201–210 of 302 posts
Largest in US, but pretty small compared to whats coming up. Todays news, ~$12B in Philippines: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39408076 Edit: 3.58B, not 12 from another comment. Still, pretty large investment for Philippines.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhadla_Solar_Park?wprov=sfti1#...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, actual size, but also relative to the size of their economy. Considering Philippines GDP, this is significant.
What's the GDP of the Ute nation? It's probably quite a significant investment for them as well.
So 35% of the Ute Nation's GDP vs 1.3% of the Phillipines. OP is clearly either uninformed or biased. Or just doesn't understand Tribal Sovereignty status in the US.
> US is incredibly slow in building transmission lines, takes decades. A lot of bitcoin miners use stranded power, which would otherwise go to waste. People often respond to me on HN that the power could be easily/cheaply sent elsewhere for better uses [0]. Comments like this just re-enforce the fact that these people have literally no idea what they are talking about. Thanks, I'll favorite this one. =) [0] https://n…
That money came straight from Texas citizens who gain nothing from the operations of these coin miners and who have already had to pay for the near collapse of the power grid back in Feb. 2021 which occurred because utilities are largely unregulated and can ignore requirements that they upgrade facilities or worse, just whine about the costs of bringing power generation plants into compliance with modern air quality standards like a bunch of rich spoiled toddlers. Many of these plants were grandfathered in when standards were established even though they would have been easy to upgrade at the time.
It is about time that the feds do what the Chinese did a few years ago and take a hard look at all the energy waste in shitcoin mining. [2]
In addition to energy consumption, this facility in Granbury, TX is already under fire for being a huge noise nuisance from the cooling fans that operate 24/7. [3]
[0] https://theweek.com/in-depth/1022698/how-voracious-bitcoin-m...
[1] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/bitcoin-mining-cryptocurrency-r...
[2] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/02/large-cryptocurr...
[3] https://time.com/6590155/bitcoin-mining-noise-texas/
I understand from your replies that you had a personal stake in shitcoin mining and you're pivoting to something else. Maybe for you the handwriting is on the wall.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This doesnt take into account capacity factors. A "800MW" solar plant would be expected to actually product 10-25% of that after day/night and seasons are taken into account. Nuclear plants are more of a 90+% capacity factor.
Yes, it's an over-simplification. But this is an area of the country where capacity factors are in the 25-30% range: https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=39832 (the Ute Mountain Reservation is in the very Southwestern corner of Colorado, a little bit of New Mexico, and a little bit of Utah: https://www.google.com/maps/place/Ute+Mountain+Reservation,+... ) So even if you discount the capacity by a 25% capac…
The only real drawback to building solar power in a desert is sand storms. That means the capacity factor is less relevant but life span and repair costs is a different matter. It is a bit similar to ocean wind farms. The capacity naturally goes up, but the salt water and transportation (as well as increased risks to engineers) makes life span and repair a bit more of an issue (it should be noted that most ocean based wind farms tend to use shallows and nature reserves near large cities).
But again, this project is built in a desert. The very definition of a place with consistent amount of sun. I hope the project works out.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This doesnt take into account capacity factors. A "800MW" solar plant would be expected to actually product 10-25% of that after day/night and seasons are taken into account. Nuclear plants are more of a 90+% capacity factor.
The LCOE cost advantage of alternative energy vs ... everything ... at this point is well known and calculated in Lazard's yearly LCOE study. Nuke advocates do themselves no favors playing shell games and weasel words with the economics. Nuclear is expensive. The nuclear industry needs to figure out how to make it a lot cheaper. And no, it's not just the NIMBY regulation. The legacy nuke industry has a ton of deeply…
Yes, nuclear is getting buried on price, but you make out the total cost of solar much lower and much more certain than it is in reality. Nobody really knows how much will renewables end up costing when they start to make up the majority of production.
> US is incredibly slow in building transmission lines, takes decades. A lot of bitcoin miners use stranded power, which would otherwise go to waste. People often respond to me on HN that the power could be easily/cheaply sent elsewhere for better uses [0]. Comments like this just re-enforce the fact that these people have literally no idea what they are talking about. Thanks, I'll favorite this one. =) [0] https://n…
It would be more useful if that was the way that all (b)/(sh)itcoin miners operated. It is not like that here in Texas [0]. The state has even paid them multimillions of dollars to cut energy consumption during extreme weather periods. [1] That money came straight from Texas citizens who gain nothing from the operations of these coin miners and who have already had to pay for the near collapse of the power grid back…
> I understand from your replies that you had a personal stake in shitcoin mining and you're pivoting to something else. Maybe for you the handwriting is on the wall.
This feels like a personal attack, which as I understand it, is against the guidelines. But, to explain... I worked for businesses with stakes. I didn't have it myself. That would be like blaming someone who works for SpaceX, for Elon's bad takes.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
May be start the manufacturing facility here and start panel manufacturing here itself !!
Panels are a commodity at this point. I hate to say it but mineral extraction, processing and panel manufacturing will be way more expensive than importing from China. Prerequisites for manufacturing panels here at an even remotely competitive price includes reducing labor costs and extracting/refining minerals at scale. I absolutely agree we should onshore solar production but simply onshoring manufacturing isnt the…
This mindset lies at the center of neoliberalism and should be examined with nuance and perspective, since the quality of each individual's experience can vary wildly in a market which accepts such inequalities as necessary for the health of the overall system.
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.
No, that is a red herring. That exact comparison would be only for greenfield projects disconnected from everything else. When connecting to an existing network, the existing (and future) generation on it is also important. For instance, if the network already has a high enough amount of gas generation, 10MW of solar or 10MW of nuclear would reduce the use of fossil fuel by the same amount; the same applies to reducing the use of water stored in hydroelectric dams.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What about at night? Or when it’s cloudy?
Wind, hydro, and storage. Pumped hydro has already existed for a long time for helping nuclear with load following https://www.wbur.org/news/2016/12/02/northfield-mountain-hyd... and as battery prices fall and production ramps up, even battery based storage is likely to become feasible for grid-scale storage.
Plus, when the hydro storage fails and floods a town, that’s still pretty bad.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Pumped hydro is very dependent on geography. Good luck doing pumped hydro in Kansas.
Sure. No solution is one size fits all. This particular solar installation happens to be in Colorado, very close to a lot of area where pumped hydro would be extremely cost effective. Somewhere like Kansas, wind power and battery based storage may be more effective. Here's a map of pumped storage hydro potential; note how dense the potential is throughout most of the Western US. https://maps.nrel.gov/psh