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. swiftcoder · 1790149813 · focus · HN ↗
    > 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
    I live in a European country, where the phone company hasn't bothered to come remove the old unused copper phone lines in the last 5 years. Thousands of dollars worth of cables running past my house alone, and no one has bothered to go strip it in the night and sell it
    This feels like one of those USA problems that would be better addressed by funding decent social services (free healthcare, cheap housing, addiction treatment programs, etc).
    keiferski · 1790154747 · focus · HN ↗
    America is an entirely different cultural universe and simple things like this seem logical but just wouldn’t really solve the entire problem, IMO, as an American that’s lived in Europe for a decade+.
    Another great example are the “open air” transit systems in Germany, Poland, etc. where you can freely enter trams and buses, with inspectors patrolling infrequently to check if you bought a ticket. That kind of system would absolutely never work in America, no one would pay, and the ticket inspectors would be hated as some kind of secret police.
    swiftcoder · 1790155235 · focus · HN ↗
    > Another great example are the “open air” transit systems in Germany, Poland, etc. where you can freely enter trams and buses, with inspectors patrolling infrequently to check if you bought a ticket. That kind of system would absolutely never work in America
    This is exactly how Seattle's light rail worked for years. You could just walk on and off, and I saw an inspector maybe 1-in-10 trips at best
    keiferski · 1790155516 · focus · HN ↗
    Interesting, I’ve never been to Seattle. But it looks like they are adding fare gates, so apparently it isn’t working.
    swiftcoder · 1790155763 · focus · HN ↗
    Yeah, the system was tiny originally - just a single line from the airport to downtown. I left right before the big system expansion started, I wouldn't be surprised if scale has exposed more issues with the system
    Gh0stRAT · 1790167097 · focus · HN ↗
    From what I've heard, fare compliance used to be relatively high but dropped massively (alongside ridership) during COVID and hasn't really recovered.
    buildsjets · 1790185126 · focus · HN ↗
    Of course ridership dropped during COVID, but it very quickly recovered and is now well over double the ridership before the COVID dip. Also note that prior to COVID, the system was still under construction and not even the 1 Line was fully operational yet. It could take you from UW to the Airport, and that's about it, the complete 1 Line route to Northgate did not open until October 2021, Lynnwood to downtown extension did not open until 2024, and Line 2 from Redmond to downtown did not open until earlier this year.
    So, it's hard to make a direct comparison of fare compliance before and after the "COVID times" however you define the time period, as the are very different transit systems that now serve a different geographical area and population. But fare compliance has recovered from 56% during the peak of COVID to 63% in 2025, and 2026 numbers are not out yet.
    <a href="https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/transportation/seattles-daily-light-rail-ridership-jumps-to-no-1-in-u-s/" rel="nofollow">https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/transportation/sea...
    zippothrowaway · 1790155998 · focus · HN ↗
    This is still the way it works in San Francisco on the buses and light rail.
    Polizeiposaune · 1790181504 · focus · HN ↗
    Improved fare gates for BART have increased revenue and dramatically reduced maintenance costs:
    "Comparing the six month period before the 'next generation' fare gates debuted, to the six months that followed, Embarcadero station saw a significant reduction in the need for maintenance work — from 112 hours to two hours. "
    ...
    "When you see how dramatically these maintenance requests fell, the numbers tell us that these fare gates are preventing unwanted behavior that impacts the station environment," BART spokesperson Alicia Trost told the Chronicle. "Those people are no longer entering BART."
    <a href="https://www.transittalent.com/articles/index.cfm?story=BARTs-long-fight-against-fare-evasion-finally-paying-off_2-10-2026" rel="nofollow">https://www.transittalent.com/articles/index.cfm?story=BARTs...
    WalterBright · 1790187533 · focus · HN ↗
    I read in the paper that 90% of the riders on the Seattle busses don't pay the fare. Grocery store looting is rampant.
    Seattle has become a low trust society.
    itsmek · 1790195935 · focus · HN ↗
    Source for the 90% number and rampant looting? This sounds like low-quality "information"/propaganda to me.
    WalterBright · 1790207379 · focus · HN ↗
    <a href="https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/only-suckers-pay-seattles-heated-transit-fares-debate/" rel="nofollow">https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/only-suck...
