12.5 Square Miles???

Companies in California announced that they will build two new solar plants which will produce 12 times the electricity currently coming from solar in California. The plants will produce 800 megawatts which is about the size of a small/medium sized coal plant.

Sounds great right? Well the plants will cover 12.5 square miles or 20.12 square kilometres to give you about 40MW per square km. Think about that. For Albertans, 20 km is the distance from downtown Calgary to Balzac (just north of the airport, outside the city) and see below for a picture of what a complex looks like. For Americans, the distance between the tip of downtown Manhattan and the Bronx is about 12.5 (linear) miles.

Does no one see a problem with covering 12.5 square miles of land with a solar array?

Now anyone who knows me, knows that I support any sort of energy program which applies differing sources of power. I'm not bound by ideology to say no to nuclear, clean coal, gasification, hydro, solar or wind, I think all of these sources have a place in sourcing our energy needs. However, I don't think I am going to be out on a limb in saying that proposing to build a 2000 MW solar plant (the electricity generation of a large nuclear plant) which would take up 50 square km (Calgary to Crossfield - edit: linear distance) would come under serious negative press.

Just like I predicted back in 2005 that the use of biofuels would quickly become an ethical questions (is it moral to convert food to power your car?), I predict that as soon as a few of these monster solar arrays go in there will be major, major opposition to the concept. I can't believe the NY Times article above doesn't even mention the land which will need to be converted to an essentially industrial use for these plants.

I do, however, think there are lots of good and positive ways to utilize solar power. For example, Wal-Mart proposing to put solar panels on the roofs of their buildings is a good use of otherwise useless space. If every big box store had solar panels on its roof, it would reduce the power required for these stores by potentially up to a third.