A 4000 acre facility is proposed for my area. The total cost will be in the tens of millions of dollars. My area is snowy and cloudy. I ran an analysis of the solar facility using the Energy Department's estimator for payoff. The payoff time exceeds the lifespan of the solar panels, meaning it will cost more to build than the value of the electricity it returns.
The project is an investment of an out-of-state financial services firm. They do their homework and I am sure will reap a healthy profit--probably 4-5% annually ROI. Landowners will get some pretty nice payments, too. The problem is that it will be all paid for by taxpayer dollars--they cannot sell the electricity for above the regulated wholesale rate, so they are using your and my money to line the pockets of an investment firm and some landowners. Yes, many of the landowners are retired farmers. But I cannot in good conscience defend using taxpayer dollars to pay for a system that returns less than it costs to build.
This is all justified by an appeal to gr==nhouse gas emissions and renewable energy. The problem is that the 4000 acres of land is 2/3 forest, which will be clear-cut. The rest of farmland which is taken out of service. This farmland loss has to be made up somewhere--probably in the American Southwest (water shortage) or by clear-cutting the @m@zon forest.
A local guy told me that the landowners are laughing all the way to the bank. I am sure they are. But, mark my words, the financial firm will sell off the project after 6 months to a hedge fund, which will then sell shares and 'derivatives' to various intermediaries, until 20 years from now, no one will really know who owns it. Then the solar panels will reach the end of their life and need to be retired. Whatever front company is still listed as the operator will declare bankruptcy, and the escrow account designated to pay for their removal will be used to cover creditors and their lawyers for pennies on the dollar per court order. Then the landowners will be stuck with these decommissioned solar panels, won't be able to sell, and the taxpayer will once again be called upon to pay for removal.
Sorry to be negative. I am sure others will have a different opinion. But unless the solar farm is in the sunny desert, neither the financial aspect nor the engineering make sense. But we're using tax dollars to force these things through. If it was just a waste of money, it would be bad enough. But the footprint on the environment that the solar farm is supposedly there to protect is enormous. I can't support something that is a waste of money and bad for us as a whole.
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