    Of course, there's a case that the Seattle Times itself is a source of low-quality information.
    itsmek · 1790272507 · focus · HN ↗
    Transit source seems fine I think you're just misinterpreting it. That first source says about a third board without paying, not 90%. The 90% number you're quoting is I assume from the <10% farebox recovery which is a different metric from fare evasion. North America generally has low farebox recovery (car centric development therefore transit needs bigger subsidies to compete) and the pandemic made it worse. Don't get me wrong the numbers aren't good but I don't think it's evidence that Seattle is an especially low trust society like you're implying, I think it just indicates a lack of enforcement - a third is in line with fare evasion problems in other places in the world when they lack enforcement. People in Seattle behave no different from people in other places - they estimate risk vs reward in a free ride and some fraction of people lack a moral compass or are so poor that the benefit is significant. There's a reasonable line of thinking that 0 fares are best for society as a whole and I've heard this promoted among PNW urbanites so it wouldn't surprise me if enforcement is intentionally low to make it a sort of sliding scale farebox recovery, in which case a high fare evasion is not evidence of low trust, just of a highly progressive political culture, and something opposing propaganda will not hesitate to harp on.
    Theft rings are pretty common in bad neighborhoods throughout north american cities. The existence of a policy to help grocery stores in high crime areas doesn't support your thesis since it's going to be used on a vast minority of stores, not indicative of "rampant" (most stores in Seattle seem fine in my experience), and not indicative of a broader trend in trust.
    And here is some data counter to your thesis <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/2025/05/08/americans-trust-in-one-another/#h-geography" rel="nofollow">https://www.pewresearch.org/2025/05/08/americans-trust-in-on... It seems to me that Seattle is an especially high trust society by US standards (largely due to high income I suspect), and the things you're pointing at are evidence of the opposite of your thesis - more likely to be symptoms of high trust than low trust.
    WalterBright · 1790274831 · focus · HN ↗
    From first cite: "Last fall it was down to 14%."
    > The existence of a policy to help grocery stores in high crime areas doesn't support your thesis since it's going to be used on a vast minority of stores, not indicative of "rampant" (most stores in Seattle seem fine in my experience), and not indicative of a broader trend in trust.
    Grocery stores in Seattle are shutting down, and looting is a major contributing factor to it.
    itsmek · 1790279222 · focus · HN ↗
    That 14% describes farebox recovery which is mostly low due to subsidized transit, not evasion. They say that number is "funded x% by riders paying fares" which is not the same as "y% of riders pay fares" that you interpret it as. The former is called farebox recovery while the latter describes fare evasion. 14% farebox recovery is not out of the ordinary in north america where we need to subsidize transit more than other countries due to car oriented development. If you subtract 33% fare evasion (from the article) from that 14% recovery you will still be at about 21% farebox recovery and that's on the low side but not out of the ordinary for western North America (it's better than most California systems for example where we usually get 10%). 20% farebox recovery is just fundamental to our transit and urban planning, nothing to do with fare evasion or trust level. Whereas 90% fare evasion would be highly highly unusual, which is why I wanted a source and now I can see where your misunderstanding comes from. In your defense I do think that article is intentionally eliding the two by not explicitly defining terms - maybe deceiving the reader makes the article hit harder. Anyway very few places have fare evasion over 50% since the majority of people will pay based on morals (and their income level) even against zero enforcement whatsoever.
    I'm open to the claim that looting -> grocery store shutdowns, especially in bad areas, I just dispute it being "rampant" based on my lived experience, and I dispute that there's a causal link instead of correlation with a low income/low traffic/low staffing death spiral. I did not feel your source adequately supported this claim. I am not convinced Seattle has it worse than other metros (similar things happen where I live in California in bad areas too, and it's been shown to be stores that were underperforming and due to be closed regardless of looting), and I am not convinced this supports your thesis that Seattle has become a low trust society against my counter evidence from Pew.
    WalterBright · 1790208524 · focus · HN ↗
    BTW, in the Bellevue area across the lake from Seattle, walk into a bank. There will be counters which the tellers are behind.
    Now go to a bank in downtown Seattle. The tellers are behind thick bulletproof glass.

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