Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

ksut.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 302 posts

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

#161

Post by 0xGod »

Incredible news and momentum. The entire land will have an advanced smart renewable grid that scales to any size and is very fault-tolerant and self-recovering. It is beautiful to observe the Melting Pot producing great ideas and vast installations of great systems. Great job all around and it's encouraging to observe communities joining forces and brains to work on planet-scale problems. Godspeed, USA! The Melting Pot will continue to lead the world in producing cultural exchange and elevation for all communities.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

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

#162

Post by pixl97 »

tfourb wrote: post #54
nharada wrote: post #42

Dang they went out and found 400+ of a rare cactus and avoided building on them? Anyone know how they actually did that survey? Like someone just goes out for days at a time and looks?

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…

I wonder how much identification of different floria could be done by hi-def drone capture of an area then image identification of different species could be done these days? I could see things like hamsters being more difficult as small mammals tend to hide to avoid being prey.

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

#163

Post by toast0 »

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?

Cabling in robust internet wouldn't be too hard, if that were the only factor. Pull fiber from Salt Lake City and Albuquerque, maybe Denver and Phoenix and boom. There's US highways in all directions, so you can pull along the road, most likely. You'd get at least two way redundancy going North and South, maybe three way if you take different paths to get to Phoenix and Albuquerque.

But you also need/want robust power delivery to run a datacenter, and a single local solar project isn't robust power delivery. If you had robust power delivery, those transmission lines could be used to export the solar, and it wouldn't make sense to put a datacenter there anymore.

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

#164

Post by adrianN »

jpgvm wrote: post #115
dangrossman wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's financially and politically impossible on a relevant time scale, while solar can be built now.

In America maybe. Lets see what the Chinese do with their nuclear rollout before calling it impossible yet. They might also abandon theirs on account of being able to make solar incredibly cheap domestically, but they also might not, we have to wait and see.

China is rolling out a couple of orders of magnitude more renewables than nuclear though. I think every country that wants nuclear bombs also needs a civilian nuclear industry, then the economics of the nuclear plants are less important.

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

#165

Post by lambda »

mytailorisrich wrote: post #126
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…

When comparing solar to nuclear we also need to include storage and dimensioning to get an equivalent 24/7 output. This might still make solar cheaper but difference will be smaller than headline numbers.

True. This happens to be in a region of the country that gets a 25-30% capacity factor on solar; in the northeast or northwest, you'd see much worse results.

The basic point is that nuclear is just really, really expensive, and it has been getting more expensive over time, while solar and wind have been getting cheaper.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levelized_cost_of_electricity

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

#166

Post by littlestymaar »

latchkey wrote: post #129
nextaccountic wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no law of nature that says that the pace of US infrastructure improvements should be like that. It's a matter of policy. The US has built impressive projects before at a staggering rate, and they could do so in the future. (currently China is doing the same but on a larger scale. It shows it is possible if you have the political will) When people say that the power "could" be sent elsewhere, they are right,…

I'm referring to the whole picture not just platitudes. The reality of the situation is that certainly a lot of stuff "could" happen, like Fusion and Nuclear power too.

Had fusion power recived a fraction of the funds that went to blockchain stuff over the past decade, we would be much closer indeed.

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

#167

Post by pixl97 »

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!

Simply put, we're going to have to build transmission infrastructure in the US.

Right now we get past a lot of that by bundling up coal and natural gas in trains and pipes and generating closer to the sink.

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

#168

Post by adrianN »

latchkey wrote: post #160
adrianN wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hm? What kind of dangerous chemicals do you need to turn for example bauxite into aluminium?

https://cumulis.epa.gov/supercpad/cursites/csitinfo.cfm?id=0... https://massena-environmental-health-and-justice.org/superfu...

To save others a click

> Alcoa released hazardous substances, including polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), onto the facility property as well as into the Grasse River through four industrial outfalls

I wonder for what you need PCBs in sufficient quantities to cause a superfund site.

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

#169

Post by latchkey »

littlestymaar wrote: post #166
latchkey wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm referring to the whole picture not just platitudes. The reality of the situation is that certainly a lot of stuff "could" happen, like Fusion and Nuclear power too.

Had fusion power recived a fraction of the funds that went to blockchain stuff over the past decade, we would be much closer indeed.

Had fusion power received a fraction of the funds that went to military wars over the past decade, we would be much closer indeed.

My point is that whataboutism, is probably a bad take here.

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

#170

Post by lukan »

latchkey wrote: post #160
adrianN wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hm? What kind of dangerous chemicals do you need to turn for example bauxite into aluminium?

https://cumulis.epa.gov/supercpad/cursites/csitinfo.cfm?id=0... https://massena-environmental-health-and-justice.org/superfu...

I suppose recycling existing aluminium is more hazard free.
Post reply on HN