Why Solar Panels Suck

Better than wind turbines but that’s not difficult, here is why solar panels suck

Solar factories are being rolled out across the UK at an unprecedented rate. Mad Miliband wants them over prime farmland and now even waterways are being targeted. None of this destruction of our food growing land and nature needs to happen. It is so far from green and is detached from environmentally friendly in every way. This article explains why solar factories suck and why we do not need them. The only thing that sucks more, are wind turbines.

Solar Factories Require Massive Amounts Of Land

We are seeing the destruction of our beautiful countryside in the name of more solar factories. Massive resistance is building across the country as local residents band together to stop the roll out of solar factories. Resistance is proving to be quite effective although some areas are facing challenges. We recently saw a massive win for County Durham who defeated a solar factory installation for good. Whilst residents in Norfolk are having a more difficult time with the block East Pye Solar group receiving multiple letters to home owners with solar factory companies trying to force the selling of their homes.

Shocking statistics reveal that about two third’s of the land used for solar factories is premium farmland but thats not enough to satisfy the climate cult!

To meet the UK’s climate cult net zero goals by 2035, the government aims to increase solar capacity to 45-57 gigawatts (GW) by 2030, up from 18.1 GW in March 2025, with an ambition of 70 GW by 2035. Currently, ground-mounted solar farms cover about 21,200 hectares (0.1% of UK land).

Estimates suggest that achieving 70 GW could require up to 0.3-0.4% of total UK land (approximately 69,700-97,580 hectares), with ground-mounted solar accounting for about 48 GW, needing roughly 69,700 hectares (172,200 acres). This assumes 2-4 acres per megawatt for new solar farms. Some sources estimate solar photovoltaic (PV) could occupy 0.29% of available land (about 70,700 hectares) or 0.51% of agricultural land to meet these targets.

The planned land use for solar factories depends on deployment scenarios and whether rooftop solar reduces the need for ground-mounted systems. These figures are not definitive, as grid capacity, planning permissions, and local resistance will influence actual land use.

They Are (Nearly) All Made In China

Without Chinas coal fired power plants the solar panel fantasy fades. Over 80% of all solar panels manufactured come from China. China overwhelmingly relies on hydrocarbons for their energy and continues to build 2 new coal fired power plants every week. Whilst the UK and the west cripple themselves with a renewable delusion, China steams ahead. We are kneecapping ourselves and our society for no good reason.

China processes approximately 60% of the world’s lithium. China has been securing vertical integration across mining, processing, and battery manufacturing. While raw lithium is sourced globally (e.g., from the “Lithium Triangle” of Argentina, Chile, and Bolivia), China’s refining capacity gives it a 58-62% share of global processing. Lithium plays a critical role in the broader ecosystem of solar energy systems, particularly through its use in lithium-ion batteries, which are widely employed for storing the electricity generated by solar panels.

There are some UK manufacturers like GB-Sol so if solar panels are to be purchased for use in the UK it makes sense to use companies based here at least.

Intermittenancy

Just like how we cant control the wind we cant control the sunshine! And of course they generate no power at night. The UK has had a wicked spring and summer this year but most of the time this place is cloudy with little sunlight. Not ideal for solar power. The odd solar panel on someones roof for personal use makes sense, it’s a primitive starting point for a lot of people going off grid, for example, however trying to rely on this for powering an ever increasingly energy hungry society is madness.

Source for the graph above which shows the solar power generated for the UK here.

And batteries aren’t the answer either. The current battery technology requires too much land is too expensive. Batteries are impractical for long-term storage due to capacity, cost, and resource limits. For example, Powering the UK for 15 minutes would require 171 Tesla Megapacks, costing £299M and 0.5 hectares. For 24 hours, 246,154 Megapacks costing £430.77B, and needing 738 hectares. Seasonal solar variability, especially in winter, demands far larger storage, straining global material supplies. Batteries suit short-term smoothing, but high costs and land needs make them insufficient alone.

Ground contamination

The rush to install solar panels on prime farmland, driven by the climate change narrative, overlooks a critical issue: chemical runoff and leaching that can render fertile soil unusable for food production. Solar panels, often hailed as “green,” can contain toxic materials like cadmium, lead, and selenium, particularly in thin-film technologies such as cadmium telluride. Over their 20-30 year lifespan, these panels degrade, especially under harsh weather conditions like hailstorms or hurricanes, which can crack or shatter them, releasing these hazardous substances into the soil. It’s quite a risk for what would otherwise be fertile food producing land.

Not only in the event of a storm damaging the panels, they can leach over time. The land beneath solar factories often cannot be reclaimed for agriculture ever again like it once was. It may take years of regenerating practice and intensive remediation and grading of the ground before anything like a fraction of its previous productivity may be restored. Landowners frequently have the experience of discovering that once fertile land is irreparably disfigured.

Here is a testimony from a farmer in the USA:

Bryan “Tate” Mayo Jr, family farmer and small-town mayor of Tarboro, North Carolina, has watched as acre after acre of his neighbors’ farms have gone to solar panels.

“If you were to take a field out of solar, the infrastructure that was put in the ground to support the panels, the concrete, and the galvanized metal these things sit on, they’re going to leach zinc into the ground. The galvanized metal under the surface can result in high readings of zinc in soil samples. Zinc may be an essential micronutrient, but if too much leaches into the soil, there’s no way of getting it out,” Mayo said. Read more about farmer Mayo and the dark side of solar here.

Constraint Payments

Solar panels sometimes make too much electricity for the grid to handle, so we pay them to stop. Insane and a very big reason why en masse solar factories suck and are little more than a ‘green’ delusion.

Although the price tag for paying solar factories to switch off is far lower than the current projected £1 Billion + per year for wind turbines by 2030, the insanity has started and will only continue to increase if we install more solar factories. We’re starting the bidding at £100,000 for February to June and who knows how high paying solar factories will go.

Fire Risk

Solar panels and their associated battery storage systems, pose fire risks that can have serious consequences. Solar panels can ignite due to faulty wiring, poor installation, or manufacturing defects, with arcing or overheating causing fires. In the UK, fire incidents involving solar systems aren’t common but increasing as installations grow, with over 1,000 cases reported since 2015. Including a fire on top of a primary school building this year. Lithium-ion batteries, commonly used for storing solar energy, are particularly hazardous. Overcharging, physical damage, or thermal runaway, where batteries overheat uncontrollably, can lead to intense fires that are difficult to extinguish, releasing toxic fumes like hydrogen fluoride.

Solar Factories Suck

If people want to put solar panels on their houses for personal use it seems ok. However trying to power entire countries is insane and will never work because of all the reasons mentioned above. Not environmentally friendly, unreliable and take up way too much land. Losing massive amounts of premium farmland to solar factories will be seen as one of the biggest blunders the UK made in the early 21st century and we’ve made plenty. When there are still an abundance of hydrocarbons to play with and promising SMR technology, we do not need to destroy the country side for more solar factories!

Oh and of course, none of this is taking into account if these crazy climate cultists actually try and dim the sun!