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Solar Farms.

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Are solar farms really this bad?

A toxic blot on the landscape: Solar farms are ruining views and causing misery for residents | Daily Mail Online


Z.
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    True, same as wind farms, too.
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    Nimbies!
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    With the present concerns about climate change and fossil fuel depletion we should be substantially reducing the amount of fossil fuel used.

    Generating electricity from wind and solar energy instead of burning natural gas is one way to achieve this. I support a considerable expansion of both wind and solar.


    These renewables are not the complete answer, gas will still be needed at times of low wind and no sun, but better to burn gas for say 1,000 hours a year rather than continually.


    Much of our gas and oil is imported from or via unstable places, and imports are at risk of disruption in the event of political changes in such places.

    Scarce foreign currency is also expended on these imports. Better therefore to produce as much of our own energy as possible and to reduce imports as far as possible.


    I would have no objection to wind or solar farms near me.
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    I would have no objection to wind or solar farms near me.


    I have some wind farms near to me, but they are out at sea and can not be heard at any time on land.


    Z.


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    There's a large solar farm on the other side if town to me I don't have any feelings towards it its just there. That said I wouldn't want one near me as they create lots of QRM to the HF bands they are a pain in the aerial socket!!
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    Kelly Marie Angel:

    There's a large solar farm on the other side if town to me I don't have any feelings towards it its just there. That said I wouldn't want one near me as they create lots of QRM to the HF bands they are a pain in the aerial socket!!


    I hadn't realised that. We live and learn.


    Z.


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    It is a general problem of DC to AC inversion of the kind that chops the DC. The square edges in effect create a spectrum that looks like a comb of high frequency lines extending over many MHz. Ideally this would be rounded off, with LC filters,  and the raw waveform pre-filters, routed in a way that did not create accidental antennas.

    It does not have to be a problem, but the pressures of  "value engineering" means that filtering and RF decoupling only just meets the legal requirements, and that is nothing like enough to protect a small signal service. Radio hams operate much closer to the limit of the noise floor than broadcast and commercial communications - getting the ultimate range for lowest power is something of a competition.

    As such solar farms and windfarms are particularly bad, as they are throwing many KA around the place, but I fear the problem will spread, with more DNOs  fitting DC bus links between phases and between substations to prop up the LV network (so far I am aware of trials in  London, but not yet more generally.

    The idea is that  a lightly loaded substation can be rectified to create a DC, and then that used to support another phase or shipped to another substation to be re-inverted there.

    It need not be an EMC problem, but I fear the commercial pressures mean it will be.


    Mike.

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    Kelly Marie Angel:

    There's a large solar farm on the other side if town to me I don't have any feelings towards it its just there. That said I wouldn't want one near me as they create lots of QRM to the HF bands they are a pain in the aerial socket!!


    I know about 3/8 of sod all about this sort of stuff, but it is interesting to note that the nearest solar farm to where I am sitting is immediately adjacent to HMS Collingwood, which is where the weapons engineers are trained. If there were any interference, I think that it would not have been tolerated for very long.


    Back to the OP, if these "farms" are on flat land, they are not capable of being an eyesore except to the immediate neighbours. If on hilly land, why are they any worse than glasshouses?


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    adjacent to HMS Collingwood, which is where the weapons engineers are trained. If there were any interference, I think that it would not have been tolerated for very long.

    I would hope that weapon systems were pretty immune to a bit of civilian EMI - otherwise it would make it all too easy for the opposition to disrupt things.

       - Andy.
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    Actually some MOD sites are far worse sources of RFI than would be allowed in a commercial setting....


    As far as I know Collingwood is not a listening site, and weapons themselves would not be bothered by a couple of hundred volts per metre, compared to  commercial spec of perhaps 3 V/m (depends a lot on frequency and nature of application). However, radio comms can be  troubled by field strengths of a few microvolts per metre on the wrong frequency.

    Mike.

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