But why don't we just build them in cities and parking lots especially since they want them within 10 miles of communities? I understand cost but this makes sense to just put them into cities and use the unused land to expand or use for farms and other things vs wasting land to build only solar farms.
The US west (and south-west in particular) has a serious problem with water as it is. Adding more population to that land is probably going to be a bad idea. We have plenty of room to expand more cities. Cities are more efficient uses of land. We don't need to push people out to the middle of nowhere yet.