Misleading title. It isn't solar power "causing" the problem, it is farmers using solar power to take too much water.
Farmers in hot, arid regions are turning to low-cost solar pumps to irrigate their fields, eliminating the need for expensive fossil fuels and boosting crop production. But by allowing them to pump throughout the day, the new technology is drying up aquifers around the globe.
Misleading title. It isn't solar power "causing" the problem, it is farmers using solar power to take too much water.
It seems that solar power changed the economics. Since it requires no fuel, there's little incentive to conserve water. (Maybe there are other ways the technology improved, too.) I wonder about...
It seems that solar power changed the economics. Since it requires no fuel, there's little incentive to conserve water. (Maybe there are other ways the technology improved, too.)
I wonder about windmills though? Haven't wind pumps been around for a long time?
Perhaps the energy needs of pumping water from the depth is more than a (mechanical) wind pump can provide? For electric pumps, power could come from petrol/diesel generator, solar, maybe wind...
Perhaps the energy needs of pumping water from the depth is more than a (mechanical) wind pump can provide?
For electric pumps, power could come from petrol/diesel generator, solar, maybe wind turbine.
The generator or solar might also provide power to other uses than just pumping water.
It may turn into People kill people. If I understand that right, they have cheap energy (solar) so they can pump more water. This water may be needed somewhere else where lives depend on it.
It may turn into People kill people. If I understand that right, they have cheap energy (solar) so they can pump more water. This water may be needed somewhere else where lives depend on it.
Ah! The point I was trying to make was that the relationship between killing someone and the tool is first order for a gun (the primary use-case for a gun is to voluntarily injure people) while...
Ah! The point I was trying to make was that the relationship between killing someone and the tool is first order for a gun (the primary use-case for a gun is to voluntarily injure people) while it's second or third order for stuff like food, pollution, badly planed road intersection, or in this case, solar power.
The desert state of Rajasthan is the Indian pioneer and has more solar pumps than any other. Over the past decade, the government has given subsidized solar pumps to almost 100,000 farmers. Those pumps now water more than a million acres and have enabled agricultural water use to increase by more than a quarter. But as a result, water tables are falling rapidly. There is little rain to replace the water being pumped to the surface. In places, the underground rocks are now dry down to 400 feet below ground.
That is the effective extraction limit of the pumps, many of which now lie abandoned. To keep up, in what amounts to a race to the bottom of the diminishing reserves, richer farmers have been buying more powerful solar pumps, leaving the others high and dry or forcing them to buy water from their rich neighbors.
Water wipeout looms. And not just in Rajasthan.
Solar pumps are spreading rapidly among rural communities in many water-starved regions across India, Africa, and elsewhere. These devices can tap underground water all day long at no charge, without government scrutiny.
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Boreholes sunk into porous water-holding rocks now provide 43 percent of the world’s irrigation water, according to a study last year by the World Bank. Irrigation is responsible for around 70 percent of the global underground water withdrawals, which are estimated at more than 200 cubic miles per year. This exceeds recharge from rainfall by nearly 70 cubic miles per year.
Monitoring of individual underground reserves is patchy at best. They are too often out of sight and out of mind. But a study of historical data from monitoring wells in 1,700 aquifers in 40 countries, published in January, reported that “rapid and accelerating” declines in reserves were widespread.
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The solar revolution on farms is happening with the best of intentions and is using a technology widely seen as environmentally beneficial. Farmers love the fact that their photovoltaic (PV) pumps do not require expensive and polluting diesel fuel or grid connections. Once installed, they can run all day at no cost, growing more food crops, or allowing their owners to expand their businesses — growing water-intensive cash crops, or earning income from selling spare water to neighbors. Many farmers also keep their old diesel or electric pumps to continuing pumping when the sun goes down.
Development agencies and governments are equally keen. They subsidize solar pumps to boost food production, reduce poverty, cut emissions from fossil fuels, and curtail growing demands on overstretched electricity grids. But the long-term downside of this solar revolution looms large.
The crisis is particularly stark in India. The world’s most populous nation “stands at the threshold of a revolution in adoption of solar irrigation pumps,” says Tushaar Shah, a water economist for the International Water Management Institute. The government intends to raise the number of solar pumps more than tenfold to 3.5 million by 2026.
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There are already half a million PV irrigation pumps watering fields across the sub-Saharan region. But Falchetta calculates that in the future 11 million more could be deployed to irrigate 135 million acres of currently rainfed fields — an area the size of France. These pumps could supply a third of the unmet water needs of small farmers, who produce most of the food across sub-Saharan Africa.
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In the central Sana’a Basin, Yemen’s agricultural heartland, more than 30 percent of farmers use solar pumps. In a report with Musaed Aklan, a water researcher at the Sana’a Center for Strategic Studies, Lackner predicts a “complete shift” to solar by 2028. But the basin may be down to its last few years of extractable water. Farmers who once found water at depths of 100 feet or less are now pumping from 1,300 feet or more.
Some 1,500 miles to the northeast, in in the desert province of Helmand in Afghanistan, more than 60,000 opium farmers have in the past few years given up on malfunctioning state irrigation canals and switched to tapping underground water using solar water pumps. As a consequence, water tables have been falling typically by 10 feet per year, according to David Mansfield, an expert on the country’s opium industry from the London School of Economics.
Misleading title. It isn't solar power "causing" the problem, it is farmers using solar power to take too much water.
It seems that solar power changed the economics. Since it requires no fuel, there's little incentive to conserve water. (Maybe there are other ways the technology improved, too.)
I wonder about windmills though? Haven't wind pumps been around for a long time?
Perhaps the energy needs of pumping water from the depth is more than a (mechanical) wind pump can provide?
For electric pumps, power could come from petrol/diesel generator, solar, maybe wind turbine.
The generator or solar might also provide power to other uses than just pumping water.
Isn't that basically just "guns don't kill people, people kill people"?
Yea, but that's kinda the point. The problem isn't the technology....the problem is the person(s) weilding it.
Guns are designed to injure people though. Solar panels are just energy extracting devices.
It may turn into People kill people. If I understand that right, they have cheap energy (solar) so they can pump more water. This water may be needed somewhere else where lives depend on it.
Ah! The point I was trying to make was that the relationship between killing someone and the tool is first order for a gun (the primary use-case for a gun is to voluntarily injure people) while it's second or third order for stuff like food, pollution, badly planed road intersection, or in this case, solar power.
Ah, okay. I understand now :-) Thanks for clarification.
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