This is turning into a series of diaries.
It started out when I started seeing all these “carbon-free by 2050” plans coming from US utility companies.
(9/6/20): Over the past three years, some of the country’s biggest utilities have been committing to a goal that few may have predicted they’d undertake on their own: weaning themselves off carbon-emitting generation by 2050.
Driving this sea change in long-term planning is a combination of public pressure and energy economics. The falling costs of wind and solar power are pushing utilities to find ways to incorporate them into their long-range plans, even as they struggle to define what resources can be relied on to provide the dispatchable power they need.
- Dominion Energy: Virginia’s Clean Economy Act demands that the state's flagship utility, Dominion Virginia, supply at least 30 percent of its electricity from renewables by 2030 and shut down all carbon-emitting power plants by 2045. That’s a far more aggressive plan than Dominion’s plan to reach net-zero carbon by 2050 across its electric and gas operations serving about 7.5 million customers across 18 states.
- Duke Energy: North Carolina-based Duke doesn’t face the same state mandates that Dominion now faces — at least not yet. But its self-imposed net-zero carbon by 2050 goals do involve similar tradeoffs between cost and reliability in the short term and uncertainty over viable alternatives in the long term when it comes to managing its natural gas fleet. Duke's utilities serve 7.7 million electric customers and 1.6 million natural-gas customers across six states, with a 51,000-megawatt generation portfolio that’s roughly 42 percent natural gas, 33 percent coal, 18 percent nuclear and 7 percent hydro and solar power. Its Duke Energy Renewables arm owns around 2,500 MW of wind power, 1,500 MW of solar and another 4,100 MW of purchased clean energy, mostly solar.
- Southern Company: Southern Company’s net-zero carbon by 2050 goal is also free of any state mandates for electric utilities Alabama Power, Georgia Power and Mississippi Power, which serve about 4.2 million customers. But the company is no stranger to zero-carbon resource: Its Southern Power competitive power arm owns substantial amounts of wind and solar in its 12.8 GW generation portfolio, while its Southern Nuclear arm generates more than 6 GW of power and is building the country’s only new nuclear plant.
- Xcel Energy: Xcel Energy was one of the first utilities to declare a zero-carbon goal without being under the pressure of a state mandate — but that doesn’t mean it’s not likely to face them soon enough. The utility serves about 3.6 million electric and 2 million natural-gas customers in eight states, most of them in Colorado and Minnesota
- Public Service Enterprise Group: New Jersey utility Public Service Enterprise Group is another utility moving just slightly ahead of its home state’s efforts to drive its energy emissions down to zero by midcentury. PSEG’s $3.5 billion clean energy plan is aimed at meeting New Jersey’s renewable portfolio standard of 35 percent by 2025 and 50 percent by 2030, as well as Gov. Phil Murphy’s goal of reaching 100 percent clean energy by 2050.
I figured that would cost lots of money, but all you need to do is built high voltage transmission lines from where the power is generated to where the power is needed and build solar and wind farms everywhere! Done! Easy!
Well, it sounds easy. But in reality, there are lot of things that will need to change for solar and wind to be able to replace carbon based power plants. It’s not impossible, but it is not going to be easy. There is lots of work to do, not only in development of technologies, but in rethinking how everything with wind and solar is done today.
I went to google maps and looked to see where all these wind mills and solar farms could be built. Which led me to the desert southwest. Which led me to the Navajo Nation, which certainly couldn’t possibly have any high voltage transmission lines that could be used. To my surprise I found the coal plants, looked them up and found out they were either closed or closing by 2031 with another coal plant a few dozen miles south of Navajo Nation also going offline in the coming years. Then I found the closed coal mines on Black Mesa.
I started to delve into what would need to be done to turn the Navajo Nation into a giant solar farm and maybe throw in some wind. The Navajo Nation became an example. It’s just an example. I have no intentions of building it. I have NO money to build it. I have not talked to the Navajo people about building it. I’m using it as an example. Outlines on the map are just intended as illustration, not a direct order to built it in that exact location using every sq inch of land within the outlined area that covers a dozen or so square miles.
Suggestions on how things should be setup are just suggestions. If I use the Navajo as an example, that does not mean it applies only to them. It can apply everywhere else that there is a similar situation.
Going carbon free will mean a complete redesign of the power grid, going from centralized generation (large GW power plants) to decentralized power generation spread over a wide region will require rethinking most aspects of generation, transmission, distribution and the power markets.
Today I’m going to cover the land needed for wind, solar and battery farms. The Navajo have a lot of open land, but so do a lot of other places. Land is going to be needed everywhere for solar farms. Where do we find it all? How do we manage development?
