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Arizona's solar-over-canal project will tackle its major drought issue
(interestingengineering.com)
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this post was submitted on 26 Nov 2023
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Luckily this does both, to some extent. It's not as far as we need, but solar offsets dirty energy usage.
Doesn't Arizona get most of its energy from the giant nuclear power plant near Phoenix?
Well they're part of a larger grid. Any clean energy on the grid will be cheaper than dirty, so will be sold to offset dirty even if Arizona was 100% clean.
I don't understand how it "offsets". If someone pisses in the pool and I do it behind a tree, that somehow gets rid of piss molecules in the pool?
You only need a certain amount of power. (In fact, you can't generate more power than is needed, or you cause massive issues.) If this adds extra energy generation but doesn't add demand, generation somewhere else will be taken offline. This will be whatever is cheapest, and green energy is nearly free after construction, so it'll be dirty energy that isn't running anymore.
My guess is that producing solar panels uses tons of fossil fuels. And they're pretty much used up after 10-20 years and needs to be replaced and the old ones ends up in a landfill.
It takes energy to produce them, sure, but it's way less than even just the production needs for coal or natural gas. Not to mention that's a one time carbon cost (per lifespan which is close to 30 years these days) vs ongoing emissions. And additionally, as the energy mix where the panels are produced cleans up, the carbon footprint of the panels go down as well! Is it the perfect solution? No, but there is no silver bullet to get off fossil fuels. Solar is just one part of that transition and it is exciting to see more groups exploring the solar/shade synergy (there's some cool shaded farming solar experiments going on that also make use of the solar panel's shadow for additional benefits!)