Solar Farms

[hurleyjd]

If Edwin Drake had not drilled the first oil well in Pennsylvania we would still be depended on whale oil and coal oil. We need to embrace and advocate for energy production that is safe and healthy. After all the fracking process that was developed bu Miitchell Energy was developed with a government grant.

 

[cowgirl8]

Its really close to some of our land.....fingers crossed we hear from them.. The land is perfect too...wide and flat

 

[TexasBred]

If Edwin Drake had not drilled the first oil well in Pennsylvania we would still be depended on whale oil and coal oil. We need to embrace and advocate for energy production that is safe and healthy. After all the fracking process that was developed bu Miitchell Energy was developed with a government grant.

Wrong again Hurley. You must have listened to former president Obama taking credit. First well was fracked experimentally almost a hundred years ago. First widely used in the Barnett Shale Formation by Mitchell Energy who really did develop and fine tune it.

 

[hurleyjd]

If Edwin Drake had not drilled the first oil well in Pennsylvania we would still be depended on whale oil and coal oil. We need to embrace and advocate for energy production that is safe and healthy. After all the fracking process that was developed bu Miitchell Energy was developed with a government grant.

Wrong again Hurley. You must have listened to former president Obama taking credit. First well was fracked experimentally almost a hundred years ago. First widely used in the Barnett Shale Formation by Mitchell Energy who really did develop and fine tune it.

https://www.npr.org/2016/09/27/495671385/how-an-engineers-desperate-experiment-created-fracking

https://www.nytimes.com/news/the-lives-they-lived/2013/12/21/george-mitchell/

https://aoghs.org/technology/hydraulic-fracturing/

https://ivn.us/2012/05/27/the-governments-role-in-the-development-of-fracking/
Lot of reading here TB it might overwhelm your Trump sized brain.

 

[Caustic Burno]

I know next to nothing about solar power but was curious about some of the numbers posted here so I did some internet searching. I am assuming numbers vary a lot by location, but it seems technology is improving in regards to output per acre. It seems as of 2 years ago, the most common number was 4 acres per MW. I did see one report that said 2.5 acres, but I didn't find any other reports to back that up. IF the 4 acre number is accurate that would mean an output of 1500 MW on a 6000 acre parcel.

It varies, depending on the number of days of full sun, versus days of cloudiness. Today's solar panels can produce power even on cloudy days, but it won't be to full capacity.

Most solar farms are restricted not by how much the total farm can produce, but by how much spare capacity there is on the transmission lines nearby.

This one, (there will actually be 3 different farms in the immediate area) has spare capacity of about 1800 MW in the transmission lines. They are feeding DFW.

Invenergy approached Prairiland ISD last week with a plan to build a 300- to 500-megawatt solar farm on 6,500 leased acres near Cunningham in southeastern Lamar County. Cost of the Samson Solar Energy Center is between $350 million to $450 million.

In August, the district gave preliminary approval to German-based Alpin Sun to build a 250-megawatt farm on 1,867 acres, also near Cunningham. With a cost of $240 million, the Impact Solar project has a value limitation agreement with Prairiland ISD awaiting approval with the Texas Comptroller's Office.

Alpin Sun also plans a 100-megawatt solar farm on 968 acres in Fannin County, according to the firm's value limitation application, available online with the Texas Comptroller's Office. The Impact Solar farm comes with a cost of $96 million.

Literally smoke and mirrors.

 

[cowgirl8]

I'm hearing reports of protesters on their way..lol
My middle daughter is a police officer. She took a job as a night security on a pipeline. Not to keep people out, but to keep them in the trees..lol….
From what I hear, the protesters wont be people from this area, but from another state. Makes no sense....

 

[cowgirl8]

Seeing service trucks around now. They are driving polls into the ground, doing testing is what I've heard. Rumors have it, over 6000 acres are being put into the solar farm...That's a lot of land going into this...

 

[Lucky]

The paper had an article the other day that said both RiverCrest ISD and Prarieland ISD will approve Solar sites. One is 6,000 acres other is 4,000-6,000 acres. The one between Bogata and Rugby South of 271 will double Red River Countys tax base if approved. There was no completion date stated for either plant though. Maybe they'll get enough money to fix my road out of the deal, seriously doubt it though.

 

[cowgirl8]

We're in..... contract signed. Pretty excited. Hoped it would come our way and they did. Taking land that is either too wet or too dry and not attached to the larger part of our ranch. Its what I called the 500 acres, but we added some land a few years ago that made it 610 or something like that. They are taking all of it. We have to decide if we want to keep cattle for our income on the rest of the ranch, this place handles around 70 and some hay taken off it, but about 1/5th of it is pines. I say RETIRE!!! and to keep our ag exempt use the rest for hay and either let someone else cut it, or do it ourselves.. but i'm voting RETIRE! Of course I wont count my eggs before they hatch because it could all go down the tubes, but I can dream...
Its going to be big. Started out small, but seems to be growing by the day. I'm seeing more and more workers out here surveying.... whats great is the county will get more tax money, but, I doubt we'll get more people. So maybe RRC will go from being the poorest to much better. And yes, I hope it goes into the roads. Been hearing the lake is back on the books again...……... We did just take a road trip to New Mexico and now our roads don't seem too bad....