Instead of Navajo Nation, I could have picked the western half of Iowa (I-35 the dividing line, about the same size area), or even a much smaller area where I live in Illinois outside St Louis. We have 2 large coal plants. One is 1.9GW and is partially shutdown. 635 MW remain and will be shutdown by 2025. The other is 1.6GW in full operation. Construction on that “clean” coal plant started in the late 00s during the “clean” coal fad and opened in 2012. The state wants it closed by 2035, but it’s not paid for and a few electric co-ops in the area on on the hook. Our friend from Black Mesa, Mr Peabody, put together that Prairie State coal plant “deal”, but none of the cash. Convenient that he could sell them the coal they need.
Where I live, these plants have high voltage transmission lines that carry power to large distribution substations in my town, dozens of miles away and into the St Louis region. There are also high voltage lines running between the plants. There is a high voltage loop in place with a few GW of coal generation slated to go offline.
In the above map, the view is about 60 miles wide. South and east of the suburban “Metro East” is rural farmland. This view contains about 4 or 5 counties. This map was not made for wind/solar. I started it a few years ago because I live in large a 50s-60s neighborhood with overhead power lines and very large, mature 60-80ft tall trees that like to drop limbs on power lines during strong thunderstorms. When we get a power outage post on the neighborhood Facebook group, I can post a screenshot of the streets and area affected.
We have far less land to work with in my local area to replace the coal power on these lines. We have alot of open land, but it’s all farms, owned by thousands of individuals. Many of those farms are the original 150 acres the US government handed to white settlers after they stole it from Native Americans in the early 1800s. Many of those farmers great-great grandfathers lined up for that government handout. Now all these farmers are going to make more money from that land by leasing it out for solar farms than they are making growing soybeans or corn. But we still need to eat.
For comparison, this view of the high voltage transmission lines from the maps of Navajo Nation I have been using in my example “Master Plan”, is about 200 miles wide. This view contains most of the Navajo Nation. There are a lot of farms and ranches on this map too, they just don’t stand out as clearly.
An integrated system like I have been describing could be implemented anywhere.
Would it be exactly how I am describing it? No, of course not. It’s mostly in R & D now. Technology needs to be developed and improved.
Did I just come up with this and I am some kind of genius? No.
I read technical articles about what is being researched now, what is starting to be implemented now, what will be coming soon. L-Ion and Tesla are not the only game in town for battery storage, and the US is way, way, way behind the in the game. Big media in the US can’t seem to get beyond Tesla and electric cars to look at the changes coming to the power grid very closely, except to give a quick overview from an orbital view.
I took the information I learned and put it together to demonstrate what is being worked on, what will need to be done and how it might be done to replace carbon based power plants. The more I write the diaries, the more I learn, so another diary is born! It’s a vicious cycle!
There are literally hundreds of possibilities to get to carbon free. My solution and suggestions are not the only ones. But it is one of the many pieces of the puzzle that need to be solved. People who know a whole lot more than me are working on it and coming up with these solutions. Some may end up being implemented, some may end up being forgotten.
Renewables Integration and the Smart Substation
Smart substations
A crucial element of the future smart grid is the smart substation, and how this power and information exchange will be connected to the regional transmission and local distribution grid. The smart substation is, on one hand, the gateway to the many prosumers connected to the low voltage grid and, on the other, the connection to the higher voltage levels of the transmission grid and interconnectors.
DNOs [distribution network operators] are faced with an ever-increasing uncertainty for planning and operation. The size, location and timing of generation and load are often unpredictable. Investments in grid reinforcements may turn out to be uneconomic for the DNOs. This stimulates them to maximize the use of the existing network and to consider installing flexibility and intelligence in the grid instead of traditional grid reinforcements. Smart substations are capable of aggregating customer demand and supply. They can guarantee power quality, allow for controlled islanding, optionally store energy, and serve as an information and control gateway. This last part is possible through exchange agents between customers and the grid. And of course, smart substations are capable of physically facilitating the delivery of electric power.
NAVAJO NATION – A GOLD MINE OF LAND LEASES
Building something like this on Navajo land will be easier than in my area since Native American land is owned by the tribe and leased out, not sold. But it won’t be without controversy. Wind farms are controversial everywhere. I’m sure they would be controversial on Navajo Nation as well.
Anything that would be done on the Navajo Nation would be up to the Navajo people, but I would hope that they would do so in consultation with the Hopi in culturally sensitive areas that had once been Hopi land.
There is a good chance someone like Mr Peabody will show up and shove some “deal” down their throats and rip them off on the leases. Many wind and solar farms are setup on leased land today. Since there is a going rate for wind and solar on farmland to use for comparison, they should be able to set similar rates for their land and fend off Mr Peabody and his “deals”. Native American tribes are sitting on a gold mine of land leases. The only other larger landowner in the US is the US Government (BLM) and we know Mr Peabody’s friends are preparing suitcases full of cash to get “deals” there as well (Native Americans aren’t immune to suitcases of cash).
However, the Navajo Nation is not made up of a bunch of unorganized, naïve Indians. They are setup similar to state government. In fact, they have more land than 10 US states (and Puerto Rico) and more land than New Hampshire, New Jersey, Connecticut and Delaware combined! They have a President (instead of governor) and executive branch. They have a Legislature. They have a Supreme Court and judicial system. Department of Transportation. Navajo EPA (yes, they have Superfund sites too). Department of Workforce development. Full fledged government. Like a state. Or a nation.
