Solar power farm coming to Disney

GoofGoof

GoofGoof

Premium Member
DisneyCane said:
The one out in the Mojave desert just on the California side of the CA/NV line is a sight to see when flying into/out of Vegas some times. Granted, that solar/thermal design is apparently not all that great and it fries birds that come to eat the insects that get attracted by the light beams. However, just from a "that was cool to see" standpoint, the brightness on the top of the towers is impressive!
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Just a few thousand birds a year. That doesn’t count the roadrunners eaten by coyotes along the perimeter fence. They were required to put in a fence around the perimeter of the facility to keep dessert tortoises out but that same fence prevents the road runners from escaping coyotes (right out of Looney Tunes). They tried putting openings higher up on the fence which were too high for the tortoises to reach but low enough for the roadrunner to get through. It’s better than it was, but still not perfect.
 
Phil12

Phil12

Well-Known Member
GoofGoof said:
Just a few thousand birds a year. That doesn’t count the roadrunners eaten by coyotes along the perimeter fence. They were required to put in a fence around the perimeter of the facility to keep dessert tortoises out but that same fence prevents the road runners from escaping coyotes (right out of Looney Tunes). They tried putting openings higher up on the fence which were too high for the tortoises to reach but low enough for the roadrunner to get through. It’s better than it was, but still not perfect.
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They could have easily fixed that problem by using ACME portable hole paint. Only roadrunners can pass through:
 
MisterPenguin

MisterPenguin

President of Animal Kingdom
Premium Member
S

seascape

Well-Known Member
GoofGoof said:
Just a few thousand birds a year. That doesn’t count the roadrunners eaten by coyotes along the perimeter fence. They were required to put in a fence around the perimeter of the facility to keep dessert tortoises out but that same fence prevents the road runners from escaping coyotes (right out of Looney Tunes). They tried putting openings higher up on the fence which were too high for the tortoises to reach but low enough for the roadrunner to get through. It’s better than it was, but still not perfect.
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Another example of the harm clean wonderful solar can cause. Plus think of this, 270 acres of solar panels to run 2 parks. That removes over 400 acres of natural trees and plants. Does anyone actually believes that is being environmental? I am not trying to say Disney is wrong in this but please don't tell me that it does not have a real environmental impact because it does. I agree with others that Disney should cover all the parking lots with solar. At least they would not be harming more acres but the cost would be much higher if done by building a roof over the parking lots first.
 
D

DisneyCane

Well-Known Member
seascape said:
Another example of the harm clean wonderful solar can cause. Plus think of this, 270 acres of solar panels to run 2 parks. That removes over 400 acres of natural trees and plants. Does anyone actually believes that is being environmental? I am not trying to say Disney is wrong in this but please don't tell me that it does not have a real environmental impact because it does. I agree with others that Disney should cover all the parking lots with solar. At least they would not be harming more acres but the cost would be much higher if done by building a roof over the parking lots first.
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Also, think about how low density the square footage of buildings is in those 2 parks. That's the big problem with solar energy. It takes a ridiculous amount of area of panels relative to the area of buildings that it is providing power for. Until the efficiency of the panels can be significantly improved, solar should be relegated to rooftop and over parking lot type installations.

Wind turbines are hideous but at least they only take up a very small footprint in the landscape they are ruining with ugliness. You can have a wind farm and an actual farm coexist on the same land. Not possible with solar.
 
GlacierGlacier

GlacierGlacier

Well-Known Member
DisneyCane said:
Also, think about how low density the square footage of buildings is in those 2 parks. That's the big problem with solar energy. It takes a ridiculous amount of area of panels relative to the area of buildings that it is providing power for. Until the efficiency of the panels can be significantly improved, solar should be relegated to rooftop and over parking lot type installations.

Wind turbines are hideous but at least they only take up a very small footprint in the landscape they are ruining with ugliness. You can have a wind farm and an actual farm coexist on the same land. Not possible with solar.
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The parks many not be very dense, but they CHEW through power. Attractions (especially launch coasters, tower of terror, and others with large moving components) require a ton of energy to run.

As such, the apparent density is worse compared to the land the solar takes up.

If you compared it to the energy consumption of a normal density suburb, I'm sure you'd see much better return on your land investment.
 
