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Half of Americans can’t install solar panels. Community solar is how they can plug into the sun.

Advice | Half of Americans can’t install solar panels. Here’s how they can plug into the sun.

https://wapo.st/3PRRthu

You may now be able to get your electricity from community solar farms.

Advice | Half of Americans can’t install solar panels. Here’s how they can plug into the sun.

Scores of new small solar farms that sell clean, local electricity directly to customers are popping up. The setup, dubbed “community solar,” is designed to bring solar power to people who don’t own their own homes or can’t install panels — often at prices below retail electricity rates.

12 comments

mbelcher

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The "half of americans" in the headline is those that live in apartment buildings.

No roof, no solar power.
That has been the dispiriting equation shutting out roughly half of all Americans from plugging into the sun.

While community solar is indeed awesome, we need to have apartment and commercial buildings install solar as well.

keepthepace

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I think it is also ok to accept that cities won't produce all that they consume. They need to import food, water, makes sense that they import energy too.

LilNaib

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Tucson, Arizona in the Sonoran Desert receives more rainfall annually than the amount of water sourced municipally. In other words, even in a desert city like Tucson, there's no need to import water. We are wasteful not by nature but by habit, and that can be changed. Rainwater harvesting with thoughtful usage, mulching and locally-appropriate plants and greywater provide all the water necessary except in the most extreme environments such as Death Valley. But even in Death Valley a single family home could provide all its own water through the above if they were also doing solar distillation and reuse.

With proper management and cultural development, cities can provide all their own water and energy and a substantial portion of food.

keepthepace

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Had never made the calculation about water, but it makes sense thanks. Thing is, we usually consume ground water that has been filtered after being rained, that explains the need to import, otherwise we need a lot of artificial filtration, which would also probably remove a lot of water circulation within the ecosystem. Doable but not necessarily with a lower impact.

LilNaib

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Doable but not necessarily with a lower impact.

According to Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands and Beyond (volume 1, 3rd edition) by Brad Lancaster, page 249, an example household doing water harvesting and reuse, saves between 80kWh and 97kWh per month and between 174 pounds (78.8kg) and 211 pounds (95.5kg) of CO2 emissions. That's a huge win for rainwater harvesting and greywater.

Rooftop solar and wind also save a ton of water since traditional generation methods of burning fossil fuels need lots of water.

And according to the same book, page 240, here are some kWh/gallon ranges of various water sources:

on-site rainwater: 0.0000 to 0.0007 kWh/gal
on-site greywater: 0.0000 to 0.0002 kWh/gal
groundwater: 0.0006 to 0.0020 kWh/gal
avg utility water: 0.0011 to 0.0041 kWh/gal
brackish groundwater: 0.0032 to 0.0379 kWh/gal

keepthepace

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I am curious about how he gets to that numbers. Is he only counting transport? You need filtration, you need treatment, you may need pumping if you want any kind of pressure. And when all these are taken into account, I have a hard time believing that the economies of scale do not compensate for the transport.

LilNaib

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You can ask him, or read his book. He's spent decades working on water.

Have you installed and used rainwater harvesting and greywater systems? It sounds like you haven't. They're remarkably simple.

keepthepace

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I haven't but lived in a community where people do. They need additional filtration (activated charcoal) which of course they used their car to buy or got delivered. They did not have good pressure with it either. Hence me asking what is really compared. Water distribution networks are also remarkably simple, so I am a bit curious about how he gets with the idea that people reproducing a thousand times what we have in a less efficient way is going to be more efficient overall.

Sorry, I don't want to sound confrontational, I am just trying to get data on that.

athos77

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I'd love to have solar, but my HOA won't allow it :(

LilNaib

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I agree but just want to add that at least some people in apartments and condos can still produce and use solar-generated electricity. Here's a cool example:

https://arstechnica.com/science/2023/01/i-disconnected-from-the-electric-grid-for-8-months-in-manhattan/

Although I have rooftop solar producing around 200% of our usage annually, I was inspired by this story and have been increasingly using our offgrid LFP (LiFePO4 / lithium iron phosphate) backup batteries with solar panels to power certain things.

I think people in apartments would need rooftop access (ideally), equator-facing windows or a balcony, at the very least, for this to make ecological sense as there's a carbon cost to manufacturing batteries and solar panels. But it's doable and some people are doing it!

Here's another:

https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/about/the-solar-website/