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The Ute Tribe will construct one of the largest solar farms in the US

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Re: The Ute Tribe will construct one of the largest solar farms in the US

#71

Post by lambda »

NegativeK wrote: post #61
lambda wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And an AP1000 reactor costs about $6.8 billion to build, and substantially higher operating costs. 68% of the power for 14% of the price seems like a pretty good deal to me, there's a reason people are investing more in solar than nuclear, it's just more cost effective. edit: Oh, and that $6.8 billion looks optimistic. This project with two AP1000s looks like it costs $30 billion. https://www.ans.org/news/article-394…

Comparing just on W/$ feels like it's missing a bunch of additional problems with the power generation, such as nuclear risk or needing more than solar to cover a full year's electrical demand.

Yeah, it's definitely a simplification.

A lot of the nuclear risk is already included in that cost; we have fairly robust nuclear regulation and safety engineering these days. I have pretty high confidence in the safety of modern nuclear reactors, because there has been the engineering needed to ensure it, and there's fairly strong regulatory oversight. Of course, that all gets factored into the price tag, which is part of why the price tag for nuclear is so high.

I'm just saying that I see a lot of discussion of more nuclear investment as the solution to decarbonization, but it's hard to make the economics work out; nuclear has gotten more expensive over time, while renewables have been dropping in price dramatically.

I'm sure there is some room for nuclear in the market, but it's hard to see it providing more than a fraction of what renewables do, just due to the massive cost difference.

Re: The Ute Tribe will construct one of the largest solar farms in the US

#73

Post by tfourb »

nharada wrote: post #65
tfourb wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure how it went in that specific case but yes, these type of impact studies are usually hands on, you go out into the field with a bunch of people and comb an area completely. In case of a chip factory currently developed by Intel in Germany, they went out onto the 200ha (roughly 280 football fields) and found and resettled 7 rare hamsters. 2 of those had to be dug out: https://www.mdr.de/nachrichten/sachsen-anh…

That's pretty wild. Do you much about this? It's kinda related to a project I'm working on and I'd be interested in chatting if so!

Not really. I’ve done academic fieldwork before but not specifically this type of environmental impact study.

Re: The Ute Tribe will construct one of the largest solar farms in the US

#74

Post by thinkcontext »

hooo wrote: post #8

Does anyone have a breakdown of the materials required to create 2.2 million solar panels? I worry that we measure solar strictly on the carbon emissions and not the full environmental impact -- such as that of land and mining of materials. Edit: I'm not advocating fossil fuels. I think solar makes a ton of sense, but it also seems crazy to think we could build enough solar + storage capacity for the world. Nuclear e…

> Nuclear energy is the real future

At present in the US there's no reactor that anyone will build. No one will build any more big AP1000s after the unmitigated financial disasters that were its 2 initial projects. Everyone has put their faith in small reactors (SMRs) but the only one with an approved design (NuScale) had its initial project fail after a Utah utility coalition fell apart.

The NuScale project that failed was supposed to come online around 2030. Their other project was some sort of Bitcoin mining fiction, its not clear they will have a future. There are a bunch of SMR startups that are at various stages of development, however, none has an approved design. So, we're looking at after 2030 if we're lucky with speculative designs that may or may not work out.

Not a very certain bet.

Re: The Ute Tribe will construct one of the largest solar farms in the US

#75

Post by nyrikki »

loeg wrote: post #48
kitten_mittens_ wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> who...will they sell the juice to? Utah is already a power exporter. Utah generates about one-fifth more electricity than it consumes, and the state is a net supplier of power to other states.[1] [1] https://www.eia.gov/state/analysis.php?sid=UT

This tribe is in Colorado, not Utah, despite the name. Transmission is expensive; you'd rather sell locally. Before you finance a $1B project it would be good to have a sense of how you expect to sell the outputs!

There is a star of WECC transmission lines going all around the region just south of the Colorado border near ShipRock NM.

Part of what made this project viable IMHO was the adjacency to existing WECC Interface Paths.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WECC_Intertie_Paths#/media/Fil...

