Can other people use my property for their solar panels and get the same benifits?

Question

I live in Arizona and I have sun shine 360 days a year. So one of my main uses of energy is for airconditioning in the summer. So I have been planning to install an absorbtion cycle airconditioner.

I was thinking it is to bad people in other places cannot borrow some of my sunshine to help them out. Then it hit me that if they installed solar panels here it would just go on the grid to be used where ever it is needed. There panels would have a greater impact here where they would produce more power. It also just happens that the time there is the most solar energy here is when our electric rates go up and they would get even more money for there power.

So is there any thing that stops people from buying solar panels and installing them some place besides their residance if that other place is better for the purpose.

It seems that they would do a lot more to offset more carbon per dollar invested here then anywhere elese they could put them.

Answer 1

First, they would need to find someone who was willing to allow them to put panels on their property.  If you are interested in doing so, you could put an add in craig's list or something similar advertising that you were leasing space for people to install solar panels.

Here's the real downside.  If people were going to do it as an individual investment, they would have to get a meter and breaker box installed for their own bank of panels.  15 investors = 15 meters and breaker boxes.  

It could be that the electric line coming into your property couldn't even handle it all.

Then, who is going to maintain all these panels on your property.  It all could get pretty complicated.  You would probably be better off forming your own corporation to produce solar electricity to sell back to the grid and then soliciting people to buy shares.

Good luck

Answer 2

the only downside to that is the wiring.  copper wire even short lengths probide some resistance to electrical current.  over the distance depending on how far the added sunshine would be negated by the electical resistance of the wires.  There are better conductors than copper but most of them are too costly or rare, ex. gold or silver.

Answer 3

I think you're on sort of the right track.  If there are ever large scale solar farms in the US (other than the demonstration one in California), they will probably be in Arizona or Nevada.

Distributing the power is not free, however.  If you research with your power company how much they would pay you to be a wholesale generator, it would not be much - maybe two cents a kWh.  So the hypothetical person in California would pay, say 20 cents a kWh for their electricity, and get back 2 cents.  If they connected the panels directly to their system, they would offset 20 cents per kWh produced, assuming the sun was shining.  Granted, you have more sun in Arizona, but you'd have to have 10 times more sunny days than the target location to break even.