By: Diane Benjamin
The country is a dirty place. My vehicle parked in the garage with no doors open gets covered with fine dirt. Tilling and planting creates blowing dirt, harvesting does too.
Sometimes it gets really bad – May 16, 2025 filmed looking out my garage door window:
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Did you know dirty solar panels, even a little dirt, greatly decrease their productivity?
https://www.chemitek.pt/en-eu/blog/cleaning-large-scale-solar-farms
The accumulation of dust, bird droppings, soiling, cement dust, rust, hard water stains, and other contaminants leads to a drop in the efficiency of photovoltaic panels, and these contaminants are often not removed from the modules with a water-only cleaning.
If enhanced cleaning is not performed, it will result in a decline of the amount of energy produced and a loss of income for the asset managers/owners. The efficiency loss due to soiling is estimated to be 2-5% annually worldwide and represents losses of over 4bn € annually. In large-scale PV plants, a soiling loss of as little as 2% can be already enough to justify a cleaning.
How do the proposed solar farm builders east of Bloomington plan to clean theirs? Water? Chemicals? Electrostatic repulsion? https://news.mit.edu/2022/solar-panels-dust-magnets-0311
Have the landowners who agreed to this project asked? Maybe they don’t care about the future farmland value when they can pocket money now.
Without subsidies this project wouldn’t exist. Solar farms:
- Take farmland out of production
- Create expensive electricity
- With components dominated by China
The only thing the locals who support this project see are dollar signs.
Meanwhile, the fossil free philosophy in Illinois will never generate enough electricity for the future. It will make electricity a luxury. Cheap energy creates prosperity. Obviously your ability to achieve goals will be limited by the cost. Non-subsidized investment in Illinois will plummet.
There are many sites claiming solar farms kill birds. Wind turbines do the same thing. Don’t forget solar farms raise the temperature too: https://blnnews.com/2025/07/05/solar-farms-raise-the-temperature/
Do you really want to live in a state covered by wind turbines and solar panels? Your electric bills aren’t high enough now? Just wait.
Diane, as you may know, these are my exact thoughts and have been for a long time. ‘What about the soil?’ 25-30-35 years of cleaning agent and weed killer simply has to be bad for the soil and ground water. But maybe this ground is never intended to produce food again, forever.
The satanic pychopaths at the wheel also use chemtrails to destroy the land. Your, our elimination if not the plan will be the result.
Those pesky unintended consequences that boggle the mind of the left.
Just for an example, scaling this up to the democrats actual goal. Complete renewable energy by 2050.
Issues and an example if America were to go all solar. Per Grok.
Requirements:
*Land use – 33,750 square miles. Equivalent to covering most of Iowa (55,857 square miles) or Illinois (55,518 square miles)
*All new transmission lines – (10-100 acres/mile for high-voltage lines)
*massive amounts of raw materials needed (silicon, lithium, cobalt, rare earths).
*8 hours Battery backup – replaced every 10-12 years
*Panel replacement every 20-25 years
*Pollution caused by manufacturing and scrapping old units.
*Loss of agriculture.
*Grid stability
Total cost – $54.1539 trillion
Bottom line – Solar is a gimmick. We can’t use it in the future at scale. We shouldn’t support playing around with it now as if it is a viable alternative.
I saw another story that widespread solar farms will change the weather.