North Carolina Town That Defeated Solar Plan Talks Back (newsobserver.com)

mdsolar writes with news that city officials in Woodland, North Carolina have taken issue with being ridiculed by the internet and want to set the record straight. According to the article: "Usually what happens in Woodland stays in Woodland, a town 115 miles east of Raleigh with one Dollar General store and one restaurant. But news of the Northampton County hamlet's moratorium on solar farms blew up on social media over the weekend after a local paper quoted a resident complaining to the Town Council that solar farms would take away sunshine from nearby vegetation. Another resident warned that solar panels would suck up energy from the sun. As outlandish as those claims seem, town officials say the Internet got it wrong."

Comments

Just as I suspected...

[Mike Van Pelt]

Tendentious article in local paper generates an Internet and social media lynch mob that gets all the important facts wrong.

Re:Just as I suspected...

[Obfuscant]

What fact did the 'Net or Social Media get wrong, or can you even answer that question?

1. The town does not oppose solar farms, just one at that location.

2. The fourth solar farm to be built was not rejected because it would "soak up the sun".

Who could imagine, a small rural town might have a couple of people who don't understand solar power, and that those couple of people would be paraded in front of the world as representing every person in that town. I hope you don't live somewhere where you might find some ignorant people who are made into your town spokesmen by a media looking for web traffic and eyeballs.

some people think they're an eyesore

[Ionized]

I don't agree, but they are certainly entitled to their opinion, and if they want to block a FOURTH solar farm from being built around their two horse town, I really don't think we have any room to bitch.

How many solar farms does YOUR town have? less than 3 per 800 people, I imagine.

Re:Surrounded?

[cirby]

Because solar farms, while really cool-looking from the air, look like miles and miles of supporting hardware from ground level.

The plan is basically "turn a farm community into an island surrounded by several square miles of industrial plants." People move to the country to get away from such things, it's not surprising that they're resisting having their property values trashed because someone decides to take a bunch of government cash to build the darned things.

Claim it isn't the whole story but quotes true?

[JoshuaZ]

So they claim it isn't the whole story, which seems fair. North Carolina in general has been very good about solar, and they've installed a massive amount in the state (to the point where they are running into problems with lack of storage during peak sunlight). However, the primary backlash was not so directed at the town as much as that one had many different people in the town saying really stupid things. Let's not forget that one of them was a retired science teacher. From the original article that started it all: http://www.roanoke-chowannewsherald.com/2015/12/08/woodland-rejects-solar-farm/:

Jane Mann said she is a local native and is concerned about the plants that make the community beautiful. She is a retired Northampton science teacher and is concerned that photosynthesis, which depends upon sunlight, would not happen and would keep the plants from growing. She said she has observed areas near solar panels where the plants are brown and dead because they did not get enough sunlight. She also questioned the high number of cancer deaths in the area, saying no one could tell her that solar panels didn’t cause cancer."

It sounds to me like this backlash is mainly pretty deserved. Even if they had legitimate reasons to say no to this new solar, it is clear that those were not the reasons articulated by the people in question.

Solar Farms in Rural areas actually heat the area

[Tighe_L]

All those black or blue solar panels aren't 100% efficient, while they convert 1/5 of the sun's energy they absorb into electricity, the remaining 4/5 is emitted as heat. It nearly like taking those fields and paving them with asphalt, it is going to heat up the local area. Solar panels make sense on areas that are already black like a roof, but taking large undeveloped areas and installing panels you are just creating a large heat island. Let's not forget the reflections they make in latitudes further north where they are angled such that they reflect light into neighboring homes. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/new...

Re: Surrounded?

[ranton]

Farmers don't make real money for anyone but the owner and few select ag services business individuals.

You nothing about agriculture if that's what you think. Most farmers are very well off. Especially after the commodity prices of the last 8 or 10 years.

I come from a farming community in the Midwest (mostly corn, soybeans, and livestock). The only farmers who are well off in my home town are those who inherited land. Farmland is incredibly expensive. According to Iowa State University the cost of growing corn is $887 per acre in 2015. This comes to $4.79 per bushel @ 185 bushels per acre.

Of that cost, $37 goes to farmers (4%) and $312 goes towards cash rent or equivalent (35%). Seed, fertilizers, and other additives make up another $386 (44%).

It is painfully obvious the only people making money off farming are the land owners and seed/fertilizer/herbicide/etc providers. Just like the GP said.