend, but lockstep is unreasonable, and you always have to question if perhaps the situation is unintuitive.
    >How is suicide relevant to the incarceration rate?
    The incarceration rate was put forward to advance an argument about the relative virtue (and implicitly the relative safety and suitability for a dignified living) of American and SK societies. Suicide rate is relevant. Do you want to make it to your next birthday or not?
    howunfortunate · 1790143407 · focus · HN ↗
    A Scandinavian economist reportedly said to Milton Friedman:
    “In Scandinavia, we have no poverty.”
    Friedman replied:
    “That’s interesting, because in America, among Scandinavians, we have no poverty, either.”
    hgomersall · 1790145218 · focus · HN ↗
    [dead]

Open on Hacker News to reply ↗

Unofficial Hacker News client; not affiliated with Y Combinator.