Grasses may fill in beneath growing number of solar panels

[OKIsItJustMe]

http://www.denverpost.com/business/ci_15043020

Grasses may fill in beneath growing number of solar panels

By Mark Jaffe
The Denver Post
Posted: 05/08/2010 01:00:00 AM MDT

The bare ground beneath solar panels near Boulder has been planted with grasses and mulched in a test to soften the appearance, restore native habitat and protect soil from erosion. (Reza A. Marvashti, The Denver Post)

The land beneath an 8-acre solar array near Boulder is bare, but by summer's end it may be covered with wild grasses — offering a way to soften the environmental impacts of large-scale solar farms across the West.

"These facilities can take up a lot of land and tend to scrape the ground clean," said Brenda Beatty, a senior biologist at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory.

With at least 26 large-scale solar projects under development in the West — with the largest proposals covering as much as 6,000 acres — there is growing concern among some biologists and environmentalists.

...

As part of a three-year study by Beatty, 48 test plots have been planted under the solar panels at the Boulder array — which supplies 1 megawatt of power to NREL's National Wind Technology Center. The facility is operated by SunEdison, a subsidiary of MEMC Electronic Materials Inc.

...

[demigoddess]

1. Good, plant grass or plant clover or some other ground cover. I guess these

guys need some guidance on these things. Also plant some trees around the edges for wind protection. Didn't these idiots learn anything from the Dust Bowl years???

[Froward69]

2. The shade provided

should help to retain enough moisture for grass growth.

[OnlinePoker]

3. But will the panels above block the rainfall so that the only place the grass will grow...

...is along the leading edge of the panel stands where the water drips to the ground? I would think it would get quite parched directly under the panels.

[XemaSab]

4. That's a bad idea

First of all, without care the "grasses" will all be non-native weeds, and secondly, those weeds are prone to catching fire. I can't imagine that fires would be good for the panels.

[Teka]

5. Or the environment when they catch on fire

Not thinking, are they?

[NNadir]

6. And when those weeds catch fire, the solar panels with their mixture of toxic metals and plastics...

are going to make for a fun incident.