Summary: This particular research project won’t quite break even purely on market-rate electricity sales, due to having 2x the installation cost of utility scale solar. If high value crops are successfully grown, there are scenarios where it could break even after including profits from crop sales.
Yeah - that’s what I thought. The original article sounds like motivated reasoning - solar farms don’t look like “green technology” so there is that great need to make them more palatable and project like this cater to that need instead of economic calculation.
If he did any energy consuming processes to aide farming such as drying wheat to harden it and increase market price, or had greenhouses which needed heating, or a dairy adjunct which needed cooling, then his rate of return as cost avoidance and improved profit for the Ag. side could be a lot bigger than the 1c/kW to sell power back.
Basically, heat energy is time shifting be it coolth or warmth. And heat and cool cost money.
Farmers in Oz are using droids to spray and weed, so battery charging could be another cost avoidance.
Or cold store for produce to sell at advantageous prices in winter. Basic arbitrage gains to permit the farm yield to maximise against predictable price variance.
Colorado has rich people. Grow microherbs out of season.
Farms often have a lot of less viable land for primary production. They could deploy flow batteries which have size costs, but massive mwh return and scale very nicely and last a very long time. Even just water pumping shifts energy into storage. Farms are giant machines for converting sunlight and water into produce anyway, this is a good fit: it's the same energy source, shifted.
It also fits well with some ideas from Denmark to find new catalysts to allow intermittent processes to make ammonia from solar power, with the idea that the ammonia when mixed with water can be used as fertiliser.
Solar power + intermittent synthesis methods fits really well together for a less centralised economy.
The simplest way to make nitrogen fertilizer from excess electrical power is by electric discharge to make NOx.
I remember a science museum exhibit of a simple spark device. It was in an enclosed box to prevent gases from escaping, and the air inside was noticeably brown from all the accumulated NO2.
Commercially, a similar process was used for a while a century ago, the Birkeland-Eyde process. It passed air through an arc. It was phased out because it wasn't competitive with the HB process using hydrogen from fossil fuels.
> Even just water pumping shifts energy into storage
Could potentially reuse elevated water tanks? Guess the cost of the pumps might make the savings on the structure very small, and no idea if the amount of energy would be significant to a farm.
As i understand it mostly the best use of pumped water is gravity fed watering for stock, or crops. Pumped hydro is great at dam size scale but the losses exceed battery. What it's got is the sheer gwh scale - snowy 2.0 will run for days and days riding out a dunkelflaut with a lot of gw fed out. 2.2 gw and 150 gwh usable. (They claim more but it's disputed)
I don't think a farm needs that. Better to pump the water to a headstock keeping cow troughs full, or for crop circles.
Not a farmer or an engineer. Happy to be corrected.
This is a cool concept and I love the idea but the math on the money earned from the 3276 solar panel doesn't add up. The article says the farm owner makes about $20,000 a year from the solar farm.
I'm assuming that each solar panel is 2 by 1 meter, which would mean that it produces about 400 watts (20% efficiency at 1000 watts per sq meter coming from the sun). You can use this calculator to estimate how power you can produce at the given location for a given system size in kilowatts:
https://pvwatts.nrel.gov/pvwatts.php
The system above is 1310400 watts or ~1,310 kW, which according to the calculator produces about 2 million kWh/year.
If he makes $20,000 that would mean that he gets paid only $0.01 per kW of power. And even if my assumption above about the size of each individual panel is off by a factor of 2 and they are only 1 sq meter in size (which I think they are not because the article states that the solar farm can power about 300 average households, which require the annual power output to be more than what I estimated above) that would make $0.02 per kW of power. How is it possible that the amount earned per kW is so low when the utility companies in Colorado charge about $0.14 per kW (effective rate)? And who is actually the customer here and where is the money coming from? I'm just curious to learn more.
~400W/panel @ 20% efficiency is pretty much spot on for my home rooftop solar panel specs, so your math checks out there.
$0.02/kW does seem a bit low. Looking at my bill, it looks like I got paid ~$0.03/kW last month in California where my retail price is $0.17/kW off-peak. Looking at the current price charts for electricity, they're also currently ~$0.03/kW, so the numbers do check out since we're supposed to be paid the current wholesale price.
Electricity just doesn't cost all that much to generate, most of the cost comes from transmission and storage.
Thanks for sharing this! That was the exact info I was looking for, didn't know the wholesale price was so low. But it does make sense that transmission and storage is what is inflating the retail price.