 

[Stocker Steve]

A grass farm is a solar farm with green collectors. :nod:

 

[cowgirl8]

We were disappointed that you cant keep your ag exempt with farming the sun... erk…. You'd think you would...its farming

 

[bird dog]

How is the increase in property taxes handled? Don't they pay the taxes as part of the lease?

 

[cowgirl8]

How is the increase in property taxes handled? Don't they pay the taxes as part of the lease?

Yes

 

[Texas Gal]

How is the increase in property taxes handled? Don't they pay the taxes as part of the lease?

Yes

Good thing they pay the taxes. We purchased some land last year that had been ag exempt forever. For some reason, when the tax bills were mailed the ag exemption had dropped off ( even though we had contacted the tax office). The bill was $7800 and change! When we contacted the tax office, they basically said my bad and sent a new tax bill to us.The new bill was $136.

 

[cowgirl8]

This thing just keeps getting bigger. Suppose to spread into another town Blossom.. That's pretty far from us. They plan to put up their own transmission lines now instead of using the abandoned ones already standing. People are coming out of the woodwork looking for land to buy or hoping it would come their way. We were told that once things get into motion, there will be thousands of workers flooding our county. They said there is not enough places to feed them close by. This got us thinking about building a food truck. Not that I want anymore work to do, but, might be fun for a short while...

 

[TexasBred]

This thing just keeps getting bigger. Suppose to spread into another town Blossom.. That's pretty far from us. They plan to put up their own transmission lines now instead of using the abandoned ones already standing. People are coming out of the woodwork looking for land to buy or hoping it would come their way. We were told that once things get into motion, there will be thousands of workers flooding our county. They said there is not enough places to feed them close by. This got us thinking about building a food truck. Not that I want anymore work to do, but, might be fun for a short while...

Drive out to the Permian Basin and look at the "Trailer Hoods" and you might get some idea of how it will be. Might be a good time to open up one. :shock:

 

[cowgirl8]

Update on the solar farm. I thought I was passing by ground zero with the farm that we'll be part of. But it wasn't. Its a different solar company. The one we're involved in will be 18,000 acres, the other 2000.. Its unimaginable to the size this thing is going to be. Most will be west of us and we'll almost never see any of it.. They are calling for people to open up a camping ground for the people needing places to live. I'm still thinking of making a food truck.

 

[greybeard]

Everything is relative i suppose..

Not an unimaginable amount of acreage for anyone that has spent any amount of time in the far west or even in west central Texas and certainly true up in the great plains.
18,000 acres is just over 28 sections or sq miles.. Houston covers
I've traveled all over Camp Pendleton Calif's 125,000 acres and Ft Hood Tx is nearly twice that size..
Roscoe wind farm alone covers over 100,000 acres and it's not the biggest in the country by any means.
The nearest real lake to me (L. Livingston) covers 83,000 surface acres.

The real test will be in seeing how many MWs/Hr vs BTUs/hr the solar farm produces.

 

[ccr]

18,000 acres is about 5 miles by 5 miles. sure seems like a waste of land. how can this be as efficient as a gas powered plant? natural gas is abundant.

land around here is $12,000 an acre. don't understand folks thinking $1,200 an acre is good for a lease for a solar farm. you won't be able to use it for 40 years? looks to me like would be better off selling.

don't really understand the hole concept of the solar power except in west texas type land. sorry just my 2 cents.

 

[cowgirl8]

18,000 acres is about 5 miles by 5 miles. sure seems like a waste of land. how can this be as efficient as a gas powered plant? natural gas is abundant.

land around here is $12,000 an acre. don't understand folks thinking $1,200 an acre is good for a lease for a solar farm. you won't be able to use it for 40 years? looks to me like would be better off selling.

don't really understand the hole concept of the solar power except in west texas type land. sorry just my 2 cents.

When we bought out place we paid 160 to 350 an acre. That was in the 90s.. Its gone up, 1700 is what our daughter just paid for some this year, that went right into solar panels. Not sure why land out here is cheap, well, back in the 90s it was. We have been making our living on cattle for over 40 years.. and I can tell you, solar panels will make you more than cattle any day. Once in panels, our son is going to start experimenting with sheep. He plans to buy weanlings and only keeping them for several months, or however long it takes to slaughter. I'm not a sheep expert in any means, only had one in my life and I hated it...lol... But they are willing to work with him. I have no interest in sheep, keeping sheep, nothing. In fact, once we get these panels going, we're going to put the rest of our land in trees. I don't want any animals.. I want to retire...