And as an added bonus, the Navajo Tribal Utility Authority (NTUA), is a utility cooperative owned and operated by the Navajo people. They have their own electric company and local distribution grid.
They have the organization needed in place. I would be surprised if they are not already working on long range plans, but this “carbon free by 2050” push from major utilities is fairly new and they may not realize the big solar land rush is coming real soon. If someone on Navajo Nation sees my examples and it give them ideas while planning and it helps them and other rural areas to be prepared and obtain a fair deal and a source of income for their land, that would be great.
But this also applies everywhere else.
HOUSING FOR SKILLED LABOR
One of the biggest problems for rural areas is going to be labor to get all the work done and then maintain what gets built. The Navajo have about 100,000 people between 18-65 scattered across 27,000 sq miles (in parts of 3 states). The largest town has about 8,600 people (Tuba City). Window Rock, the capitol, has about 2,500 people. It’s 125 miles from Tuba City to Window Rock in a straight line. Very rural. Similar to parts of western Iowa and the midwest.
Getting skilled labor will be a problem for rural places all across the country. Training can be provided for those that live in rural areas, but they will need more labor. The Navajo have about 100,000 members living elsewhere, most likely because they could not find work at home. Western Iowa and the rest of rural American have similar percentages who left home for the nearby cities to find work.
These people could decide to move back home. There will be a lot of jobs available in rural America if these carbon free plans can ever get implemented. Both in construction and in maintaining them afterwards.
That will mean more housing will need to be planned and built. This revolution in electric generation could really help revitalize rural America and also help lift Native American tribes out of poverty, but the need for land for solar and housing in rural areas will put even more stresses on farmland.
ZONING
The Navajo Nation is not one big unused desert. It encompasses 27,413 sq miles (17,544,320 acres). From a 2008 report, they were using:
- Livestock grazing: 12,000 acres (18.75 sq miles)
- Farmland: 46,000 acres (71.875 sq miles)
- Ranches: 1,433,906 acres (2,240.478 sq miles)
It appears they are using 1,491,906 acres (2,331.1 sq miles) for agricultural purposes.
There are 16,052,414 acres (25,081.9 sq miles) available for other purposes. Let’s say 75% of that is off limits for one of many reasons (towns, special areas, dry streams that aren’t dry when it rains, rugged terrain, radioactive, etc).
That leaves 4,013,103.5 unused acres (6,270.47 sq miles) to work with for solar and battery farms and substations. About 25% of the non-agriculture land. All currently unused. You aren’t going to find that in Iowa or near the power lines on my power grid. All the open land near me is active farmland. We will have to take out sq miles of farms for all the solar power we will need to fill the lines we have coming available (1 sq mi = 640 acres).
On my “Master Plan” for the Navajo, I had placed 3GW of solar on 8 “farms” that totaled about 88 sq miles of land (excluding the coal mine farms). This is about 1.5% of the 25% of the non-agricultural land. It is 0.4% of all their non-agricultural land. And much more land than that is needed to generate the power needed via solar. 10GW or more of solar panels will be needed to output about 2GW of solar power 24/7 plus space for large battery buildings and other equipment. It’s about 125 sq miles needed just for solar panels (for now).
Within these areas, there could be large and small solar farms, all linked together into one central location for access to the high voltage transmission lines. There could be open space set aside between the solar farms.
It is similar to zoning an area, instead of industrial, commercial, residential, you create solar and wind zones like I have here. They are overlaid onto a mix of farm, industrial, commercial, residential land, whatever already exists today. They are centered around an access point to an existing regional or long distance transmission line.
Within these zones,, you can setup rules to exclude solar and wind farms from certain areas (no you can’t knock down your house and put up a solar farm or wind turbine on your residential subdivision lot because you are in a solar or wind zone, but you can put them on the roof, HOA be damned), reserve open space (farmland, parks, etc), setup power line ROW, find land for substations, etc. Setup rules for solar farm aesthetics as viewed from roads and/or neighboring property (solid wall, no chain link, etc) and features solar and wind must include (MW per acre, batteries, no pavement, drainage, dual-use, etc).
Each solar or wind zone would have rules for connection to the local collection transmission grid within that zone (frequency control needed or not, voltage, equipment, etc). The local collection transmission grid would be managed by the same utility that manages the local distribution transmission grid. The grids may even be combined to minimize transmission lines needed for individual solar and wind farms.
With a solar or wind zone in place, new projects won’t have to go thru the time consuming approval process to get on a major transmission line, they would use the access to the transmission line already in place for use by farms in the solar or wind zones. Rules and standards would be published and as long as a developers project is within the rules for the zone they are building in, it is quickly approved and they get a quick connection on the local collection grid.
