There is currently a situation in California’s Central Valley where the farmers are hoping to convert their failed agricultural lands into vast solar farms. The farms are failing because there isn’t enough water supply in the State to support all of the farms. The causes of these failures are many fold, but in a very simplified view they farmers planted beyond the ability of the environment to provide a sustained supply of water. They used up the ancient aquifers because instead of planting what the environment can support in a “low water year” they instead planting for the high water years and used the water stored in non-refilling aquifers to supplement the sustainable supply. Thus they over-planted with respect to their water resources, ruining the fertility of vast stretches of land in the process.

Now that it has become obvious that they destroyed their land, used up the aquifers, and want (they say need, but I say want) more water than will ever be available they are turning instead to farming the sun. However, if they are going to use these failed farms for solar powered electrical generation facilities they will need a means to ship that power to the users. The land being considered for conversion to solar energy is far from the users. There are not nearly enough power lines to carry the electricity, therefore there is a big push to have many more large power lines installed across California. If this is anything like the past, the goal is to have the State subsidize the cost of installation of these lines, including implementing eminent domain policies because new power lines are so unpopular in the State. The solar farms, nor the utilities are likely to pick up the costs for these transmission facilities, they will either be included in the overall rates that users pay, or be subsidized by the State through higher taxes – actually both approaches will be used. It is a situation where the farmers want to sell a new product (electricity) but can’t because a lack of infrastructure. They are therefor asking the State to provide that needed infrastructure so they can sell their not yet produced product. It is similar to what they originally did with respect to the water that they use. They had lots of unused (and almost free) land that they wanted to produce crops on, but there wasn’t any water. So they convinced the State (and Federal government) to provide them water so they could turn their worthless land into incredible profits. That worked for a little while, but they got so greedy that they destroyed the value of that gift, so are now turning to another scheme to once again turn there worthless land into another profit center funded by government and rate payers.

This is the same old BS that always comes with the utilities and powerful corporations being in charge of “big planning” to protect their monopoly.  It is true, if the utilities are going to continue to maintain their monopoly with controlling the sources of power production, and if they intend to locate it hundreds of miles from where it is needed, and if they continue to follow the plan of make more power instead of investing in efficiency, and if they want to make sure the users keep having to pay as much as they can afford rather than what is should be – then it is true.

The thing is that the “old” model of providing power, using power and operating the grid is out of date and will no longer work.  We don’t need more of the same, we need an entirely new approach. Of course wherever we (society) changes to an entirely new approach the financial winners and loses change and that causes all sorts of uproar from those that will become the losers.  The way for this to work is for the potential losers to find ways to change horses so that they too continue to be winners – but corporate and government inertia is great.

A better, and more sustainable solution is for the users to vastly reduce their use through available and affordable improvements to efficiency, and providing the bulk of their energy needs with on-site (or near by) solar energy production. The savings for the efficiency improvements go directly to those investing in the improvements, the 50% (or more) energy loses attributable to electrical transmission through long power lines are avoided, the grid becomes much more resilient and dependable, and the price of electricity becomes truly insignificant in most instances (especially those ten million of houses that the farmers say their solar farms can supply). If we take those ten million houses off of the grid by the use of local solar production and there is no need to provide them with additional power. The amazing part about this is that we have all of the technology we need to do this, and it can be done at an upfront, installation cost that is less than not doing it. There are well known means of saving money in the beginning that will result in huge savings over time in the future. It isn’t a case of having to wait for the “payback time” in order to achieve a savings, there is no payback time because there is no initial cost (Sort of, there is obviously an initial cost but it is much less than doing it the way were are currently doing it. The savings is in NOT doing what is being done.)

As an aside, it should be understood that the regulated utilities are not allowed to make any profit from the sale of electricity. They are mandated to sell the electricity for exactly the amount that they pay for it. There profits come from all of the other changes on the electric bill – the cost of the “grid” related to building and maintaining the physical structure to move the power that they purchase elsewhere to the customer. Of course, most of the utilities have “sister” corporations that produce the power, which is allowed to make profits on the production of electricity. In the case of large solar farms located on all of those hundreds of thousands of acres of failed agricultural land in most cases the land owners will lease their land to the owners of the solar arrays, who then will sell power to the utilities, who will then transmit and distribute the power to their customers. Spanish companies are very big in owning the large scale solar production in the United States. I assume China and other countries will also find this a great investment opportunity.