D

DisneyCane

Well-Known Member
GlacierGlacier said:
The parks many not be very dense, but they CHEW through power. Attractions (especially launch coasters, tower of terror, and others with large moving components) require a ton of energy to run.

As such, the apparent density is worse compared to the land the solar takes up.

If you compared it to the energy consumption of a normal density suburb, I'm sure you'd see much better return on your land investment.
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While true, the land can't be simultaneously used for anything else, whether it be conservation land or farmland or developed land. To generate all of the electricity for the state of Florida (if you had storage for nights and cloudy days) would probably take around 700,000 acres. That's about half the acreage of Everglades National Park. That's a lot of land to dedicate to solar panels.

It would make MUCH more sense to encourage rooftop and parking lot coverage solar. In both cases, there is no downside from a land use perspective. Roofs are just there and parking lots would benefit from the shade produced.

The most efficient solar panels are about 22% efficient. If that could be doubled, it would make solar much more practical from a land use perspective.
 
Monorail_Red_77

Monorail_Red_77

Well-Known Member
DisneyCane said:
While true, the land can't be simultaneously used for anything else, whether it be conservation land or farmland or developed land. To generate all of the electricity for the state of Florida (if you had storage for nights and cloudy days) would probably take around 700,000 acres. That's about half the acreage of Everglades National Park. That's a lot of land to dedicate to solar panels.

It would make MUCH more sense to encourage rooftop and parking lot coverage solar. In both cases, there is no downside from a land use perspective. Roofs are just there and parking lots would benefit from the shade produced.

The most efficient solar panels are about 22% efficient. If that could be doubled, it would make solar much more practical from a land use perspective.
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At least in this specific case they could have built the solar arrays over top of the water percolation ponds. They already cleared that land for the ponds. These ponds take the reclaimed water from WDW via RCID and percolate it back down into the ground. there is a large array of these ponds around 429 in Disney's extreme western property around Flamingo Crossings, etc. Though I'm sure that would be the cheapest route, it would have double the benefit of the original tree removal in this case.
 
W

WDW Monorail

Well-Known Member
Monorail_Red_77 said:
At least in this specific case they could have built the solar arrays over top of the water percolation ponds. They already cleared that land for the ponds. These ponds take the reclaimed water from WDW via RCID and percolate it back down into the ground. there is a large array of these ponds around 429 in Disney's extreme western property around Flamingo Crossings, etc. Though I'm sure that would be the cheapest route, it would have double the benefit of the original tree removal in this case.
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Sort of. Quite a bit of that land was cleared for the perc ponds. All of the trees cleared for the new arrays were only planted about 25 years ago. Of course the entire area was wooded and possibly farmland? before the perc ponds were built. Infact the entire surrounding area was almost completely undeveloped until 429 was built in the early 2000s.

I am genrerally not a fan of solar arrays since I’ve had to deal first hand with the issues that they cause. These do seem to be out of the eay of future development but the construction was all for PR of course.
 
ThatMouse

ThatMouse

Well-Known Member
Not to nitpick, but the solar farm producing 25% of Disney's energy seems in error given that 50MW farm is probably only doing about 18MW/h on average (rough guess) and Disney's power usage on average is 138MW/hr according to my Google search.
 
Monorail_Red_77

Monorail_Red_77

Well-Known Member
WDW Monorail said:
Sort of. Quite a bit of that land was cleared for the perc ponds. All of the trees cleared for the new arrays were only planted about 25 years ago. Of course the entire area was wooded and possibly farmland? before the perc ponds were built. Infact the entire surrounding area was almost completely undeveloped until 429 was built in the early 2000s.

I am genrerally not a fan of solar arrays since I’ve had to deal first hand with the issues that they cause. These do seem to be out of the eay of future development but the construction was all for PR of course.
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I've done Google Earth back to 1995 and the area was mostly Orange Groves, at least from what I can tell. I think at some point RCID re-forested it between then and now. Until like you said 429 and the rest came in.
 
Monorail_Red_77

Monorail_Red_77

Well-Known Member
Monorail_Red_77 said:
I've done Google Earth back to 1995 and the area was mostly Orange Groves, at least from what I can tell. I think at some point RCID re-forested it between then and now. Until like you said 429 and the rest came in.
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Feb 4, 1995. You can see some Perc Ponds to the north already at this point.

351567
 

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