A system like this is already in place for real estate development. This could be done in rural locations everywhere to control what areas get solar farms packed together and where they must be spread out to conserve farmland. We still need to eat! There will be a land rush in rural America, not for housing developments, but for solar and wind farm locations. This would speed up the approvals process.
With zoning in place, private developers know what land is available and would know the rules in that specific location. If the location is hot enough, they bid on it. Highest bidder wins. There is an asking price, like selling a house, except they are selling 25 or 30 year land leases.
The sellers could be the Navajo or any tribe, or the US Government (BLM) or it could be private landowners in Iowa or near my house.
Buyers would be companies that develop smaller scale solar and wind farms, companies that specialize in large industrial scale farms, companies that specialize in battery farms and utility companies. Diversified ownership of the generation and storage (and financing).
Once the transmission collection grid is in place in the zone, it’s a land rush for leases from several different sources (or land — some land outside of tribal or public land could be sold instead of leased)
PERSPECTIVE
To help put acres/sq miles into perspective, this is the Navajo Generating Station and its toxic waste dump. The shaded area is 5 sq miles (3200 acres).
The shaded area on the map below is a 1 sq mile area (640 acres) near downtown Phoenix. This will give you perspective on solar and wind farm sizes being mentioned.
On the Navajo example, I also used an additional 34.4 sq miles of old coal strip mines to generate another 1.65 GW. The Navajo would probably want to pack as much solar and batteries on this eyesore as they possibly can. Build up for the big battery farms and stack them in tall buildings. This could be an urban style industrial solar zone.
The Navajo could generate and store GWs of solar power on these old coal mines! Take that Mr Peabody!
LEASING LAND NEEDED FOR SOLAR AND WIND
Even with the little land needed, farmers in the Midwest are getting $10-12K per year to lease about 1 acre of land for a wind turbine.
Corn pours into Kelly Nieuwenhuis’ combine grain tank this past fall as 20-plus mph winds keep two MidAmerican Energy wind turbines spinning in his field. The northwest-Iowa row-crop farmer, in effect, is harvesting two revenue streams, but the latter is a stable source.
“For the last four years, the turbines were the most profitable part of my farm,” Nieuwenhuis claims as he maneuvers his combine around the base of one of the 262-foot towers. “I wish I had 10 of them.”
It’s been a struggle to make a profit growing corn and soybeans the past five years, the Primghar farmer contends. The annual lease payment from MidAmerican of about $25,000 — use of about 2 acres of land for two turbines and infrastructure — that started in 2017 provides needed revenue to help offset fluctuating commodity markets.
When 40 acres of prime farmland came up for sale three years ago next to his field with the two turbines, Nieuwenhuis says the steady revenue the twin towers offer provided him with the confidence to purchase the property.
“I’ve been real happy with the wind turbines since they’ve been built,” he continues.
I’m not sure what the going rate is for the many acres needed for solar farms, but this 4 MW farm proposed on a 40 acres of farm land that abuts one of the transmission substations near my town is going to be more profitable (and the income more reliable) for the farmer than farming the land. The farmer is still going to farm the remaining 90 acres.
After years of putting off hopeful retail developers, Cathleen Lindauer finally found the type of development she feels is right for a portion of her land south of Belleville.
She plans to lease 40 acres of her 130 total acres of corn and soybean farmland to a solar energy company.
With soybean prices falling to their lowest levels in years, farming the sun instead of the land is becoming an increasingly attractive, and sometimes more profitable, use of property for some landowners.
…
Lindauer has helped farm her land for 45 years — at first helping her father farm it and later becoming owner.
I’m not sure how much that farmer near me got for the lease of her 40 acres for the 4MW farm, but the output from that solar farm is probably similar to the two wind turbines that the other farmer is leasing two acres for $25,000 per year. But the sun doesn’t shine all day and the wind can blow day and night, so let’s just say 50 acres of farmland leases for about $20,000 per year for solar.
Transmission capacity becoming available + land available for solar & wind generation = Gold Mine in land leases for Native American tribes and rural land owners. Every year. For 30+ years, probably indefinitely. Good steady income for farmers everywhere who can turn a few acres into wind turbines or solar farms while still farming the remainder of their land.
I think many farmers in my area would be lining up to get their land in a solar zone and convert some, but not all, of their land to solar, like the farmer mentioned above. Which would end up creating many scattered 5-10MW solar farms over a very wide area.
AMOUNT OF LAND NEEDED FOR WIND FARMS
Wind turbines are spread out over a wide area. They are typically no closer then 1000 ft apart. They are spread out over sq miles, but use very little space in that area. Each wind turbine requires about an acre of land, but the entire site does not need to be fenced off.
For example, the White Hills Project (map) wind farm near Kingman, AZ opened in 2020 with 126 Turbines that produce 349.6 MW (when the wind is strong enough) on 24,527 acres (38.3 sq miles)
Scores of turbines have been erected where a utility-scale wind farm is expected to begin producing power before the end of the year near the rural town of White Hills, about 40 miles north of Kingman. Next Era Energy spokeswoman Lisa Paul said the 350-megawatt wind farm will begin generating electricity sometime in December.
