Miliband Overrules His Inspectors to Approve Britain’s Second-Largest Solar Farm

Re: the land use issue. Here is an actual comparison between a solar complex and a gas plant in Texas. To me, this is the clearest illustration of just how completely idiotic it is to install solar. One other issue is that the grid in the US runs at a frequency of 60hz (I think the EU and UK run at 50hz) and is supported by reliable energy sources with spinning reserves, so by adding unreliable, intermittent and variable energy sources, grid management becomes more complicated and expensive which will very likely lead to power outages as more of this nonsense is added.

The video linked below shows, among other things, a comparison between the Blevins 270 MW nameplate solar complex in Texas covering 2300 acres or 3.5 square miles to the Bridge City 1200 MW nameplate gas plant covering 26 acres or 88 times smaller. The gas plant nameplate is over 4 times that of Blevins and generates electricity 24×365 while the solar complex produces electricity maybe 20-25% of the time (not the 270 MW nameplate) and never from dusk to dawn. Also, that solar complex may last 15-20 years at best whereas the gas plant will last 50 years or longer. And, those solar panels don’t just pop up out of thin air – a lot of fossil fuels are burned to power the machinery needed for the enormous amount of mining required  in countries around the world (with many having little to no labor laws and no environmental controls) to extract the minerals used, then the processing to separate the ore from the overburden, then transport via truck, rail, and ship to manufacturing facility (likely in China), the coal powered energy intensive manufacturing process, transport to the site via truck, rail, and ship, site prep, lifecycle maintenance and ultimate decommissioning and disposal (which is another looming environmental catastrophe) – all done by very heavy fossil fuel powered machinery. And what are we going to do with all those end-of-life solar panels (or wind turbines)?  And of course, both wind and solar need a backup system for the times the wind does not blow and the sun does not shine adding to overall system cost and environmental impact. And who benefits most from all this? China! 

So, let’s do a bit of extrapolation. For Blevins to reach just the nameplate capacity of Bridge City would require over 4 times the amount of land – that is over 15 square miles of solar panels. But, given that solar has a capacity factor of maybe 25% (which is generous and as pointed out in other comments, the UK capacity factor is under 10%), you would need to multiply that 15 square miles by 4 again to reach the same output as Bridge City – so you are now looking at over 60 square miles of solar panels, and they still do not provide any electricity from dusk to dawn.  In fact, the only time they produce near nameplate is between the hours of 10-2 during the time of the year when the sun is directly overhead on clear, cloudless days.

The net is, wind and solar are far more environmentally destructive than hydrocarbons, including coal, and if anything, increase the need for them.  Both are parasitic and degrade grid performance leading to brown and black outs – see Duck Curve.
https://robertbryce.substack.com/p/sunblock-the-global-fight-to-savehttps://energybadboys.substack.com/p/solars-land-use-problem-is-much-worse https://www.facebook.com/reel/1225185639676254 https://edmhdotme.wpcomstaging.com/a-few-graphs-say-it-all-for-renewables/