[vvarren]

> But he soon discovered that the shade from the towering panels above the soil actually helped the plants thrive. That intermittent shade also meant a lot less evaporation of coveted irrigation water. And in turn the evaporation actually helped keep the sun-baked solar panels cooler, making them more efficient.

Holy cow! Sounds like a win-win-win to me?

[lostdog]

They should still compare solar+farm, to covering the farm with canvas shade and having the solar panels elsewhere.

[prawn]

I think it would go without saying that for most crops, having more sun and better machinery access would be superior. But the farmer couldn't make it viable without the solar. Once they had solar, the produce was another positive factor.

[FPGAhacker]

What would that show?

[lostdog]

Similar to solar roadways, I would expect there are many reasons to separate the solar panels and the farm.

For example, maybe the solar panels restrict the types of tractors you can use. Maybe the fields sometimes create too much condensation and harm the solar panels. Maybe pesticides damage the solar panels. Maybe the solar panels sometimes block too much sun from reaching the plants. And so on...

[pgeorgi]

What's that, a gish gallop waiting to happen?

They're not arguing to have found a global maximum and everybody everywhere should stop what they're doing and adopt this scheme, this is just reporting that there are unexpected positive effects to the scheme they've tried.

[lostdog]

I'm just pointing out a common engineering principle: Trying to optimize two solutions together is often more difficult than trying to optimize them separately.

I hope I'm not coming across as overly negative here. If these things work together, that's very cool! But I would still be curious to see an overall comparison between doing them together vs doing them separately.

[adgjlsfhk1]

the solar roadways comparison would be if you put the solar panels under the pants.