Paul said more than half of the 126 turbines had been assembled and positioned by early October where the project is being developed on more than 24,000 acres of public land administered by the Bureau of Land Management. About 300 people are involved in construction of the system that will require no more than six people to operate.
That project was using 2.82 MW turbines. The latest turbines are in the 4-5 MW range. The latest turbines would boost that site to the 600 MW range. For example, the Oso Grande Wind Project (map) in New Mexico produces 247 MW with 60 4.5 MW turbines made by Siemens Gamesa on 24,000 acres. It cost $300 million.
With today’s turbines, you can produce almost three times the power with the same number of turbines as just 10 years ago. The Perrin Ranch Wind Farm (map) near Williams, AZ was built in 2012 and produces only 99.2 MW with 62 1.6 MW turbines on 20,000 acres.
A sixty turbine wind farm could produce $600-$750K per year in lease income to the landowners for the use of sixty acres of land (plus right of ways for access and power lines, which are usually buried).
ZONING LAND NEEDED FOR SOLAR FARMS
Now we are talking about needing square miles of land. That proposed solar farm near my house will generate 4 MW, by the time the approvals process is over and it finally gets built, it will probably be 5MW as panels get more efficient. So about 8 acres per MW, if the panels are packed closely together, like typical solar farms being built today.
The Navajo Tribal Utility Authority built the 55 MW Kayenta Solar Project at the Kayenta substation in two phases. Phase I in 2017 and Phase II in 2019.
Kayenta I was developed by NTUA and constructed by Spanish renewable energy firm Isolux Corsán Group. It was completed in May 2017 and came online the following month, marking the official opening of Kayenta Solar Project that consisted of 119,301 sun-tracking panels and had a budget of more than $50 million.
Shortly thereafter, plans for Kayenta II began. Walter W. Haase, general manager of NTUA, told the Navajo Times early last year that the utility had to secure 65 acres for Kayenta II before installation began. Kayenta I is on 300 acres of land where the late Ella Todacheenie once grazed her livestock.
“We didn’t need to build a new interconnect (the access point for a solar project to deliver energy to the electrical grid) because we were able to just upgrade the existing one very affordably,” Haase said at the time. Kayenta II, built by NTUA and Swinerton Renewable Energy, is now online.
The Kayenta Solar Project is 55 MW on 365 acres, using about 6.6 acres per MW.
The Navajo have another solar project on Red Mesa scheduled to start in 2021. It will be 70 MW on 600 acres (just under 1 square mile — using about 8.5 acres per MW). This is located on the 230 kV line between Kayenta and Shiprock. I didn’t see an exact location in the info sheet.
It appears that they are adding a tap on the line for the new solar farm to send it’s power to customers in Utah. We can’t be having independent solar farms added by the dozens to transmission lines. It would make the grid almost impossible to manage. That is why there is a strict process today that is followed before allowing new solar or wind farms onto transmission lines.
It will get harder to add more solar farms this way. The queue for these interconnect studies is very deep. Many solar and wind projects languish for years waiting for review, then get denied. This is where the “collection and control” substations I talked about in the previous diary and zoning come into play. Creating “solar zones” around central transmission line access points may become necessary to provide quicker and easier access to the grid.
Let’s say it takes about 8 acres for 1 MW of solar panels.
Say we needed to have 10 GW of solar panels to provide enough to charge batteries and with enough generation left over to output so that solar power can be provided 24/7 on the transmission line. This amount of panels may generate less than ½ the power for transmission 24/7 that is needed to replace the output of all 3 coal plants. Even more may be need. Or less as panels become more efficient. Then throw in rainy day storage, or season to season storage, you’ll need even more!
10 GW (10,000 MW) of solar panels would need 80,000 acres, or 125 sq miles. On the Navajo example, I “zoned” 34.4 sq miles on the old coal mines to generate 1.65 GW on that land. If they made the old coal mines an industrial solar and battery farm, they could have 2 GW to 2.5 GW of solar panels and have room to store 70% of the solar generation for night time use just on that old coal mine, depending on how much land the batteries use.
The existing 115 kV lines to the old coal mine can be reconfigured to carry power out to the 230 kV transmission line. The substations on the transmission lines here would be large remote “Collection and Control” substations managing output and storage for all the solar farms on the old coal mines.
There is still another 8GW and 100 sq miles or so of solar farms needed to get to 10GW of panels. These can be distributed into the other solar zones created around the transmission loop “Collection and Control” substations discussed in a previous diary.
Using this design, there are 8 other solar zones outside of the coal mines. Each will need to have about 1 GW of solar panels. We will need about 13 sq miles of tightly packed solar panels, large battery buildings, access roads, ROW, etc in each zone.
