[phil21]

> If people in rural areas NIMBY away solar power in these areas

This really needs to be talked about more. Solar becoming a religious political topic is tiring at best.

I've been looking for property for about half a year now, with the goal of a small house on a large (10 acres+) property with a "large" solar plant in the back. The number of places where this is basically impossible to do (politically) if you are not a giant corporate is the norm. I doubt there is a "solar friendly" county in the country.

People vehemently fight this stuff even if the only potential way you'd ever see the panels is via drone. It's honestly really depressing, and I've been curtailing my dreams due to it.

[natelegler]

Curious where is here for you? When you say solar plant you mean the plant itself or the panels?

What is done around here is panels go up, they have storage and anything extra gets fed back into the grid where they are paid out in the form of credit from the power company.

[phil21]

Here for the most part is semi-rural Minnnesota. Within 45 minutes of MSP airport.

I've also checked out (at a very surface level) areas surrounding Nashville and some places in Idaho.

By "plant" I'm talking mostly about non-rooftop solar. I would ideally like to put up about 200-500kw of panels and various mechanical outbuildings (including batteries) to service said install.

I expected the electric company interconnect problems. I did not expect the political pushback for things no one can see. Ideally I'd like to toss up a small wind turbine or two as well, but that's even more controversial these days.

It's not just legal - it's also I need to live in the area as well.

Edit: I also have a very low tolerance for "administrative bullshit" so take this all with a giant grain of salt. My family is rural and on the local town city council so I am especially exposed to current politics.

[natelegler]

If you are self funding this I find it very discouraging that there would be any sort of pushback about this. The areas you were looking at they were rural correct so there wasn't any sort of weird city restrictions on the land?

Only reason I am asking this is because around here we are seeing more and more solar panels going on rooftops plus there was a local grain elevator expansion that took place that they have 6 rows about 50 yards long of solar panels. Not too far away there is another local elevator with the same setup. As far as I know they do not house any storage ability and are simply hooked to the local power company.

I know we have looked into putting rooftops on a few buildings with our own onsite storage (we currently have our own propane back up generator for our livestock) so that way during weather events we can tap into that source to run a few of our things around the farm while our back up generator powers the house and there was zero pushback by anyone. It was personal property so not much they can do about it anyways.

Can you say more about the pushback? It's funny because one farmer in our group is setup for wide row cropping that sort of have alleyways where he has a housing contraption that holds a bunch of chickens and few pigs. It collects rainwater (he also supplements when needed) for the water source and it has a solar powered and stored system for self moving the housing. So think about it like this it goes down the alleyway that is often planted with various grazing grasses/legumes that are consumed by the animals and their "waste" is used for fertilizer for the following year. He will shift his row crops over onto that path the following year.

Sorry to ramble but always interested in issues that are being had in rural areas and how they can be solved by both parties.