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SkiingAway t1_jdazaav wrote

Reply to comment by PlentyCommission166 in Maine's Energy future by mainething

Because it's a pretty terrible idea when you've got a fuckton of empty land to work with, and virtually nowhere does it make sense unless you wanted to build a canopy anyway.

You're introducing large additional costs and complexity for no reason.

  • An overhead structure is a lot of additional....structure, that you didn't need vs just....putting the things on/near the ground.

  • $ to build.

  • $ to maintain - structure has to be maintained, crews working on the structure or panels now need to care about fall protection, traffic, access, you'll have lots of lane closures for structure work, and so on.

  • Increased safety risks

  • Your overhead structure has to be supported. Which means support posts. Line the interstate with phone poles every 50ft and you'll have a lot more crash deaths. (small) road signs + light posts are designed to breakaway because they're not supporting anything - can't do that with a structure.

  • Increased damage/failure rates

  • now you've got car crashes regularly damaging sections of your overhead structure. You see how fucked up guardrails get, imagine if each one of those crashes took out some big overhead structure that collapsed on top of the roadway and cars.

  • Road debris and pollution will collect on the panels and reduce efficiency.

  • If you're doing it anywhere populated, now any taller buildings/new development going up in the future are likely going to slash output on nearby sections of panels.

Etc.

If you want economically efficient power, it should look like this: Luz del Norte. Anything else is wasting money and efficiency for no reason. Especially not in a world where we can't produce enough solar panels to meet demand - which means they should be getting installed in the most optimal sites with the highest production efficiency first.

Or watch the video of construction (spanish but you don't really need the words): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1e9jj0d43w0

And compare the low complexity of doing that vs the complexity of trying to build vast overhead structures over roadways.

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