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

241–250 of 302 posts

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

#241

Post by deaddodo »

Gibbon1 wrote: post #232
deaddodo wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

2.96bln USD 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.

Worth noting GDP is per year. Where the project cost is over the 30 year life[1] of the project. Through the magic of finance 35% becomes 1.17%. [1] One feels that 30 life for something where components can be constantly replaced as they wear out is a misnomer.

Doing the same to the Filipino project drops it down to .35%, so the total impact is still 1/3 that of the Ute project.

Additionally, the Ute will need to weather that impact for a full 30 years, while the Filipinos will only need to for a few.

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

#242

Post by nonethewiser »

visarga wrote: post #225
robertlagrant wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's hard to know what you're saying. Everything should be examined carefully (although you can't examine something "with nuance" - nuance is not an examination tool). What are you actually saying? If $1 buys a good meal somewhere, but it costs $15 for the same meal somewhere else, paying someone less in the former location is not a moral failing.

A meal might be 15x cheaper, but a phone, laptop, car or anything imported will surely not be cheaper.

> A meal might be 15x cheaper, but a phone, laptop, car or anything imported will surely not be cheaper.

Im not sure I understand what you’re saying because it absolutely is orders of magnitude to import phones and laptops. Cars have more tariffs to protect the domestic market so Im unsure about that one.

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

#243

Post by latchkey »

HDThoreaun wrote: post #216
latchkey wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That makes me sad.

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

#244

Post by fuzztester »

nonethewiser wrote: post #193
sciencesama wrote: post #191

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…

>Frankly im not even sure the labor cost is even solvable. Will probably always have to utilize low foreign wages

An entitled and creepy af attitude, if there ever was one.

"Foreign" "wages" are not going to stay low forever.

Already gone up and going up in some countries.

Think (and act) smarter, dude.

Only the fittest of the fittest shall survive.

- Bob Marley (Could you be loved)

https://youtu.be/CRkfqH1r714?si=8FsPUVBnizwkixvB

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

#245

Post by woooooo »

robertlagrant wrote: post #222
soulofmischief wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Will probably always have to utilize low foreign wages 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.

It's hard to know what you're saying. Everything should be examined carefully (although you can't examine something "with nuance" - nuance is not an examination tool). What are you actually saying? If $1 buys a good meal somewhere, but it costs $15 for the same meal somewhere else, paying someone less in the former location is not a moral failing.

As a consumer, of course you buy what's cheaper and that's not a moral failing.

Policy makers on the other hand should consider externalities, and optimize for making them less bad, or at least not make them worse.

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

#246

Post by usrusr »

SoftwareMaven wrote: post #228
belorn wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Building nuclear in a desert feel a bit like building hydropower dams in a desert. It does not really make sense and whatever the capacity factor is, being in a desert should increase it. 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 n…

There is an ecological cost to miles and miles of solar panels. Desert ecosystems are extremely fragile, and these kinds of projects can be very damaging. It’s not just wasteland. (Said as a desert Southwest denizen and lover who gets the impression that many people think, “oh, there’s no trees? It’s unimportant land.”) I want the Utes to have success in this, but I don’t want the general attitude to be “trash the de…

The ecosystem will change, no doubt about that. Just like it changes when we start agriculture somewhere, or pastoralism. Even if we consider that the new ecosystem of desert with a lot of shade might affect neighboring pristine desert within quite a radius, there will still be a lot left in the foreseeable future. Very much unlike agriculture and pastoralism, which have been pushed into almost every corner even remotely viable for millennia.

It might be worthwhile to exclude certain areas of particularly rare variations of the ecosystem to be built in. But it's easy to end up with too much red tape that will be abused for NIMBY and by people who hide a fossil yolo attitude behind a facade of conservationism.

Perhaps there could be some mechanism for operating some veto quota, "pick the project you want most desperately to be stopped"? That scheme would probably end getting gamed in the ugliest ways, with sacrificial decoy projects getting proposed, not vetoed and then getting built to keep up appearances. Better not, heh.

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

#247

Post by AYBABTME »

anonporridge wrote: post #175
thelastgallon wrote: post #53

I wonder if the tribes have enough autonomy to build transmission lines quickly. Just the Navajo Nation can build enough solar/wind and transmission lines within their reservation and probably connect to the grids in Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Arizona. US is incredibly slow in building transmission lines, takes decades. And, if they have enough autonomy to import Chinese panels (50% cheaper), a network of these n…

Related. Even as energy production prices from solar trend towards zero, end user energy costs is still going to be lower bounded by transmission costs. California in particular is getting a nasty taste of this, with many customer's bill being mostly transmission costs. However, this is largely because they're paying for PG&E's lawsuit payouts and regulatory required upgrades. Energy can be free, but reliable and saf…

The crazy thing is that CA has ample solar power and the average house likely can be entirely offgrid with a large enough battery system.

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

#248

Post by robertlagrant »

visarga wrote: post #225
robertlagrant wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's hard to know what you're saying. Everything should be examined carefully (although you can't examine something "with nuance" - nuance is not an examination tool). What are you actually saying? If $1 buys a good meal somewhere, but it costs $15 for the same meal somewhere else, paying someone less in the former location is not a moral failing.

A meal might be 15x cheaper, but a phone, laptop, car or anything imported will surely not be cheaper.

> anything imported will surely not be cheaper

Possibly not, but that can't be solved purely by employers. If a country for whatever reason does not have the economy to support this, this can't be solved quickly. Companies won't pay $15/hr to overseas workers; they'd probably just not spend the money there at all. That's the choice you're giving them.

Also - it probably will be cheaper, for three reasons:

- the local market won't bear the real price, and while this means less profit, it's still some profit, or presence, or whatever reason the vendor is selling for

- a similar but slightly different product might be offered. E.g. I bought a car in South Africa and it was a slightly simpler spec compared to the UK equivalent, despite looking identical

- local labour, fuel tax, sales tax, and other costs all increase prices. Driving the goods to a shop and buying them from it is a pretty different cost in different countries.

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

#250

Post by doodlebugging »

latchkey wrote: post #214
doodlebugging wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

>way ahead of you.

Comedy must be your true calling.

Post reply on HN