Polk County, Wisconsin is at a 45.46 N.

That is the same latitude as Milan, Italy and Southern France!

There seems to be a real interesting mix of pros and cons (total watts generated through the year, by time of day, susceptibility to dirt and hail damage, reflections, etc.), especially with regards to mounting. This guy goes into a lot of detail: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5AVO1IyfA9M

Land per sqft is usually a lot more expensive than panels.

Bifacial above ground capture more of solar, esp if the ground reflects solar back.

Many YouTube experiments where people have captured an extra 100-150W from back panels yielding 500W+ per panel.

And bifacial is only slightly more expensive than mono panels. With higher efficiency the price is worth it.

For residential solar with batteries, the price of panels is barely 10% of the cost. Labor, permitting, connectors, inverters, framing take a huge chunk of the cost.

I imagine utility scale has lower overhead but the tradeoff for bifacial would have given positive ROI.

Almost the same cost. It seems the frames and connections are decisive. Let alone mounting system. ( Ref: Just recently priced 20kw options.)

Maybe they will angle the panels differently during the winter so snow falls off, and then the back panel will become more important capturing reflections and low sun.

It's news because new solar farms are one of the things this site reports on. See this story from a few weeks ago for example: https://electrek.co/2024/10/21/a-solar-farm-comes-online-on-....

They report on other countries as well, here's a story about a much larger project in China from yesterday: https://electrek.co/2024/11/14/china-worlds-largest-open-sea....

One reason this one could be notable though is that the panels are US-made, I think that is somewhat unusual.

It's news because the US is a big time laggard in renewables for a variety of terrible reasons. (Mostly oil/coal lobbying and utility monopolies stifling competition.)

If you're going to transmit energy it is easier to do it in the time domain than over a distance. MISO does not seem to report storage resources, so maybe they are only just getting started in terms of time shifting.

Overbuilding & batteries in snowy areas is cheaper than an HVDC line from a sunny area. https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2020/12/27/the-future-of-...

The US does not have a nationwide electric grid, so adding more solar power in Arizona or Florida can't supply Wisconsin with electricity.

Early solar farms were very concentrated in sunny states because the equipment was expensive enough that they couldn't make money elsewhere. As solar equipment has fallen in price, there are more places where a solar farm can turn a profit. That's why solar farms are now being built in places like Wisconsin. States like Arizona are still adding solar farms each year but now less sunny states are also building solar farms because falling equipment prices have made it practical.

Because the local power economics favors some solar everywhere, due to congested transmission. Compare to Antelope Valley in SoCal, where one ranch is 230 MW, and to total CA solar, which has almost 50,000 MW and is projected to grow 50% over the next 5 years, according to https://seia.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/California-1.pdf

Transmission isn’t free.

Also, there are usually only a few really heavy snowfalls a year. The rest would presumably melt off pretty quickly, though I’m no expert.

Snow doesn't really matter if you remove it.

And solar cells work way better if it is cold due to silicon having a lower resistance at lower temperatures.

So it's not all bad if it is not overly dark.

Because people need power in Wisconsin and even there solar is cheaper than fossil fuels. Also snow isn't a big deal for solar. Clouds are the problem.

Why not both? I don't think solar panels are scarce, no need to hold back investment up there.

It’s profitable everywhere right now. The limit is whether you can build.