There is a contractual obligation by a solar farm owner to maintain the solar system and facilitate its removal at the end of the lease or lifetime of the plant. If the project’s ownership should change during the term of the lease, the new owners will assume the same contractual obligations of maintenance and removal.
Additionally, solar panels retain value as scrap materials after their useful life, which significantly offsets the cost of their removal. Many communities now set specific decommissioning and financial standards to ensure the successful removal of a project after it ceases operation.
Solar farms produce very minimal amounts of noise which generally cannot be heard, even if standing right at the facility’s fence-line. The inverters, which convert direct current to alternating current, produce a small humming noise, which cannot be heard at the fence line. For farms using a tracker system, the tracking system is also virtually silent and is generally not audible.
Geenex is aware that not all people are excited about the way a solar farm looks, although we love the looks of our solar panels. For this reason it is common for vegetative screening to be used around specific parts of the solar farm boundary. We strongly advocate for the installation of vegetative screening between the solar farm and all adjoining residential properties. They may also be installed along road frontage, should the local community find this desirable.
Artificial lighting is not used on solar farms. Generally speaking lighting is not used during construction either. There may be specific times during construction when lighting may be sparsely used during morning and evening hours.
Solar farms do not emit any gases or release anything into the environment. When the system is removed, all of the components can be recycled. Solar farms are not toxic.
Whenever there is a flow of electricity, an electromagnetic field (EMF) is generated. Solar panels generate electricity as direct current (DC) which does not generate EMFs; however, once the energy changes to alternating current (AC) at the inverter, EMFs are generated at very low levels due to the low voltage of the facility. The electromagnetic fields measured at the fence of a solar farm are typically no higher than background levels, meaning that the electromagnetic field standing next to a toaster or having a smart phone in your hand is higher then standing by the fence of a solar farm.
Solar panels are designed to absorb sunlight. For this reason their reflectivity is very low. They are also coated with an anti-reflective coating to minimize the little reflectivity there is. As such, fears related to reflectivity are unfounded. A driver driving by the system will not be blinded by the reflection of the sun and reflectivity and glare is certainly not something which will impact neighbors.