“Wanting to rent
your land to place solar panels.”
It came in the
mail, a slick pamphlet like a lot of junk mail.
I glanced at it and started to toss it in the recycle bin. This wasn’t the first offer I have had from
folks wanting to rent land for a solar farm.
The solar panel
people follow the wind generator people because the wind generator companies
have done the power line work, erecting substations and making connections to
the main grid. I stayed my hand and took
a second look, not so much because I was thinking of surrounding myself with
solar panels, to fill in the gaps between windmills.
It was an idea
that has been hatching in my brain for about a year. I’m not sure what the original stimulus
was. For years, I have thought that
global warming could be caused in part by all the black top we have installed
over the years.
Think of all the
parking lots in shopping centers and sports complexes and college campuses and
I don’t know what all. That pavement
absorbs, retains, and radiates a lot of heat on a summer day. Imagine walking barefoot across the parking
lot at 2 p.m. in July.
Add a few
automobiles, glass cages with the windows tightly shut to keep out the dishonest
and the homeless. Inside the cars, the
temperature may exceed 150 degrees. All
that heat gets released into the atmosphere.
Another stimulus for my idea,
perhaps, can be found east of Ft. Lupton, a route I occasionally take. A forty-acre field with gently rolling slopes
has been converted to row upon row of solar panels.
The idea reached
full fruition on our trip to Tucson in January.
The parking lot at the Tucson airport has a covered parking lot. I don’t remember if we paid a parking fee for
using the airport lot. If the lot were
in DIA, you would pay a premium for covered parking.
The cover is made
up of solar panels, which generate some electricity while preventing your car
from reaching convection oven temperatures.
The pamphlet
listed a website (http://innovativesolarfarms.com/solar-farm-land-lease-programs/). I found the email reply address.
No, you
can NOT lease my land, but I do have a suggestion for you.
Go to the cities and cover parking lots with
solar panels. You would be much closer to the end user of the power, you
would not be taking food-growing land out of production, you would be doing the
patrons of the stores a great favor by protecting their automobiles from weather.
You would reduce global
warming quite a bit by shielding heat-absorbing blacktop and miniature greenhouses
(automobiles) from the sun's rays with sun-shading solar panels.
A contract with a
Wal-Mart or Safeway, or Krueger’s would keep you busy for years.
If you are not
already familiar with it, check out the Tucson airport parking lot with its
solar panels.
Good luck.
Kerplunk! I could hear my email hitting the trash can
minutes after I pushed “send.” When I
got no reply, I looked closer at the website.
They were offering $500-$700 per year for thirty years.
Hmmm! I sent another email some days later. “I’ve changed my mind. I might be interested in leasing my land for
a solar farm.”
In a matter of two
or three hours, I got a phone call. The
guy introduced himself and got right to the point. “We have to have a minimum of 160 acres of
fairly level ground as our first requirement.”
At the moment of
the phone call, I was reading a story to grandson, getting him close to taking
a nap. I did not want to prolong the
conversation. I wasn’t thinking of
converting farmland to solar panels. I
was thinking of some CRP ground that will come out of contract in a few years.
So I replied 100
acres is the biggest lot I had available.
He was serious about his minimum requirement. He closed the conversation and was gone. I finished reading the story and grandson was
gone.
The seed planted
didn’t sprout. I’m still looking for a
solar company to take on Wal-Mart parking lots.
It still seems like a good idea.
There is probably some good reason why it isn’t feasible. Surely, I’m not the only one to think of it.
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