Comment by schnevets
3 hours ago
Anecdotally speaking, I have heard of a massive California solar farm in an undeveloped area that has serious vandalism problems. Junkies will find ways through the fencing at night, strip copper and other materials from panels, and cause thousands in damages and lost energy just to extract enough scrap for a fix.
Nothing short of a face-to-face security response will deter these criminals, so there it is a challenging cost-benefit balance. At least panels in parking lots and other developed spaces have the benefit of witnesses. I'm sure a 20 foot climb up a steel beam over running water is a decent deterrent as well.
I would love to see more project specs call for aluminum cable. For a given ampacity, it’s lighter, cheaper and more flexible than copper.
The major downsides are that the exposed wire is much less corrosion resistant underground (which is irrelevant) and that you need appropriate lugs. But standard lugs can easily be purchased in aluminum-compatible variants at no additional cost.
> Anecdotally speaking
First hand experience here - worked with a non-profit that has a tiny solar and battery installation for a light display, and we have had constant theft and vandalism problems with it. It's not even easy to get to - those meth-heads had to work to steal the lead acid batteries and copper wire...
Several years ago one of the local youth sports complex was limited to daylight use because the copper would get stolen from the light poles. This was a large complex with many light poles. Within a week of them being fixed, they'd come and steal the new copper. I never did follow up to see what they ultimately did to discourage the thieves.
And the one thing California absolutely will not do is put these people in jail.
A company nightwatchman making $20/hr would cost about $80k/yr, all in.
One prisoner costs the California taxpayer $125k/yr, all in.
Maybe the company should foot the bill for a security guard instead of asking the taxpayers to subsidize their business.
This implies that vandals only attack one business, instead of being a public nuisance or menace to everyone.
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24/7 coverage 365 days a year at 20$/h = 175,200$/year.
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Your takeaway is that every solar installation, regardless of size, now has an $80k/year minimum cost associated with its' mere existence because California can't get its' house in order?
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> Maybe the company should foot the bill for a security guard instead of asking the taxpayers to subsidize their business.
Why would a company spend their own money when they can have someone else spend their money instead?
They have been trying to crack down on the people buying the scrap: https://calmatters.digitaldemocracy.org/bills/ca_202520260ab...
I’m willing to bet if we gave them their fix they wouldn’t steal a thing. But because their fix is illegal they have to steal to get their fix.
Seems to me like the root cause is the illegality of the drugs. I hope you never have to deal with substance abuse problems yourself. You won’t like being on the dehumanizing end of the stick that you’re presently poking with.
If you're going to give junkies their fix, are you going to buy my alcohol too? What about my gambling debts? What about my escort bill for my sex addiction? Shy are you differentiating addiction to drugs?
Someone with heavy, habitual alcohol use can still get drunk on $20 of alcohol. Someone with a heavy opiate habit may spend hundreds of dollars a day on drugs just to maintain. A habituated opiate user could also get through the day with $20 worth of drugs if we allowed opiates to be produced and sold like alcohol, but we don't. So the unemployed junkie needs to beg or steal a lot more than the unemployed alcoholic to get their fix. That's why the parent comment highlighted "illegality of the drugs" as the cause.