Guest post by David Middleton

From the Department of All Things Ironic…

Following the Standard AGW Scientific Method, the observations are consistent with the model, despite being contradictory…

The Nature Science Report found that the Photocoltaic Heat Island (PVHI) effect was actually quite significant. A 1 MW PV plant routinely caused 3–4 °C of PVHI.

[…] The PVHI effect caused ambient temperature to regularly approach or be in excess of 4 °C warmer than the natural desert in the evenings, essentially doubling the temperature increase due to UHI measured here. This more significant warming under the PVHI than the UHI may be due to heat trapping of re-radiated sensible heat flux under PV arrays at night. Daytime differences from the natural ecosystem were similar between the PV installation and urban parking lot areas, with the exception of the Spring and Summer months, when the PVHI effect was significantly greater than UHI in the day. During these warm seasons, average midnight temperatures were 25.5 + 0.5 °C in the PV installation and 23.2 + 0.5 °C in the parking lot, while the nearby desert ecosystem was only 21.4 + 0.5 °C. The results presented here demonstrate that the PVHI effect is real and can significantly increase temperatures over PV power plant installations relative to nearby wildlands. […]

How many MW of solar PV have been installed in the past 8 years? How much total PVHI has this yielded? Will this have any effect on our government’s mindless obsession with solar power?

References

Barron-Gafford, G. A. et al. The Photovoltaic Heat Island Effect: Larger solar power plants increase local temperatures. Sci. Rep. 6, 35070; doi: 10.1038/srep35070 (2016).

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