The United Arab Emirates has launched Al Dhafra solar farm – now the world's largest single-site solar farm – ahead of COP28.
  • carl_dungeon@lemmy.worldEnglish
    59·
    1 year ago

    This is great, I guess it really was the economics of panels holding them back all these years. Great to see solar taking off, there are so many ways it can help, like shading parking lots (double win), apparently being great shade for some plants like hops, coving things like canals which both avoid using additional land area and reduces evaporative losses of the water, etc etc!

    • Thisfox@sopuli.xyzEnglish
      331·
      1 year ago

      A lot of solar panels are now semitransparent too, now, meaning as you said people can grow plants below them. I love the shading cars in parking lots idea, but no one seems to have impemented that in Australia just yet.

    • scarabic@lemmy.worldEnglish
      6·
      1 year ago

      While cost has been coming down, efficiency has been going up. Panels now convert about 20% of the sunlight’s energy to electricity. When I was a kid it was 3-5% and it was a long slow climb. Maybe it’s just me but when I learned it had reached 20% that struck me as a lot.

      • Alerian@lemmy.mlEnglish
        25·
        1 year ago

        Though efficiency is not really a relevant metric when the source energy is free. It has indirect impact such as the necessary area but efficiency is not a good indicator for solar overall. But yay science!

        • cucumber_sandwich@lemmy.worldEnglish
          7·
          1 year ago

          What a bullshit take. Efficiency directly affects area and thereby all related overhead costs for cleaning, connecting, land use, production, etc.