SOLAR EXPLORER

I’m an advocate for solar power. We’ve had solar on our home for 8 years now, and I’m satisfied so far. From a cost perspective, I’d say it’s been a wash versus before we went that route. I’d hoped for at least that much. We leased our system, not wanting to fork out money whenever repairs might be needed down the road. Research shows that can be costly.

Driving around Lake Havasu City, I’m always checking out rooftops and spot a lot of solar panels on commercial and residential structures. At first, they seemed out of place, but I now accept the shiny, squared-off areas without problem. Seeing them in quantity on huge expanses of land is still taking some getting used to. There’s a large solar farm planned between here and Kingman—with some folks up in arms over what it might do to the environment. I’m not one of those protestors.

Driving to Las Vegas, going through Eldorado Valley on US95, there are acres and acres of solar that appear from a distance to be a large lake. It isn’t until you get closer, that the shimmering mirage becomes a manmade complexity of enormous proportion.

I’ve driven by it numerous times always wanting to get “up close and personal” with what I observed. Another definition for my curiosity is “snoop.” Finding a paved road that went almost to the foothills, I decided to do some exploring from within the air-conditioned confines of a Jeep. The biggest reason for doing so was to see if outside temperature increased when surrounded by these heat-soaking obstacles. An inside the vehicle temperature gauge would hopefully tell me that.

Turning off US95 on this unnamed road, I saw neither Keep Out nor No Trespassing signs regarding the pavement, yet there were numerous warnings on the bordering fence. After I write this, and it’s published, I’m sure that’ll change rather quickly. A sign did mention it being a Desert tortoise protected area and to slow down and watch for them. Taking a picture of that decaying sign, I couldn’t help but chuckle. The peeling paint made it appear a cowboy was riding one of the turtles. At first, I thought it’d been deliberately made that way.

Getting out and walking around, I immediately got an eerie feeling. Expecting to hear a buzzing sound like the solar inverter fans do on our home, all was quiet. Being the only human there, I didn’t see a turtle, bird, ant, bug, or anything with a pulse. Perhaps it was siesta time for them? I didn’t hang around to find out because it was 110 degrees. Not knowing if my car phone worked, I made an early exit, with plans to come back another day.

Heading onto the main highway, I watched my temperature gauge go down a good 10 degrees, yet can’t be totally sure leaving the panels behind made things do so. I tend to believe it was, but there are more scientific ways to prove this over my simplistic method. I’d love to do more testing but also don’t want to be arrested at the same time.

If Desert turtles are in that immediate vicinity, I’d bet they’ve long since packed up their shells and moved to a cooler area. The extra heat generated around them, would undoubtedly evaporate water much faster than before the solar farm was built.

Driving back home, with “Knights in White Satin” by the Moody Blues playing on Sirius got me to thinking. If more homes in Arizona, Nevada, Utah, California, and New Mexico had solar on their roofs, perhaps there’d be no need for humongous solar installations. That’s purely an opinion of mine, and for the record, I have no affiliation with solar businesses.

Joleen and I are totally satisfied with our system. The only thing I’d do differently, is go against the salesman’s recommendation, adding more panels at the start for our newly installed garage AC units. Being a hot rod guy and believing that you can never have enough horsepower, more kilowatt-hours of electricity is also a good thing for sure!