I have heard from a couple farmers that some venture energy corporation will pay a yearly fee to put panels on the farmland, which is probably the 20k/year he gets paid from a corporation like that. I doubt he's selling the power directly, nor was able to invest money for all those panels. He just get's a check every month. He also doesn't know the risks he's taking allowing that.
edit: I might be wrong on this, reading this on their site they have some significant donors.
"With additional funding from the Walton Family Foundation, the Cielo Foundation, and donations from a myriad of individual donors and businesses in 2023"
I think the 20k number is something of a throw-away, and not really explained.
For example, is that 20k gross revenue (check from utility) or net revenue (after deducting financing costs?) Is he getting free grid power at night as well? Is he using power on the farm itself?
It's a pity the article didn't go down this road a bit, but since it didn't, I guess the 20k number (described as an "estimate") is really just a measure of scale.
Indeed, one gets the impression that the finances part is possibly not the main focus of the farmer (much less the article.) The farming land is being used by non-profits and research groups, he's not actually farming the land himself.
But it sounds like this is just a small part of his farm (4 acres), so perhaps more of a pilot project and finding out how to best use the land, before rolling out on a bigger scale.
> If he makes $20,000 that would mean that he gets paid only $0.01 per kW of power. And even if my assumption above about the size of each
As others have mentioned the off peak daytime wholesale rate for electricity is often just a few cents per kWh. Let's say 3-4c/kWh.
The other few cents above your calculated rate of 1c/kWh likely go to pay off the principle and interest on the financing for the system, plus any profit for the company maintaining and servicing the system. If the farm owner paid for the capital costs and maintenance directly themselves, their share of the returns would probably be higher.
But they would probably prefer to focus on farming crops.
That isn't an issue with farming. It's the competitive pressures of the electricity market in the US. Most of the US is currently powered by natural gas, which is about five times less expensive in the US than in Europe. Colorado is a bit different, they still have 33% from coal (US wide coal is 16%). The quick and easy solution would be for electricity to be more like the rest of the world and more expensive. Europe will actually be much worse soon due to a price cap is expiring at the end of this month.
Or if they can act as a quasi-shell corporation for an agribusiness concern to cash in on tax breaks. And at that point, if the family makes any money at all, the parent corp will surely find a way to harvest that too.
There was a link here a few weeks ago about UK energy that said that only about 30% of the cost of energy is the cost to produce, the rest is the infrastructure and the costs to pay some suppliers to stay online in case they are needed.
> "A lot of the cost of the solar array is the people — installing the solar panels and all the wiring that goes into it. Inverters and the transformers and the switchgear. None of that changes"
Yeah this came as a big shock to me as I was hearing acquaintances say their solar and battery install would payback in 3-4 years compared to 15-20 years timeline I read on hackernews etc. Turns out the cost of equipment is so cheap now that in countries with cheaper labour and other costs they can get a similar system with install at 1/3 the price.
Here in Australia in a semi rural non big city town there are a lot of professional grade DIY installs.
The area has many FiFo (Fly In Fly Out) mine site workers and farmers all of whom are capable of fixing panels to roofs and racking batteries .. the wiring and looms are either "done by a mate" or done from a sketch on the back of envelope, or reading the sheet of instructions that come with an order.
The important part, safety, comes at the end when one of the few working town electricians (or an "off duty" mine electrician) checks the wiring for safety and compliance and signs off on the work for a fee.
Like many things the total cost is sweat equity + mail order prices + professional inspection and sign off (for insurance and peace of mind).
How long ago did you hear that it would take 15-20 years to break even? When I had solar installed on my house in Seattle back in 2013, they estimated it would take seven years, but it was actually closer to six. Equipment is only cheaper and better now.
I'm currently getting 16% return on capital invested, just with domestic savings. Thats an annualized return over all capital spent, including panels, equipment and labor.
Thats more or less what I expected.
So yes, your locality matters. As does your current consumption, cost of electricity, and so on.
Prices are also falling quite a bit as time passes.
For farmers in regions with intense sun like colorado, I would imagine that some kind of solar netting would ultimately be the best solution for mixed agriculture. If you could hang a net like 10 feet off the ground that has tiny solar panels linked together to block out 50% of the sun, that would probably create an ideal environment for growing certain berries and vegetables.
