The Ute Tribe will construct one of the largest solar farms in the US • Hacker News Board

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

#211

Post by worik » Sat, Feb 17, 2024, 8:55 PM UTC

AtlasBarfed wrote: post #199

Areading314 wrote: post #124

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…

> The nuclear industry needs to figure out how to make it a lot cheaper. And no, it's not just the NIMBY regulation.

It is very expensive, there is no way around the extreme engineering costs of nuclear reactors. Even before trying to make then safe from threats extant and possible.

That is before the unknown costs of handling long term waste using technology that has not been proven, or invented, yet

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

#212

Post by worik » Sat, Feb 17, 2024, 8:59 PM UTC

tfourb wrote: post #174

Jgrubb wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I doubt they're morons, more likely perfectly intelligent and know exactly what they're doing and for whom.

"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."

Incentives explain a lot more than ethier

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

#213

Post by doodlebugging » Sat, Feb 17, 2024, 9:01 PM UTC

latchkey wrote: post #206

doodlebugging wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

If you're so upset at what happened in Texas, then you should speak up to your representatives there. To me, it sounds like a larger systemic issue than just Bitcoin mining. > 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 gui…

It was not intended as a personal attack. It was an observation that you may have been involved in the industry long enough to sense that changes were coming in near future and that it might be a good time to think about other ways to earn an income.

As far as the Texas political situation goes, I do what I can. I'm only one vote and experience has demonstrated that when you contact one of your elected reps here, the best that you can hope for is that they forget to add your contact information to their list of Texas residents who might support the election or re-election of people just like them. I made the mistake once of correcting one of my reps during a community phone roundtable discussion and later followed up with an email. Since then I have been trying (with some success) to remove my contact info from their call and email lists. The simple fact that they spam your contact accounts from every state-wide and national candidate in spite of the fact that they should know that they will never have your support tells me that they are trying to discourage people who will vote against them from participating in the process. It won't work with me but it might with others.

This is as far off of the topic of solar panels in the Four Corners region as I think I need to go today. Good luck in your new ventures.

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

#214

Post by latchkey » Sat, Feb 17, 2024, 9:07 PM UTC

doodlebugging wrote: post #213

latchkey wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're so upset at what happened in Texas, then you should speak up to your representatives there. To me, it sounds like a larger systemic issue than just Bitcoin mining. > 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 gui…

It was not intended as a personal attack. It was an observation that you may have been involved in the industry long enough to sense that changes were coming in near future and that it might be a good time to think about other ways to earn an income. As far as the Texas political situation goes, I do what I can. I'm only one vote and experience has demonstrated that when you contact one of your elected reps here, the…

> it might be a good time to think about other ways to earn an income.

Ethereum switched from PoW to PoS. GPU mining stopped. The company I was working for wound down. So, yea... way ahead of you.

Bitcoin is about to halve its emissions. I expect a lot of miners to shut down (or at least continue to concentrate into the larger corporations).

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

#215

Post by HDThoreaun » Sat, Feb 17, 2024, 9:12 PM UTC

op00to wrote: post #210

lambda wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Pumped storage requires creating new lakes, destroying existing ecosystems.

And creating new ones. Why are the existing ones more valuable?

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

#216

Post by HDThoreaun » Sat, Feb 17, 2024, 9:19 PM UTC

latchkey wrote: post #142

lukan wrote: post #76

"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.

Metal smelting has the often frowned upon side effect of generating super fund sites.

Luckily the indian reservation has plenty of empty land to pollute.

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

#217

Post by zdragnar » Sat, Feb 17, 2024, 9:21 PM UTC

AtlasBarfed wrote: post #194

zdragnar wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Safety usually isn't the problem. It's the public notice periods, feedback collection, final notices, environmental impact studies, lawsuits over whether the environmental impact studies were sufficient, possible need to get the government to invoke eminent domain, studies over which potential version of a project needs the least disruption, and so forth. Near where I live is a bridge over a river that needs replacin…

Meanwhile collapsed Minneapolis I-35W bridge (remember that? Gusset plates, etc?) got replaced in something like 7 months, they picked a colorado company and started construction very quickly. Of course a half dozen local construction companies filed suit but the bridge was built really fast. Right next door to that bridge are three other projects: a cliff/dirt collapse/erosion/retaining project that kept the river p…

A friend of mine was on I35W, about a half mile or mile before where the bridge collapsed, and had to take an exit to get off the freeway. Lots of small quirks of fate slowed down his trip that day just enough that he wasn't over the portion that collapsed when it went down.

I think a part of the difference is that the federal government provides funds for maintenance of the interstates, and the sheer volume of traffic that was being re-routed down other roads that weren't really intended for the extra traffic (adding lanes to 94 certainly helped some).

Shame that it requires a catastrophe to see what we can really do when it needs doing.

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

#218

Post by wizardwes » Sat, Feb 17, 2024, 9:23 PM UTC

snickerbockers wrote: post #181

solardev wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some tribes were able to secure federal recognition, which grants them a more official diplomatic relationship in regards to their dealings with the federal and state governments of the United States: https://www.bia.gov/faqs/what-federally-recognized-tribe > Because the Constitution vested the Legislative Branch with plenary power over Indian Affairs, states have no authority over tribal governments unless expressly…

I might be wrong here, but I was under the impression that their sovereignty was something they possess of their own accord and not merely because the Federal government chose to recognize them? I seem to remember being taught in school that the native american reservations exist because of treaties signed by the united states government with sovereign nations (those nations being the native americans) and that the U…

Well, yes and no. Theoretically, I could create my own sovereign nation on whatever land I want. But if nobody recognizes that sovereignty and applies their laws to that land instead of mine, am I really sovereignty? These reservations exist on land that otherwise is part of the USA. If the government decides not to recognize their sovereignty and say the treaties are void as a result, unless they can mount a resistance, they aren't really sovereign at that point.

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

#219

Post by samatman » Sat, Feb 17, 2024, 9:26 PM UTC

loeg wrote: post #176

samatman wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a serious overestimate. Figuring a 90% capacity factor for the reactor and 20% for the solar installation, it's 1005MW delivered power for the former and 151MW delivered for the latter. That's 15% of one reactor, or put another way, it would take about six and a half of these solar installations to provide the same power as one reactor.

My impression (trying to read charitably) was that the 756MW figure included some capacity factor, if an extremely optimistic one. (For the nuke, a reasonable capacity factor of 95% of 1100W is still more or less 1100W.) Of course you are correct if the stated figure is maximum output of the solar farm.

I've never seen solar installations reported as anything other than nameplate.

I don't like it. I do like renewable power, but this kind of puffery makes people think that we're right on the verge of building an all-renewable electrical grid. Which we are not.

We could have a zero-emissions electrical grid in ten years, by embracing a nuclear baseline, putting in a bunch of solar and wind where it makes sense, and adding some battery storage to soak up the intermittency of the latter. But when people read solar by the nameplate, they think it's 7x cheaper than it is, and try to compare that number to nuclear, rather than the actual one.

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

#220

Post by s1artibartfast » Sat, Feb 17, 2024, 9:30 PM UTC

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!

For what it is worth, a lot of environmental work is very hands on. I have a friend who's full time job was to walk in front of tractors and make sure they don't run over snakes. Another who's job was part of a large team with the job walk power lines under construction and make sure birds don't nest in them. If they did nest, the construction project would be on hold for a year.