Six Flags Great Adventure to be powered mostly by 90-acre solar farm

Wow, this is a really big deal. Not sure how they can get 98% of their electrical needs this way without a whole lot of temporary storage to power the park after sunset.

So um, no hotel?

:-)

If Six Flags needed a solar farm...

Nevermind.

Only half of the solar panels will be operational anyways, and if you want to use the electricity from the ones that do work, you'll have to pay extra. :)

Wow. This is a really big deal. I've often wondered why parks don't do more solar. I read recently that one of the goals of teslas new battery plant is to provide backup batteries for projects like solar. Wonder if they're gonna have that kind of backup or just suck off the grid when it's dark.

Regardless, kudos to six flags and I hope more parks follow in these steps.

SFGAdv gets a TON of grief for their parking lot - deservedly so. I love the idea of going solar, but would have preferred killing two birds with one massive stone - parking lot solar - nice to have a cooler car TOO!

edited to add: Seriously though, HUGE ups to GAdv for adding the solar farm. Awesome news - best new thing out of the park since El Toro.

Most of these Solar farms make twice as much as the park needs during the day

and sells it to Local Power company then at night they buy it back.

The thing not mentioned is that in the off season it will be making money for the park during a time when they are not using much power.

Plus after the Zombie's take over the park will still run :)

I thought only Cedar Fair parks cleared that many trees. ;)

Curious what the cost is and what the ROI numbers look like. Would love to see this kind of thing be economically viable, but I haven't seen that being the case yet.

http://pureenergies.com/us/home-solar/solar-basics/solar-myths/

According to that, it takes around 7-15 years for it to pay for itself, but could be less if there's good tax incentives.

They need to rethink this and build the farm over the parking lot and that will kill two birds with one stone, cooler cars and generate all this so-called green energy.

I'm sure that would exponentially increase the cost of the project. It doesn't make a lot of financial sense.

Jeff, IF they can retrofit the parking lot to house this farm. They would save the 90 plus acres which produces oxygen for the people the park is serving. It will also cool off the parking lot for the people who are tired from the park. The expense would be around the same as destroying the 90 acres of forest to build this monstrosity.

This is awesome, but 18,000 trees is mind boggling.

Also, to note - my home park is 42 acres, SFGAd's solar farm will be more than twice the size! Crazy.

Well, it is the Garden State, so maybe they have plenty.

Screamlord said:

Jeff, IF they can retrofit the parking lot to house this farm. They would save the 90 plus acres which produces oxygen for the people the park is serving. It will also cool off the parking lot for the people who are tired from the park. The expense would be around the same as destroying the 90 acres of forest to build this monstrosity.

No it wouldn't. As Jeff said, it would exponentially raise the cost of this project.

Oh definitely. I was more spitballing....

That being said, the VA building across from my old office has just begun doing exactly that, putting solar panels over the parking lot. I'll refrain from comment on the expense of the project vs. getting them services in a timely fashion. Oh, wait, maybe I just did comment on that...

Clearing land is a pretty fast process and relatively inexpensive. I know because it's going on all around me in western Orange County, Florida. Abandoned orange groves are turning into subdivisions faster than you can say crop freeze.