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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

#251

Post by thehappypm »

lambda wrote: post #71
NegativeK wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 p…

Idk.

Plz bro, just 10 more years and the next design will finally solve all the probs.

I don’t like solutions that don’t ever make real progress. Solar is getting cheaper in real-time, as are batteries. Nuclear is getting comparatively more expensive every year.

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

#252

Post by thehappypm »

XorNot wrote: post #226
tfourb wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In that case you'd also need to model how the cost changes if you combine solar with wind and other renewables. Wind and solar are to some extend complementary (there is statistically more wind when there is little sun and vice versa). You'd also need to account for distributing solar and wind across large geographic areas (i.e. the U.S. is so wide that there are a few hours difference between the sun setting on the…

Thats still building 2x the power generation (and you've got storage in there too). Those wind turbines aren't free. They have different maintenance costs too. You don't get to say "oh well it'll be 1GW of solar if we also build 1GW of wind" because that's not the project. This is all an excuse to talk around Solar's god awful capacity factors which take the shine off those $/MW headlines.

Yeah, but peaker plants exist. 2 GW of wind + solar will actually reduce 2 GW of peaker plant usage.

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

#253

Post by lostapathy »

dralley wrote: post #148
lambda wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Pumped hydro is very dependent on geography. Good luck doing pumped hydro in Kansas.

I know "Kansas is flat" is a popular trope, but it's not even that accurate.

Depending on how you measure, lots of states are flatter than Kansas. Florida is the flattest state by nearly all measures. Illinois is crazy flat as well.

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

#254

Post by lostapathy »

adrianmonk wrote: post #192
alexpotato wrote: post #151

Whenever I see comments about how slow public projects are these days, I think about this documentary: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/race-under... It's a PBS special about the history of the Boston subway (which was one of the first in the nation). To give you an idea of what construction safety was like back then, they would routinely encounter gas lines, cut them WITHOUT turning off the gas, and…

> they would routinely encounter gas lines, cut them WITHOUT turning off the gas, and keep working That's still done today, evidently! A few months back, there was a small gas leak in my neighborhood. When they knocked on my door to say they'd be working in the area, the repair crew leader was kind enough to indulge my questions. I asked them if my gas would be shut off. They said no, they do the work while the gas i…

> I asked them if my gas would be shut off. They said no, they do the work while the gas is still on!

My understanding is that most "last mile" gas lines are pretty low pressure and low flow. On purpose, so that if theirs a leak they aren't releasing massive amounts of gas into the atmosphere in a hurry, so the concentration doesn't raise to dangerous levels.

Then when they are working on the lines and in those pits to make connections, they have detectors to tell if there's a dangerous build up, and ventilation to ensure it doesn't happen anyway.

The system generally being low pressure is why sometimes during really cold periods when demand is high, the gas company has to adjust field regulators to increase flow so that demand can be met. They normally run at low enough flow that if everyone's furnace and stove and water heater all run at once, the lines would effectively run out of gas.

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

#255

Post by codersfocus »

soulofmischief wrote: post #207
nonethewiser wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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.

If you examined your thoughts more closely, you'd realize they're ridiculous.

Should we pay everyone the same in a given country? Should a food deliverer make the same as a surgeon? No? Then this creates an economic hierarchy already. This economic hierarchy exists for countries as well.

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

#256

Post by codersfocus »

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…

There is the concept of "agrivoltaics" where solar and agriculture can be colocated. Apparently, certain fruits and veggies grow better with a bit of shade provided by solar panels.

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

#257

Post by krupan »

XorNot wrote: post #223
bboygravity wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that really cheaper though taking into account that the cheap ones (and perhaps the expensive ones too) have a lifetime of about 50 years and cannot be recycled at all? That doesn't sound sustainable at all to me.

Recycling is not a magic word for "cheap". Landfilling a bunch of panels every 50 years is fine: they're "just" sintered sand.

Yes because land is free, according to solar power proponents

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

#258

Post by skeyo »

KennyBlanken wrote: post #127
ayk3 wrote: post #86

Contrast this news with that of LPEA from neighboring Durango area putting a stop to new solar installation due to maxing out energy needs https://www.durangoherald.com/articles/la-plata-electric-put...

Promote electric vehicles, heat pumps, inductive cooktops, and other decarbonization that would increase electricity demand since you've got a plethora of electricity? Nope. Incentivize home energy storage and invest in grid level energy storage and encourage purchasing EVs that can be used as grid batteries? Nope. Invest in better grid-level interconnects to export electricity? Nope. Work with the community to attra…

Keep in mind, that contract was signed way back in 2000 and things were pretty different back then. I also believe it was signed by a primarily conservative LPEA board.

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

#259

Post by krupan »

usrusr wrote: post #246
SoftwareMaven wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 remo…

Exactly. And a nuclear plant does not change the ecosystem like all those other things you mentioned.

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

#260

Post by psychlops »

helsinkiandrew wrote: post #122

> 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.” That’s a surprisingly vague statement on a billion dollar project. I’d expect there would be spreadsheets and models estimating production/consumption locations for decades out and the company would be quoting a percentage figure even if that was a guesstimate.

When people say things like that you know they aren't spending their own money.
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