Since Industrialization, the United States and many other countries around the world have realized the significant negative impacts of fossil fuel consumption and associated carbon emissions which are altering Earth's climate. To mitigate this change, there have been significant transitions from fossil fuels to renewable energy, with one viable option being mass deployment of solar arrays. Thus, large plots of land in regions such as California's Central Valley have begun to convert land, much of it agricultural, into solar arrays. Here, I work to understand the current solar installation practices and the impacts on food, energy, water, carbon, and the farmers who have decided to convert their land. I provide this information to encourage best installation practices and promote long term positive impact deployment. In Chapter 1, I develop a comprehensive remotely-sensed dataset commercial-scale crystalline silicon solar installations in the Central Valley detailing precise panel locations, orientations, and time of installations. These attributes allowed for the assessment of current practices including frame technologies, panel packing, spatial field placement, and crop preferences. I then link those practices to federal and state policies and quantify sub-optimal installation practices. In Chapter 2, I deploy this new dataset in an Impact Analysis to project future food, energy, water, carbon, and economic implications of these installed arrays through a 25-year predicted lifespan. This new data leads to a better understanding of to-date solar installation practices and provides the information needed to improve future infrastructure as we move towards sustainability.
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