It will be next to impossible to find a parcel that big anywhere near existing power lines. Even on Navajo nation with all their unused land. Not only do we have to spread out generation sites to build out our example Navajo renewable power plant, we don’t have another old strip mine to use to find the rest of the land needed. We will have to have distributed generation within our solar zones.
Here is where solar zones and “Collection and Control” substations come into play again. We can’t throw everyone off the 13 sq miles we need, so we’ll say for this site we need 4 times the area as land needed. Solar zones in other parts of the country may need to be 10 times larger than area used, to conserve farmland and other open space, but for this area, developing 25% of the land with solar may be possible.
Let’s look at the area around the Arizona Public Service owned Moenkopi 500-kV Switchyard near Cameron, AZ. A logical location for one of our “Collection and Control” substations.
The highlighted area is a 13 sq mile area around the switch substation. I don’t know what is on the ground now, I’m just drawing lines at 5,000 ft, but a quick look shows a Burger King and a school. We can’t just plow it all under and build an urbanized industrial solar and battery farm on every acre outlined.
Instead, this solar zone will need to be 52 sq miles. Here is the same area with the expanded zone. it is roughly centered around the Moenkopi 500-kV Switchyard. The furthest point from the switch substation is about 8 miles away. But it is mostly within 6 miles from the substation to any spot in the zone.
Now, let’s get our Solar zone divided up into subzones. Again, i have no idea what is actually on the ground, just drawing lines from 5000 ft. If someone from a county (or tribe) planning department were to do this for real, they would know the area well.
In our case, I’m also going to exclude land (red) on either side of the major roads since they seem to have homes and commercial development. I’ll reserve as much land as I can get around the substation for large battery buildings and as many solar panels as will fit on the land. This is an “Industrial” zone (grey). It looks like we can have a fairly large sized “Industrial” zone in the area immediately around the substation and to the west and south. There are some areas that look like they are used for farming or grazing, so I’ll make these areas (green) dual-use zones (keep reading below). The rest will be a standard solar zone.
Rules would be set for each zone type. For example, the standard solar subzones below may specify the required spacing between solar farms, the max and min size, and the percentage of land that can be used for solar in the subzone. Once the percentage is full, no more solar can be built in the subzone.
The purple zone was reserved in the previous diary for a large research and training solar park. That would not be placed in every zone. But they will be needed regionally. There will be lots of research ongoing and there will be lots of people needing training on the equipment and new technologies.
Of course the real subzoning would be far more granular, down to the parcel level for the borders of each subzone. The entire solar zone as well. And every solar zone will require different mixes of subzones. It all gets setup in advance thru the zoning process, which is already in place in all jurisdictions.
Next to the 500kV switch substation is several acres reserved for the “Collection and Control” substation equipment. Transmission will be sent to the 500kV switch from here. All lines from solar and wind farms terminate here. It will also house other substation equipment like control rooms, etc. The rest of the “industrial area” will be used for high density solar farms and factory like battery and administration buildings.
Within these zones, we should be able to find enough land for 1GW of solar panels and storage. Everyone will know the rules in each area. Once zoning is in place construction starts on the collection transmission network and the “Collection and Control” substation, developers will be lining up for leases so they can start construction.
Good luck finding a parcel this large for an industrial zone in most areas tho. The one above is about 5.4 sq miles (3450 acres). There are bound to be some landowners who resist. If you try to take land for it using eminent domain, there will be controversy and it will go on for years. Some places may have useless land that could be used, like an old strip mine. But you really want to try to pack things in as close as you can around the “Collection and Control” substation to minimize the length of the transmission lines needed.
TRANSMISSION LINE RIGHT OF WAY
Right of Way for power lines running radially from the “Collection and Control” substation would be setup while working on the zoning. This in itself will be a process and could require eminent domain. You really want to work at minimizing new transmission lines.
If there are existing power lines, I’d try to reuse as much ROW as possible by placing lower voltage lines in the existing high voltage ROW as well as widening existing ROWs. Using double or triple circuit transmission poles as you get closer to the substation where lines start to consolidate will help limit ROW width needed. ROW land can be used for farming, roads or staging areas for equipment deliveries, but you can’t build permanent structures under them.
Different voltage power lines require different width ROW. The higher the voltage, the taller the transmission tower or pole and the wider the ROW. Below is a chart showing typical transmission towers and poles used for different voltage levels.
230 kV and higher use towers like the one on the left. The higher the voltage, the higher and wider the tower (and ROW). The 2nd from the left is a pole type that is carrying two circuits. The 4th from the right has two 230 Kv (high) circuits and two 69 kV circuits (low) maximizing ROW. The 3rd from the right is a similar tower with just the two 230 kV circuits. It is 15-25 ft shorter. The 2nd from the right a 115 kV single circuit pole. These can be metal or wood. 115 kV circuits are often run on tall/wide wooden “H” type towers as well. The one on the right is a double circuit 69 kV circuit. On Navajo nation, it looks like they use 69 kV circuits as substation distribution (sends power to substations to step the power down or local distribution to homes and businesses). They are strung on single wooden poles, often along the major roads with 12.4 kV distribution circuits on the same poles.
