Italian Wind Farmers to Plant Solar Panels Around Turbines
If all goes to plan, solar panels placed at the bases of the wind turbines will feed power through the farm’s existing grid.
Wind-energy purveyors Moncada Energy Group hope to install thin-film solar panels at its existing wind farms by the end of next year. The solar panels could increase power production at Moncada’s farms from 105 megawatts to over 500 megawatts, with the panels overtaking the production from the turbines themselves. While the wind turbines work best under the high-speed gusts of nighttime, the solar panels will thrive during the day under the Mediterranean sun.
Photo Credit: Chiarra Marra on Flickr under Creative Commons license.
It’s a grand idea and highly innovative. However the cost-offset against time is still a factor that puts many off the use of this (simplistic) technology.
Too bad the farmland is getting plowed under for this. Wake up, people. Wind and Solar are not the way to go (at least wind turbines do not impact farmland too much)
Algae that produce oil is the way of the future, it can be refined into any kind of fuel, including nat. gas, using existing infrastructure, distributed using esisting infrastructure, stored using existing infrastructure, consumed using existing infrastructure, and requires very little additional construction or impact to other resources to get going. And you don’t have to worry about calm, cloudy days and nights, there will always be a supply to call upon when needed, without the construction of expensive, efficiency costly storage systems: No batteries, which are very heavy consumers of extremely toxic and usually hard-to-find materials. There is only so much silicon in the world, and we’re running out, solar panels are a good idea in some cases, but not to support the planet’s energy needs.
Now, I ask, What food crops or veggies can you grow in the shade from the solar panels? It should be moist under them and some sunlight will peetrate, so cabbages? some spices? smaller root crops?
@anon Algae is great for biofuels like biodiesel but in my opinion it is only an interim solution since it is not totally clean as wind and solar power generation.
Anon,
Please be real. We are not going to run out of silicon. High quality Si for computer chips is in short supply right now, but solar panels do not need this degree of purity. This is a technological issue, not one of supply. Perhaps you were thinking of the elements used to dope the wafers. But again, it’s a tech issue, not supply. It’s not like it’s going to turn into a gas and escape into space! And how much space do you think it takes to grow algae? How about the water? Nutrients? Competing organisms? Disease? Not out of the question, mind you, but this is going to take some research and that takes time. It is currently easier to burn trash. There is so much half-baked bs about alternative energy–I can’t believe it.
great invention
is anybody knows who running the cheap water pump on solar power