Forests v. Solar
from cooling to heating
Twitty's Creek Solar, a 134-acre, 15-megawatt installation along
highway 59, is the first solar project operating in Charlotte County, Va.
Credit: Melissa Lyttle for the New York Times.
Water vapor is Earth's most abundant greenhouse gas. It is responsible for about half of Earth's greenhouse effect — the process that occurs when gases in Earth's atmosphere trap the Sun's heat.
Twitty's Creek Solar, a 134-acre, 15-megawatt installation along
highway 59, is the first solar project operating in Charlotte County, Va.
Credit: Melissa Lyttle for the New York Times.
Trees convert CO2 to O2 through photosynthesis, sequester the carbon, release water vapor, and seed clouds with bioaerosols. The sun's heat, in latent form, is carried by the water vapor up to where it is released when the vapor condenses to form clouds and rain. About half the heat escapes to space.
Twitty's Creek Solar, a 134-acre, 15-megawatt installation along
highway 59, is the first solar project operating in Charlotte County, Va.
Credit: Melissa Lyttle for the New York Times.
The forest cleared for the solar arrays is no longer cooling the Earth, no longer seeding the clouds, and no longer clearing the CO2 from the atmosphere via photosynthesis. The cooling effect of each tree (approx. 10 window air conditioners) has been replaced by solar panels. Only about 20% of the sun's energy is converted to electricity. The remainder heats the panels which become a ground-level heat source.
Twitty's Creek Solar, a 134-acre, 15-megawatt installation along
highway 59, is the first solar project operating in Charlotte County, Va.
Credit: Melissa Lyttle for the New York Times.
It will take the electricity from more than 10 solar panels to power the air conditioning to replace the cooling effect of a tree.