While this looks promising, I’m not sure I like the idea of introducing more plastic into our waterways. Does anyone know if our filteration systems are capable of filtering out micro/nanoplastics?
They also make a valid point that people will not accept the loss of these areas for recreation, or any effect the loss of sunlight will have on the ecology of the lake.
I can really only see it being accepted on purely artificial lakes, such as wastewater treatment or water reservoirs.
I mean, no boat/bootie uses up amy more than a tiny fraction of a percentage of a lake. Put them outside of designated lanes, probably within 200m of shore where boats should avoid and go slow anyway and are we really losing anything? I mean, would swimmers care if they can’t use 5% of a beach?
It would depend what the reduced sunlight does to fish stocks etc.
On a hydro lake, you wouldn’t want them too close to shore, or else it would end up aground at low lake levels.
I applaud the initiative in finding new solutions to the problem of power generation and power cost to consumers. However, surely there are better locations. Wind farms on the many hills around the motu, solar farms on the ocean, wave power, etc.
There’s also a lot of land that has very little economic value in terms of agricultural potential, where solar would be a very good use of the land.
Land like that typically isn’t very flat though.
I agree with your general point but I just want to add a caveat
land that has very little economic value in terms of agricultural potential
Native environment is also a good use of land.
I think globally we’re just at the “and find out” stage of realizing that actually, there is a value in the earth being its natural self, and an economic price to pay if not enough of it is.
Yes very true. One reason I like wind farms, is they tend to be most profitable in areas where land is useful for little outside of forestry.
double
Except that’s not how electrical grids work. If you want to double capacity, you need to double the base capacity, not the peak capacity.
Seems like harvesting the tides and waves would be a better option.
deleted by creator
