LEAF posing

My Nissan Leaf Forum

Help Support My Nissan Leaf Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
TickTock said:
ILETRIC said:
Jeez! They need to put these things on people's homes' roofs, not line the beautiful desert with it!

Sorry folks, I'm sooo against it...
I agree that is the ideal state but I guess I'm a glass in half-full person. I'll take a solar plant over another natural gas or coal plant any day.
(BTW, my Leaf is actually powered from my own 11.8kW array - I just thought this would make a nice shot)


I love those shots. How did you get up there to take them?

I don't mind desert solar, I think they look cool and futuristic, but it's all subjective. We also have lots of desert.
 
rumpole said:
TickTock said:
ILETRIC said:
Jeez! They need to put these things on people's homes' roofs, not line the beautiful desert with it!

Sorry folks, I'm sooo against it...
I agree that is the ideal state but I guess I'm a glass in half-full person. I'll take a solar plant over another natural gas or coal plant any day.
(BTW, my Leaf is actually powered from my own 11.8kW array - I just thought this would make a nice shot)


I love those shots. How did you get up there to take them?

I don't mind desert solar, I think they look cool and futuristic, but it's all subjective. We also have lots of desert.
My other obsession - RC helicopters. ..or, as the media affectionately calls them these days, drones. ;)
 
ILETRIC said:
Jeez! They need to put these things on people's homes' roofs, not line the beautiful desert with it!

Sorry folks, I'm sooo against it...
What; on aesthetic grounds? The panels are a huge improvement, IMO.
 
Lasareath said:
I think it looks great too. They should cover half the deserts in America!
Wearing my botanist hat, I will point out that many of the deserts in the southwest aren't "deserted" or barren. The plants and animals in the desert around Phoenix and Tucson are particularly beautiful in many places, with tremendous biodiversity. Converting them to urban sprawl has been a controversial issue. Scraping and covering them with solar power stations is also controversial.

That said, I will point out that there are large tracts in the desert that are already disturbed, sometimes profoundly. Converting those places to solar power stations can make a lot of sense. There are many such tracts in the Mojave Desert in California and Nevada. In the Sonoran Desert in Arizona there are places that have been farmed for many years, using limited ground water or water from the Colorado River that is becoming scarce. Converting those areas to solar power stations would have no impact on desert plants and animals because they have already been destroyed as a functioning desert ecosystem.

So, it depends on where in the desert that you put those large scale solar generating stations. If you think deserts are nothing but sand dunes you are mistaken. Here's a picture of the desert here in western Colorado:
56zn.jpg

It is fortunate that this remote area is already somewhat protected as a BLM National Conservation Area (NCA). If you really think that such places should be converted to solar power stations, I vehemently disagree.
 
dgpcolorado said:
So, it depends on where in the desert that you put those large scale solar generating stations.
+1. Getting OT, but my preference for location of solar:

1. Rooftops
2. Previously disturbed land (landfills, mine sites, degraded farmland, etc)
3. Undisturbed land

In the last case especially, I would like to see conservation efforts used to offset the effect of disturbing the affected land.

I've got a lot of room for PV on my roof - it would be possible to install enough PV to generate at least 2x the amount of electricity I currently use, and potentially 3-4x if I really squeeze the panels up there and/or use high efficiency panels. And nearly every house in my area has similar amounts of roof-top space. This petition is relevant and would let California residential customers sell excess energy to utilities at a fair rate: http://petitions.moveon.org/sign/let-california-home-owners?source=s.em.mt&r_by=1604456" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

BTW: Great pics TickTock and dgpcolorado!
 
Nice Picture.

I didn't say all of the desert. I said half. Which half is not up to me. Deserts are not my forte.


dgpcolorado said:
Lasareath said:
I think it looks great too. They should cover half the deserts in America!

So, it depends on where in the desert that you put those large scale solar generating stations. If you think deserts are nothing but sand dunes you are mistaken. Here's a picture of the desert here in western Colorado:
56zn.jpg

It is fortunate that this remote area is already somewhat protected as a BLM National Conservation Area (NCA). If you really think that such places should be converted to solar power stations, I vehemently disagree.
 
It must be October... My car outside the office in Ouray yesterday:
14196289628_12e8076627_b.jpg

The internet forecast was for rain and thunderstorms. But the TV guy got it pretty close with a forecast of the snow level at 7000 feet; it was actually at about 7500 feet. This picture was taken at 7700 feet.
 
I do agree to a point. But look at this place on a map, it's a developed area. I'd much prefer a city block of solar panels to another mini-mall.
ILETRIC said:
Jeez! They need to put these things on people's homes' roofs, not line the beautiful desert with it!

Sorry folks, I'm sooo against it...
 
It's not my LEAF, which sadly is still at the body shop, but we borrowed a LEAF from our hosts in Lanai, HI last week and following the old adage of "nothing off-roads like a rental" we took it down to the beach.

2013-12-28%2010.14.08.jpg


We also managed to borrow a RAV4-EV a different day, and since it is truck (haha) we took it slightly further off the beaten path...

2013-12-30%2015.16.17.jpg
 
ILETRIC said:
Jeez! They need to put these things on people's homes' roofs, not line the beautiful desert with it!

Sorry folks, I'm sooo against it...

Well life is full of tradeoffs... cuz I would trade keeping the troops home over the aesthetics of 10000 acres of desert.

my 2 cents. I'm sooo against the evils of big oil! Would be nicer to get back all the Gulf of Mexico and the other spill areas all over the world if we had done this transition to electric and PV solar 30 years ago... No Iraq Wars 1 & 2... Afghanistan never would have been an issue... since the reason it was fought over was a Unocal Pipeline from Russia to the water through that sad country. And if we had never messed with the middle east... maybe alQaeda might not have cared that much about us.

To say nothing of Fukushima (nearly lost Tokyo, no dead man switches), Three Mile Island, Chernobyl etc...

Germany has already started the transition away from crazy energy policy and we would do well to follow their lead on energy.

Sorry to rant... but I really think we need to continue to examine our priorities. And go as clean as we can.
 
jsongster said:
ILETRIC said:
Jeez! They need to put these things on people's homes' roofs, not line the beautiful desert with it!

Sorry folks, I'm sooo against it...

Well life is full of tradeoffs... cuz I would trade keeping the troops home over the aesthetics of 10000 acres of desert.

my 2 cents. I'm sooo against the evils of big oil! Would be nicer to get back all the Gulf of Mexico and the other spill areas all over the world if we had done this transition to electric and PV solar 30 years ago... No Iraq Wars 1 & 2... Afghanistan never would have been an issue... since the reason it was fought over was a Unocal Pipeline from Russia to the water through that sad country. And if we had never messed with the middle east... maybe alQaeda might not have cared that much about us.

To say nothing of Fukushima (nearly lost Tokyo, no dead man switches), Three Mile Island, Chernobyl etc...

Germany has already started the transition away from crazy energy policy and we would do well to follow their lead on energy.

Sorry to rant... but I really think we need to continue to examine our priorities. And go as clean as we can.
 

Attachments

  • yes-sign.jpg
    yes-sign.jpg
    88.8 KB · Views: 153
On my way home yesterday from the annual battery check at the dealer in Durango:

12776310193_9297b5db18_z.jpg

LEAF near Coal Bank Pass, US 550, late afternoon, looking east.
It was a lovely day for a drive through the mountains, as you can see.

12776162675_da4c3f02d2_c.jpg

Twilight Peak, 13,163 ft, 4012 m
 
Back
Top