I've always wondered why we don't combine wind and solar on the same land. The shadows from the turbines would be negligible and you could reuse the same electrical hookups and wiring.
In fact you could raise mushrooms under the solar panels and get triple use of the land.
Building the solar farm on the same location as the windfarm meant 20% could be saved from the construction costs of the solar farm, said Ivor Frischknecht, the chief executive of Arena.
Arena recently commissioned an investigation into the costs and benefits of hybrid solar and windfarms.
It found that besides huge cost savings – achieved mostly because the grid connection was able to be shared by the two generators – the two energy sources were often complementary, producing peak outputs at different times of both the day and year. That meant they combined to create a more reliable energy source.
“Co-location provides more continuous energy generation as windfarms tend to generate more energy overnight whilst solar only generates during the day,” Frischknecht said. “Gullen windfarm generates more power in winter and the new solar farm will generate more in summer.”
Sometimes, other times it's just wind farms are put in by companies who do wind farms and buy those rights, often from regular farmers, who continue to farm around the turbines. If you put in solar, then there's nothing left to farm. Though for grain crops solar is likely going to be more profitable on an acreage basis.
That's definitely part of it, but as solar panel prices continue to fall I suspect that the marginal cost of adding on solar panels to a wind installation will be low enough to justify it even in sub-optimal sunlight conditions. You've already got the land and the power transmission infrastructure taken care of, so it's just the additional cost of the panels. It could start making sense.
Exactly, anywhere plants grow you can put solar, Germany has one of the highest concentrations of solar but pretty dismal sun. Germany stopped building Neuclear Plants and didn't like buying Natural Gas from Russia, so they basically invented the modern Renewable industry.
I don't know about the US but here in the UK the windiest places are often not the sunniest. High, windy ground often means mountains pushing up air and moisture and creating clouds and things, and hilly, angled ground means panels may not be able to face the sun for much of the time.
In fact you could raise mushrooms under the solar panels and get triple use of the land.