this post was submitted on 11 Aug 2023
4 points (100.0% liked)

Technology

59551 readers
3201 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.

Our Rules

  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related content.
  3. Be excellent to each another!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
4
Hops for beer flourish under solar panels. They're not the only crop thriving in the shade. (apnews.com)
submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
4 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Hops for beer flourish under solar panels. They're not the only crop thriving in the shade.::A farm in Bavaria is covering its hops with solar panels, providing electricity to 250 households and shading the plants from the increasingly scorching summer heat in the process.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Sounds good to me. My only real complaint about solar panels is the space they occupy. That complaint goes away if that space can also be used for crops. It's a win/win

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Solar panels are about 70x as efficient in getting energy when compared to corn ethanol. If all corn ethanol land (which is heavily irrigated, fertilized, and subsidized) were converted to solar, it would generate 3x the yearly electricity needs of the US.

30.2 million acres * 400 MWh/acre/year = 12,080 TWh/year. US energy use is about 4,000 TWh/year.

We are already taking cropland away for energy production, might as well make it way more efficient.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Do we use corn ethanol for any mass power production?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I think a lot goes into gasoline. Like a large percentage of our corn crops