AM site and Solar arrays

[mbrockm]

Tossing an idea out there. Our AM 3 tower uses about 17 acres. I have wondering if some of the land could be used for a solar panel farm. There is a lot of southern exposure and a couple of miles from a midamerican energy substation. Several arces are outside the guy radius. The solar panel farms I have seen are low to the ground. I am guessing under 10 feet. If they were all panels were well grounded to the am ground and outside the guy radius would it cause a big problem for the directional? It would require some retuning I am sure. Would the solar panels act as a good ground plane? Just wondering what the thoughts are.

[TPT]

https://www.motherearthnews.com/renewab ... az80mjzraw

The AM station is now WQCT,. WQCT is a 500 watt daytimer, back when the array was built they used an MW-1. Looks like there is still a solar array just to the west of the transmitter site owned by the city--this may be their original set-up...clearly was built away from the tower and ground system.

[KPJL FM]

Do you get ice in the Winter?
How tall are your towers?
That's the first things(s) to figure out, you don't want the panels anywhere near the towers in the Winter. Otherwise you get religious panels by Spring.

[mbrockm]

Center tower is 480 and outer towers are 240. Lots of land outside the radius of the towers. Several acres North and East of the array.

[TPT]

Holy?

[Deep Thought]

The solar farm shouldn't cause you much disturbance if it is installed properly, but the installers will learn a few things about RF, antennas and why you wear thick leather gloves working around long bits of metal near an AM array.

[kkiddkkidd]

Truth...

Several, several years ago, I briefly worked with a station that had rented their DA site to a solar farm without regard to AM operation. It was a hot mess. The solar installers tore up the ground system, the solar didn't work in high RF and the DA was extremely unstable. As I recall, the owner had rented the ENTIRE site to the solar farm and the entire ground field was covered with the solar array.

It became very clear that the income from the solar renter was making the station owner disregard any relevant advice concerning his station and I quickly bailed.

Properly engineered and implemented... It is probably perfectly doable.

The solar farm shouldn't cause you much disturbance if it is installed properly, but the installers will learn a few things about RF, antennas and why you wear thick leather gloves working around long bits of metal near an AM array.

[kc8gpd]

Talk to Darren McMullens in Denver i think he was involved in a solar array on Denver kezw 1430's am tower site. Darren engineers KOSI and KEZW iirc.