Solar energy's problem with property devaluation.
Property Devaluation #
The most unarguable downside to Solar Power Plants is their curb appeal. In a review of court cases filed by citizens the number one most common complaint is solar power plants are aesthetically detrimental to any area they occupy. They are reported to breed an environmental of sterility and trashiness. Frankly, there is not one article available that reports anything else but how hideous these installations are, and how people absolutely cannot stand the sight of them.
But this takes us from the argument at hand. Regardless of how you slice up these things or wrap them in a sugar coated ribbon of rhetoric, these installations are and always will be classified as industrial complexes. Nothing can really deter from this statement. Solar Power plants are industrial because they involve industrial sized hazards, industrial equipment, industrial pollution, industrial sized price tags, and industrial sized power generation.
In order to gain perspective on how industrial these complexes we performed a little research and found that in many cases a solar power plant around thirty acres is considered by the court system of the united states to be a heavy industrial facility. An installation over sixty acres would be without a doubt an ultra heavy industrial facility. The prevention of installing industrial facilities beside, surrounded by, or in the middle of residential communities is one of the primary reasons the united states has zoning laws to begin with.
Zoning laws designate land for specific purposes. This designation prevents commercial and industrial facilities from causing harm to residential property and protects the health of residents from receiving damages caused by the nature of the business performed on such properties. It is for this reason that any variety of power production facility, solar or otherwise, will always devalue property within the same area.
Allowing special exceptions to this fundamental principle of real estate is negligible. Because it guarantees the valuation of the surrounding pieces of property will loose value and cause unnecessary harm to citizens. This is why constructing power plants in residential areas is the same as taking money away from the residents and handing it to the owner of the power plant. The aesthetic appeal that property owners have invested in is consumed by the facility. This is why solar power profit off the expense of it’s neighbours.
A Letter on Property Devaluation
Real annoyance for Residents #
As mentioned in both health risks and environmental hazards solar power plants offer real deterrence for real estate investors. Just like all industrial facilities they contain industrial sized risks. But there are another number of truths that will annoy anyone living beside these facilities enough to where they will quickly close up shop and move somewhere else in a hurry.
One of these annoyances is the sound generated from any number of motors that control the ability for the array to track the sun. These motors will generate around sixty decibels from sixty feet away each. Multiply that by how many ever motors are included in the particular plant and you are better off living at the end of a runway. The tracking system that uses those motors also have the potential to get stuck and prevent the array from properly aligning. When this happens, the tracking system hung and will continuously attempt to readjust the entire array over and over. It will continue to do this until the motors either burn out or eventually an electrical short causes the entire array to fail. Which means over twelve hours of hearing the clanking and humming of a stuck motor will be how you will spend your Sunday afternoon.
Another extreme annoyance is the little known fact that solar power plants actually raise the surrounding ground temperature by several degrees. This means that residents have unusually high summer temperatures to look forward to. This difference in temperature will mean of course that water will evaporate at a much quicker rate than a person would usually expect. This has particularly frustrating consequences when it comes to watering horticultural life surrounding a facility. Property owners will notice that there plant life will begin to wither and die from lack of water. Which will be particularly an expensive problem to fix.
Then least of all there is the glare of the array itself, which no one can question is in the least at least as reflective and bright as a lake or other body of water. This means that residents will experience sun burn much faster than they would anywhere else. Which is not particularly conducive to enjoying the leisure pleasure of your property.
Buyer’s Rights, Sellers Duty #
It is the responsibility of the seller to fully disclose all known issues and or problems concerning any piece of real estate to the buyer before the property is sold. Failure to do so would result in committing real estate fraud, and is a federal offence and is punished with time in jail. This means that if your property is located near an industrial power production facility, then you must disclose so to any buyer interested in the property, to avoid committing a federal felony.
This responsibility to the seller is extremely problematic considering the State of Georgia’s current stance on solar power production facilities. Which is to allow such toxic facilities to bypass normal zoning regulations through an exception and lower the value of all surrounding properties in the area regardless whether they are residential or commercial. Especially if the known facility has been linked with causing cancer, the seller of the property must inform any buyer of this issue before the property is sold, and once the buyer is informed this will greatly reduce the amount the buyer would be willing to pay, if not deter the buyer from investment all together.
This simple problem means that any property near a solar power production facility will suffer great damages in property value and will be nearly impossible to sell at a reasonable price that would stand a chance at repaying any investor what he has invested on the piece of property. The majority of the residents surrounding such a facility will simply be stuck with their investment, and or will totally lose all capital invested in their personal property.
Most installations are permanent fixtures #
The cost of removing and properly disposing a solar power plant is not cheap, and is extremely expensive. The cost of demolition, disposal fees, recycling, and associated costs is roughly equivocal to the cost of installation. Which when keeping in mind the depreciation in value recieved from usage and reduction in efficiency is an extremely costly process for any company to undertake, so costly that there are high probabilities of the facility never being removed. It is not as if they can disassemble it and part it out, selling pieces of it slowly over time. No, Once current travels through it, it has been used and the longer it is used the less value it is worth. There is also not much of a market for used power plants, it is not like you can advertise to sell it on craig’s list or part out the used pieces on ebay or anything, because you can’t. It is simply not practical and cost effective.
Then because of the lack of functionality or the fallen state of disrepair, the dead power plants stay there. There are numerous examples of abandoned power projects all across the state. One of the reasons for this is simply another new generation of technological innovation has been developed and this new technology phases old the former or makes it obsolete altogether. In fact, when these facilities are engineered they are designed with an operational timespan. This operational timespan is not reflectant of how long the facility will be able to stay in operation, nor does it reflect the length of time the facility will operate at a rate of peak efficiency due to the effects of entropy, not does it reflect on when the point of diminishing returns is reached. It is more or less these other factors that commit property designated for utility production to be labeled and referred to as industrial, and it is these factors that lead to these facilities to being eventually abandoned and in disrepair.
Solar Power Plants don’t have insurance #
When a natural disaster occurs and damages or completely obliterates a facility, the probabilities state that there will not be enough capital to rebuild them, nor will their be enough capital to afford the clean up costs of removing the installation. So what has historically happened is for these installations to be totally abandoned, which destroys property valuation considerably more, almost wiping out all value invested by residents on their personal property.
Why do the owners not start small? #
What we have been wondering the entire fiasco is, why has the owners of the property where the proposed facilities are to be installed, not installed solar panels on their houses before they invested in a huge power plant? This does not make sense. If solar was so great, then why did they not convert their homes over to solar energy before they devalued the property surrounding them, and force their neighbours to live a miserable and short lived existence beside them?
Links #
Below is just a small collection of links that we have gathered concerning legal precedings where residents protested the construction of solar power plants. In all cases the residents succeeded.
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