New House Thermal

Question: Does the previous question add anything to the discussion on solar farms creating thermals? There has to be a forum out there that is better suited for environmental debates. Let's focus on soaring.

I routinely fly high over the Florida Power & Light solar farm near the northeast side of Lake Okeechobee. Occasionally, there are pronounced markers indicating a thermal is cooking off the panels. It's a smaller solar farm, so I'm really eager to see what the mega-solar farm does for us.

Paul A.

On Tuesday, June 27, 2017 at 11:50:59 AM UTC-7, Paul Agnew wrote:
Question: Does the previous question add anything to the discussion on solar farms creating thermals? There has to be a forum out there that is better suited for environmental debates. Let's focus on soaring.

I routinely fly high over the Florida Power & Light solar farm near the northeast side of Lake Okeechobee. Occasionally, there are pronounced markers indicating a thermal is cooking off the panels. It's a smaller solar farm, so I'm really eager to see what the mega-solar farm does for us.

Paul A.

I've flown over the (boiler on a stick) solar plants near Primm, NV and haven't found they produce much lift. Haven't seen a cloud over them either.
But have thermaled over the cooling tower of the Pottstown, PA nuclear power plant. First watched a dirigible fly over the towers... The deck angle went to 45 degrees up, leveled out, 45 down, leveled out. And there was a cloud. All good indicators.
But these days the latter type have security people who think "shoot first, ask questions later" (there was an article about it in Soaring) so they aren't as useful for low saves as they used to be.
I live and fly near many Gigawatts of PV panels. Believe one site is a good thermal source, but it wasn't bad before the plant went in.
You'd think PV panels should be like an asphalt parking lot (car park), but the panels are not mounted on the ground. I know the roof of my house is cooler under the panels than the unprotected roof. Wonder if the cooler air underneath panels being brought into the thermal weakens it?
Perhaps they're better lift sources in the evening?
Jim

Ah, the good old days when you could legally fly over French
Nuclear power stations; now they were really good reliable
thermal sources! Nowadays rumour has it that some sites have
ground-to-air missiles as part of their defence; they all have
exclusion zones.
The reason why so little coal is burned in France is that 85+%
of French power is nuclear (that's what it says on my electricity
bill). The only reason that some power is solar/wind generated
is that the French do not want to be seen as the most non-
Green country in Europe. France has the capability to be 100%
nuclear, it just doesn't want to be as not everyone is convinced
that Nuclear is Green/Renewable.

I will try the Vinon solar array, never noticed it to be good or
reliable but that's probably just my crap thermal technique.
When ETA gets going there might be a huge exclusion zone
down there to spoil the fun.

And here's yet another reason to be anti-nuclear power: being
mostly on rivers I'd guess they are near impossible to defend
against terrorists.