The comment is referring to finding something to replace the Haber-Bosch Process, which is mostly fossil fuel driven, which makes most of our food itself dependent on fossil fuels.
I've been interested to see some small (1 acre-ish) solar panel installations popping up on local farmland near me in Northwest Indiana. I'm a bit surprised because although we get quite a few sunny days it's nowhere near Colorado levels of sun. So I guess the economics must be getting to the point where it's either profitable now or is expected to be profitable soon.
> “Having shade on the ground is a climate adaptation. I hate to say it, but I've kind of given up on the thought that we're going to fix climate change whatsoever,” said Komenik. “Climate change is going to happen. It's going to be rapid. It's going to be terrible. So we need to figure out how to adapt to that changing climate.”
Only because geoengineering is off the table. If you take climate change seriously and want to avoid it, solar radiation management is pretty much the last remaining option for prevention. Here’s a nice article for an overview: https://climate.benjames.io/someone-is-going-to-dim-the-sun/
We have already been planting tress for a long time. In Sweden it is the law that after a forest is cut down it must either be replanted or have enough viable trees remaining for natural regrowth. For managed forests it is often a revenue increase to replant trees since it increase the efficiency of the land. The amount of tree planting that goes into environmental purposes are tiny compared to the amount of trees planted as part of the natural cycle of tree harvesting and regrowth.
However, cutting down tress and then replanting it do not capture a lot of carbon. Much of it either get burned or decompose into methane. Planting trees without protecting it from being cut down is not going to do much to compensate excess greenhouse gases that get created from burning fossil fuels.
If that was simple, it would have happened. It’s not simple to stop—if governments stopped it over night, they’d be thrown out of power the next day by mass protests.
Technology is stopping it, though! The continued exponential growth of solar (~30% CAGR) suggests that we could get to 1% of the earth’s surface in solar in about 20-30 years. That would be more than all current sources of energy.
Readit News
https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy24osti/88816.pdf
Summary: This particular research project won’t quite break even purely on market-rate electricity sales, due to having 2x the installation cost of utility scale solar. If high value crops are successfully grown, there are scenarios where it could break even after including profits from crop sales.
Basically, heat energy is time shifting be it coolth or warmth. And heat and cool cost money.
Farmers in Oz are using droids to spray and weed, so battery charging could be another cost avoidance.
Or cold store for produce to sell at advantageous prices in winter. Basic arbitrage gains to permit the farm yield to maximise against predictable price variance.
Colorado has rich people. Grow microherbs out of season.
Farms often have a lot of less viable land for primary production. They could deploy flow batteries which have size costs, but massive mwh return and scale very nicely and last a very long time. Even just water pumping shifts energy into storage. Farms are giant machines for converting sunlight and water into produce anyway, this is a good fit: it's the same energy source, shifted.
Solar power + intermittent synthesis methods fits really well together for a less centralised economy.
I remember a science museum exhibit of a simple spark device. It was in an enclosed box to prevent gases from escaping, and the air inside was noticeably brown from all the accumulated NO2.
Something like that: https://sciencedemonstrations.fas.harvard.edu/presentations/...
Commercially, a similar process was used for a while a century ago, the Birkeland-Eyde process. It passed air through an arc. It was phased out because it wasn't competitive with the HB process using hydrogen from fossil fuels.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birkeland%E2%80%93Eyde_process
Could potentially reuse elevated water tanks? Guess the cost of the pumps might make the savings on the structure very small, and no idea if the amount of energy would be significant to a farm.
I don't think a farm needs that. Better to pump the water to a headstock keeping cow troughs full, or for crop circles.
Not a farmer or an engineer. Happy to be corrected.
I'm assuming that each solar panel is 2 by 1 meter, which would mean that it produces about 400 watts (20% efficiency at 1000 watts per sq meter coming from the sun). You can use this calculator to estimate how power you can produce at the given location for a given system size in kilowatts: https://pvwatts.nrel.gov/pvwatts.php
The system above is 1310400 watts or ~1,310 kW, which according to the calculator produces about 2 million kWh/year.
If he makes $20,000 that would mean that he gets paid only $0.01 per kW of power. And even if my assumption above about the size of each individual panel is off by a factor of 2 and they are only 1 sq meter in size (which I think they are not because the article states that the solar farm can power about 300 average households, which require the annual power output to be more than what I estimated above) that would make $0.02 per kW of power. How is it possible that the amount earned per kW is so low when the utility companies in Colorado charge about $0.14 per kW (effective rate)? And who is actually the customer here and where is the money coming from? I'm just curious to learn more.