Re: The Ute Tribe will construct one of the largest solar farms in the US

#76

Post by lukan »

"Having said that, we're going to be producing a large amount of power. So I'm not sure that all of it will be able to be consumed within Colorado."

Hopefully they can attract further industry, that will consume that cheap energy close to production. Metal smelting ones for example.

Re: The Ute Tribe will construct one of the largest solar farms in the US

#77

Post by aorloff »

yieldcrv wrote: post #55

> But also, it makes sense not to transmit power too far from where you are yep, they’ll waste the energy trying to transmit it sounds like they’re going to be attracting bitcoin miners. they’re the only use case that’s able to be in the middle of nowhere without needing other infrastructure, like robust internet. any other use cases you all know of?

Powering a casino

Re: The Ute Tribe will construct one of the largest solar farms in the US

#78

Post by lambda »

photonbeam wrote: post #64
lambda wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And an AP1000 reactor costs about $6.8 billion to build, and substantially higher operating costs. 68% of the power for 14% of the price seems like a pretty good deal to me, there's a reason people are investing more in solar than nuclear, it's just more cost effective. edit: Oh, and that $6.8 billion looks optimistic. This project with two AP1000s looks like it costs $30 billion. https://www.ans.org/news/article-394…

You pay a higher price for power that works in darkness

Yeah, but even renewables + storage is likely to be cheaper than nuclear. Right now pumped hydro is one of the best for grid-scale storage, but with the the reduction in cost of batteries, it may be that grid-scale battery storage becomes viable not too far in the future.

And remember, nuclear generally needs some form of storage or supplementation with on-demand generation (generally via fossil fuels). Nuclear reactors are very slow to increase or decrease their output; they're best providing a constant base power output, but to account for periodic changes in demand across the day, you need either grid-scale storage or to supplement them with things like gas turbines that can quickly spin up and down. Many of our existing grid-scale energy storage systems are there to support nuclear. For example: https://www.wbur.org/news/2016/12/02/northfield-mountain-hyd...

But if you're already going to be building the grid-scale storage, supplying it with renewable energy can be a lot cheaper than supplying it with nuclear.

I'm not saying that nuclear will have no place in the energy grid as we decarbonize. But the economics are hard to justify as renewables and storage become cheaper.

Re: The Ute Tribe will construct one of the largest solar farms in the US

#79

Post by tfourb »

photonbeam wrote: post #64
lambda wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And an AP1000 reactor costs about $6.8 billion to build, and substantially higher operating costs. 68% of the power for 14% of the price seems like a pretty good deal to me, there's a reason people are investing more in solar than nuclear, it's just more cost effective. edit: Oh, and that $6.8 billion looks optimistic. This project with two AP1000s looks like it costs $30 billion. https://www.ans.org/news/article-394…

You pay a higher price for power that works in darkness

Like wind turbines? ;-)

Re: The Ute Tribe will construct one of the largest solar farms in the US

#80

Post by thelastgallon »

hooo wrote: post #8

Does anyone have a breakdown of the materials required to create 2.2 million solar panels? I worry that we measure solar strictly on the carbon emissions and not the full environmental impact -- such as that of land and mining of materials. Edit: I'm not advocating fossil fuels. I think solar makes a ton of sense, but it also seems crazy to think we could build enough solar + storage capacity for the world. Nuclear e…

The materials will be insignificant. Its a one time material cost which yields energy for 25 - 30 years. And at EOL, it will still produce ~80% (which is really good!), the life is 25 - 30, but manufacturers won't provide longer warranty. I don't see any compelling reasons to decommission solar fields producing 80% after 30 years.

Also, land usage can be minimal. Vertical panels can allow farming, and are also more efficient (allow heat to escape), cover the early mornings and evenings better.

40m acres (just in US!) are used for ethanol production to produce a small fraction of fuel. I'd imagine the material costs of these 40m acres over 25 - 50 years (fertilizer, harvesting, shipping, refining ....) would be a lot more than solar panels.

Also, 40% of shipping is fossil fuels, we are mining, refining and shipping billions of tons every year.

Also remember the fossil fuel plants and infrastructure are not material free. There is a one time cost of materials there just as much as solar panels. But for fuel, solar panels have zero input costs, zero processing costs, zero waste production.

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