I just read an article about a proposed solar farm that was presented to the Saline County Commission (Saline County, Kansas). The Company, Shasta Power is an Oregon based power company that wants to come to Kansas, to build a 1,000 acre project on county owned land that has been designated by the individual who left the land to the county to be used for agricultural purposes. I have so many red flags from this article that dare not go into them all. However, I will share my thoughts on many.
First red flag is an Oregon power company coming to Kansas with no word on who would benefit by the power generated. Am I too presumptuous to think that no Kansas homes will benefit? The second flag is that the proposed size is not known but would be between 1,050 – 1,450 acres. That equates to about 2.26 sections of land at the largest proposed area.
I think what concerns me the most is that they want all this land for 30-35 years and this project would only generate 150 megawatts that would power only about 3,800 homes! Where is the efficiency in that? Oh sure let’s take out two and a quarter sections of land to provide power to 3,800 homes! I do not see this as a good use of land when crops on that land could provide. I did a little figuring and that 1,450 acres of land can produce about 2,738,000 loaves of bread per year! Multiply that by 35 years and that is over 95 MILLION loaves of bread. How many households would those loaves feed?
The above figuring was based on an article I read from this site. My math might be a little off but not by much. https://www.commongrainalliance.org/growing-grain/acres-loaf-bread
A huge flag is that this project will only have about 300 TEMPORARY jobs. I thought renewable energy was supposed to be big in permanent jobs. But worst yet they have plans to decommission the WHOLE thing in 30-35 years! What is renewable about that?
The last flag I will comment on is that this proposal is to use land that was given to the county for agricultural use. While this project is a ‘solar farm’ it by no means grows product for consumption, which in my training in animal science means some type of food. Energy or rather energy from the sun is only a component of photosynthesis and the carbon cycle to produce either plant or animal protein. This (solar farm) is NO FARMING/AGRICULTURE!
Now the biggest question I have is: WHY ARE OTHER COUNTIES IN KANSAS NOT ALLOWING SOLAR FARMS IN THEIR COUNTIES? There is a reason and you should QUESTION EVERYTHING!
https://salinapost.com/posts/e74744c0-255e-453b-83b9-51557137da81
Educated Cowpuncher 