$0.02/kW does seem a bit low. Looking at my bill, it looks like I got paid ~$0.03/kW last month in California where my retail price is $0.17/kW off-peak. Looking at the current price charts for electricity, they're also currently ~$0.03/kW, so the numbers do check out since we're supposed to be paid the current wholesale price.
Electricity just doesn't cost all that much to generate, most of the cost comes from transmission and storage.
... from renewable resources.
Fossil energy can cost quite a bit to generate, but of course it comes with storage built in.
edit: I might be wrong on this, reading this on their site they have some significant donors. "With additional funding from the Walton Family Foundation, the Cielo Foundation, and donations from a myriad of individual donors and businesses in 2023"
I don't know either; what are the risks?
Deleted Comment
For example, is that 20k gross revenue (check from utility) or net revenue (after deducting financing costs?) Is he getting free grid power at night as well? Is he using power on the farm itself?
It's a pity the article didn't go down this road a bit, but since it didn't, I guess the 20k number (described as an "estimate") is really just a measure of scale.
Indeed, one gets the impression that the finances part is possibly not the main focus of the farmer (much less the article.) The farming land is being used by non-profits and research groups, he's not actually farming the land himself.
But it sounds like this is just a small part of his farm (4 acres), so perhaps more of a pilot project and finding out how to best use the land, before rolling out on a bigger scale.
As others have mentioned the off peak daytime wholesale rate for electricity is often just a few cents per kWh. Let's say 3-4c/kWh.
The other few cents above your calculated rate of 1c/kWh likely go to pay off the principle and interest on the financing for the system, plus any profit for the company maintaining and servicing the system. If the farm owner paid for the capital costs and maintenance directly themselves, their share of the returns would probably be higher.
But they would probably prefer to focus on farming crops.
Most farmers (even in developed countries) are cash poor and most farmers are deep in debt.
The ones that aren’t can quickly become so given a little bad luck. Farms have to hedge against bad yields to protect against undesirable weather.
Family farms only make financial sense if there is a lot of free labor (slavery, indentured servants, or unpaid labor of children).
Reminded me of Charge Robotics' mission: https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/charge-robotics
The area has many FiFo (Fly In Fly Out) mine site workers and farmers all of whom are capable of fixing panels to roofs and racking batteries .. the wiring and looms are either "done by a mate" or done from a sketch on the back of envelope, or reading the sheet of instructions that come with an order.
The important part, safety, comes at the end when one of the few working town electricians (or an "off duty" mine electrician) checks the wiring for safety and compliance and signs off on the work for a fee.
Like many things the total cost is sweat equity + mail order prices + professional inspection and sign off (for insurance and peace of mind).
Thats more or less what I expected.
So yes, your locality matters. As does your current consumption, cost of electricity, and so on.
Prices are also falling quite a bit as time passes.
https://youtu.be/NngCHTImH1g?si=XVLJAfkJi3MqZN1d
https://youtu.be/ekEdq6PhC0Q?si=Wpr_DKcAvtX-Tsi-
Deleted Comment
Only because geoengineering is off the table. If you take climate change seriously and want to avoid it, solar radiation management is pretty much the last remaining option for prevention. Here’s a nice article for an overview: https://climate.benjames.io/someone-is-going-to-dim-the-sun/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_fertilization
The use of mass timber for construction is a great way to make sustainable forestry sequester carbon for the long term.
https://research.fs.usda.gov/treesearch/66069
Cloud seeding via containerships is another low cost, high impact method: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marine_cloud_brightening
But if we really want the ability to pause climate change, we need to do some more research on Stratospheric Aerosol Injection: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stratospheric_aerosol_injectio...
Stratospheric Injection of Calcium carbonate is a very promising approach that would have the benefit of reducing ocean acidification.
Planting trees is good thing to do but not even getting close to a solution.
However, cutting down tress and then replanting it do not capture a lot of carbon. Much of it either get burned or decompose into methane. Planting trees without protecting it from being cut down is not going to do much to compensate excess greenhouse gases that get created from burning fossil fuels.
At best it will make the planet prettier and at worst it will simply be feelgood.
Technology is stopping it, though! The continued exponential growth of solar (~30% CAGR) suggests that we could get to 1% of the earth’s surface in solar in about 20-30 years. That would be more than all current sources of energy.