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What California is learning from solar panels built over irrigation canals

372 points · 744 comments · Jtsummers

  1. nbf_1995 · · 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 · · 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. happyopossum · · focus · HN ↗
        > Anecdotally speaking

        First hand experience here - worked with a non-profit that has a tiny solar and battery installation for a light display, and we have had constant theft and vandalism problems with it. It's not even easy to get to - those meth-heads had to work to steal the lead acid batteries and copper wire...

        1. dylan604 · · focus · HN ↗
          Several years ago one of the local youth sports complex was limited to daylight use because the copper would get stolen from the light poles. This was a large complex with many light poles. Within a week of them being fixed, they'd come and steal the new copper. I never did follow up to see what they ultimately did to discourage the thieves.
          1. Enginerrrd · · focus · HN ↗
            Man, we don’t have tools to deal with these clowns. I had the gas tank in my truck drilled. I doubt they got even 5 gallons worth of gas, worth about $25 at the time. The fix cost me $2500. I found out from the shop that there had been a string of these going around town. After some digging, I came up with an order of magnitude estimate of somewhere around 50 such instances. So, what was undoubtedly just a couple of people at the most had done probably over $100k in damages to get maybe $1200 worth of spoils. Even if caught, unless they confessed to more, they’d probably only ever risk getting linked to a single one of these crimes and face a tiny fraction of the consequences they deserved. Such a drain on society.
            1. vkou · · focus · HN ↗
              > Man, we don’t have tools to deal with these clowns.

              We do. Arrest and imprison the fences and scrappers that pay cash to buy copper off the tweakers.

              The problem will solve itself in a few weeks. Hang the fences, and the thieves will starve. It's both way easier to go after them, and they have something to lose if they don't follow the law.

              1. AnthonyMouse · · focus · HN ↗
                > Arrest and imprison the fences and scrappers that pay cash to buy copper off the tweakers.

                How do you expect the scrappers to know if something was stolen and not just some old wires you've been stuffing in a bin until you accumulate enough to justify a trip to the scrap yard?

                How do you even expect to catch the scrappers who knowingly pay for stolen copper if you don't have a way to know that what they throw into the smelter was stolen?

                Meanwhile if the idiots keep stealing copper from the same place over and over, is it really that hard to maybe put up some cameras or set up a sting?

                1. vkou · · focus · HN ↗
                  They don't need to know if something was stolen. All they need to do is require an ID, not pay in cash, and pay 30 days after receiving the merchandise.
                  1. AnthonyMouse · · focus · HN ↗
                    At which point people with legitimate copper to sell start going somewhere else because the repeat players resent having 30 days worth of interest stolen from them every month and the one-time sellers don't trust an IOU from a company they've never done business with before.

                    Meanwhile you just create a new line of business for fences who are willing to pay cash today in exchange for a margin and then take the IOU from the legitimate scrapper and turn a profit in 30 days. Or the drug dealers take the copper as payment and then don't care about the 30 days if it means they can sell more drugs.

                    You can't make a commodity not worth money. At some point you have to actually catch the thieves.

                    1. vkou · · focus · HN ↗
                      > At which point people with legitimate copper to sell start going somewhere else

                      Make it required by law, and they won't be able to go somewhere else. Legitimate businesses with scrap to sell aren't going to risk committing a felony to get paid below market value 30 days sooner (Not to mention that many businesses are used to getting paid on a delay, and selling scrap for pennies is a tiny portion of their revenue flow).

                      Catalytic converter thefts have been decimated by similar policies. As it turns out, there are plenty of hoops that you can introduce that aren't a serious impediment to b2b transactions (which make up the overwhelming, massive majority of legitimate trade in this space), but are a serious impediment to tweakers selling stolen property.

                      > Or the drug dealers take the copper as payment and then don't care about the 30 days if it means they can sell more drugs

                      Street dealers are trying to run a drug business, not a goddamn copper clearinghouse. If they wanted to run one, they wouldn't be out on the street slinging meth.

                      1. AnthonyMouse · · focus · HN ↗
                        > Make it required by law, and they won't be able to go somewhere else.

                        So then you inconvenience the legitimate businesses but not the ones who don't follow the law.

                        > Catalytic converter thefts have been decimated by similar policies.

                        Correlation is not causation. When you get a lot of a particular type of theft, people try 50 different things at once to try to make it happen less, and then it happens less. Sometimes because one of them works (but not necessarily your thing) and even more often because of reversion to the mean.

                        This is how we get the accumulation of bad laws. People pass something ineffective but at the same time as an unrelated reduction in the problem, and now if you want to get rid of it you have people pointing to the chance correlation.

                        > Street dealers are trying to run a drug business, not a goddamn copper clearinghouse.

                        They're empirically willing to operate a car wash or similar to launder their money, why not a scrap yard?

                        And they don't even have to own the business, just be willing to wait the 30 days.

                        1. vkou · · focus · HN ↗
                          Street dealers aren't laundering their money through running an Albuquerque car wash.
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