In my area, Ameren uses 34.5 kV lines for substation distribution. This voltage is commonly used for solar and wind farm lines to grid substations. The poles are shorter than 69 kV poles, but taller than normal 12.4 kV distribution poles. Around here, most 34.5 kV poles also have 12.4 kV distribution lines on them.
Here are some photos 34.5 kV power lines.
Transmission lines are not cheap. A new 230 kV line will run in the $2 million per mile range, higher for distances shorter than 10 miles. A new 34.5 kV line is much cheaper, but still not cheap. The less transmission line needed to be built, the less cost for each project and the quicker the projects can come online. So you’ll want the solar and wind farms to learn to share transmission resources whenever possible.
DUAL-USE SOLAR FARMS
In suburban and urban areas, parking lots make good solar farms. Many large companies have already built carports over all their parking spaces and filled them with solar. They use the power to power their buildings. This could be encouraged for smaller buildings, apartment complexes, shopping malls and office parks that may have lots of parking space, but the owner of a large apartment complex, or a mall or office park has no incentive to build one to provide power to their tenants. But if being able to get an easy connection to the grid would mean profit for them from selling the solar power, they would probably do it. And if they can get financing.
The way solar and wind projects are financed now by lining up customers for the power before it is built won’t work anymore. It’s like the electric co-op in Missouri that singed onto Mr Peabody’s Prairie State “deal” to finance the plant and buy their power from it. But they are well over 100 miles away and on the other side of the Mississippi (there are only a few transmission lines crossing the river).
The power that plant produces comes directly into my town. If I signed up to buy power from a wind or solar project 100s of miles from me, the power I use will still be coming from the coal plant. The power that rural Missouri co-op consumes will be from whatever power generator is closest to them. They are not using the same generated power that they are paying for.
Some other way to finance solar and wind projects and figure out who gets paid for what for power generated, transmitted and delivered over the new redesigned power grid will need to be figured out. Don’t ask me about that, I have absolutely no clue on that one.
Back to Dual Use Solar farms because the money thing is a whole different problem that needs to be solved.
In my previous diaries, I mention “Agrivoltaics”, farm or grazing land under elevated solar panels. Research is still ongoing, but I can see this being a thing as time goes on and designs get developed.
Agrivoltaics: Solar Panels on Farms Could Be a Win-Win (2019)
“This would seem like a great thing—you get to farm and use the same exact space to generate money from solar production,” said Brad Mitchell, deputy executive director of the Massachusetts Farm Bureau Federation. “But it’s still in the early stages.”
The idea of producing solar energy and growing crops on the same land has been around for a while. Isolated demonstration and research installations are in place or planned in Arizona, Japan, and France. In recent years, however, the concept has become more attractive, as the price of photovoltaic panels has plummeted, interest in renewable energy has risen, and financial pressures on small farmers have grown. And because solar arrays often displace agriculture, causing tension between the two land uses, agrivoltaics is being seen as a potential win-win.
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Traditionally, when solar developers turn to farmland for their projects, the property is leased or sold to the developer, the topsoil is stripped, and the panels are mounted on concrete footings embedded in the land. While the shift boosts renewable energy generation, it weakens the local food supply. Some counties have even started prohibiting large-scale solar developments on agricultural property as a way to preserve the land.
For example, you may be able to graze 100 head of livestock on 10,000 acres on natural arid desert land. If you installed elevated panels 10 -12 ft off the ground, spaced out the solar panels so light can get thru and added efficient irrigation to the structure holding up the panels on 1,000 acres of those acres, you could grow more natural vegetation on the land and graze those same 100 head of livestock on 1,000 shaded acres, making the land more productive for agriculture and the livestock more comfortable.
If solar farms can help turn desert land into productive farm or grazing land, I’d expect a lot of people to sign up to have irrigated solar farms installed on their desert grazing or farmland across Navajo Nation and elsewhere. Have the developer throw in the irrigation system in exchange for no lease payments on the land. I’m sure someone could probably work out a deal like that way.
Other dual use farms are turning unusable “Brownfields” into Solar farms. There are lots of brownfields in urban areas. Many of these could be turned into solar farms. You could refurbish abandoned buildings into battery farms. Many blighted cities have block after block of vacant lots and dilapidated buildings that could be turned into block after block of batteries and solar panels. A large parcel could even be assembled for redevelopment for an urban “Collection and Control” substation without too much trouble. If old buildings and lots are vacant and dilapidated for decades, it isn’t going to redevelop, may as well use it for solar generation, storage and collection.
This is an example of turning a brown field into a solar park near where I live. I don’t think it was ever built. The company mentioned as building it does not have a website anymore (the domain is for sale).
After 17 years of cleanup, plan for solar farm at polluted East St. Louis site still uncertain (2018)
After years of contamination from aluminum production, a 400-acre site off Illinois 15 is finally cleaned up and ready to use for a solar panel field to generate renewable energy.
But the project, four years in the works following more than a decade of cleanup, has yet to get off the ground. Financing complications have prevented the developer from moving forward, according to Mike Singer, project manager for Brightfields Development, the Massachusetts-based solar company hoping to develop the site.
The site, just a few miles west of the Interstate 255 interchange north of Illinois 15, was used by the Alcoa company until the late 1950s as a place to dispose of waste from its aluminum production plant, according to the Unites States Environmental Protection Agency.
More than 50 years' worth of waste collected there until the plant's closure, permanently contaminating the site and rendering it unfit for reuse. Such sites are called brownfields.
Efforts to clean up the the EPA Superfund site began in 2001, but it wasn't until 2014 that cleanup efforts ramped up after Brightfields Development expressed interest in building a $65 million solar field there. Brightfields specializes in turning brownfields into solar fields.
In 2014, the EPA, Alcoa, and the Alton and Southern Railroad, which has rails running parallel to the site, renewed the cleanup effort. The site was cleared and workers laid 2 feet of new soil over roughly 100 acres where the waste was disposed, according to EPA spokeswoman Rachel Bassler.
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It's the perfect area for a solar field because practically nothing else can be built there, Singer said. The contamination is still toxic, making the site unsafe for humans to frequent.
"The reason that solar is such a good fit is because there's very little day-to-day operation and maintenance," Singer said. "These are long-term projects with minimum moving parts that's why (solar) is such a good reuse for contaminated sites."
"Why go out and cut down trees or take farmland to build solar (fields) when these sites are well-positioned to the electric grid and readily available?" Singer added.
There are many other brownfield sites in East St Louis, St Louis and other urban areas all over the US. The land can’t be used for anything, even after it is capped because it is too toxic. But solar farms to don’t have people onsite very often, so some of them are OK for limited exposure for construction and maintenance. Great use for them.
Reusing the land from the old Black Mesa strip mines would be an example of using brownfields. The Prairie State coal plant near me also comes with it’s own strip mine.
Mr Peabody’s friends left the Navajo with some old uranium mines that have caused a mess.
Those areas may be able to be used for solar farms as well.
There are many old, capped garbage landfills all over the US. These can be used.
Old strip mines are everywhere in the US.
Much of the useless brownfields land could become solar farms all over the US.
IN NEXT FEW YEARS YEARS AND BEYOND
The CEO of Arizona Public Service mentioned that technologies will need to be developed to save power from season to season. Whatever they come up with will need to have additional generation added to put in storage. That 10 GW guestimate that they need to produce with solar power to replace some of the lost coal generation from Navajo Nation and still have power generation to save from season to season could become 100 GW worth of panels (that doesn’t mean you will be generating 100GW for every hour the sun shines, you’ll only hit that for a few hours each day, if lucky).
Now repeat that for hundreds (or is it thousands) of old coal and gas plants all over the US. Each situation will be different depending on the mix of renewables available in the area. Some may have no choice but solar only, some may have plenty of wind and some solar. Others may be able to add hydro and water and other non-carbon sources into the mix.
Power will also need to be able to be generated and stored locally in heavily built up urban and suburban cities to avoid transmission congestion on long distance lines.
The new power grid being designed to integrate renewable energy sources will change the power grid from a centralized generation system, where large amounts of power is generated at one location and sent out radially over 100s of miles, to a distributed generation system where small amounts of power is generated and stored locally, used locally and whatever is not used locally gets transmitted out over high voltage lines to places that have more demand than generation.
There are so many changes coming to how power is generated, transmitted and delivered, your head will spin if it can ever be implemented. What we now know as peak time power usage will probably change to 1am — 5am (electric car charging). The cheapest will be mid morning until early afternoon on sunny days when we are generating solar power locally and before the afternoon HVAC peak hits.
It will be a political mess just trying to get funding to do it. It can’t be done without a funded Green New Deal or Infrastructure funding that includes funding for electrical grid work, especially at the local level. It will cost hundreds of billions if not a trillion or more to do it nationwide. Just to build out the infrastructure needed.
It will be a political mess just trying to get the land needed to do it, especially if eminent domain comes into play. And we all know the GQP will use it to gin up the base with outrage and exploit every little thing real or imagined along the way.
And down at the bottom of the political mess will be the zoning and development planners in county (or tribal) offices all over the US trying to figure out how to come up with all the land that will be needed in their rural, suburban and urban areas for solar generation and energy storage without pissing anyone off.
Solar and wind farms will continue coming online piecemeal for the next few years. The big solar and wind build out may start on a smaller scale in 5 years, then, once they figure out what they are gonna do, accelerate about 10 years from now as the technology matures and continue for the next 20 years or even more. By the time you get there, you’ll have to go back and start replacing or rehabbing a lot of the stuff you built at the beginning since it will be at end of life and obsolete.
I’ll be getting into energy storage in the next diary.