Requiem for a Solar Plant
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Requiem for a Solar Plant
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Re: Requiem for a Solar Plant
#2This is a good story that taps into a lot of the systemic failings in America that hinder progress. Failure of the state to prioritize energy sufficiency over hypothetical mineral rights. Failure of utility companies to maintain their infrastructure to modern standards. Failure of governments to produce consistent and predictable business environments. Failure of bureaucracy to prepare creators and visionaries for success.
All of this results in good intentions being squandered because too many entrenched entities would lose too much hypothetical value on a balance sheet to just do something better for everyone.
Re: Requiem for a Solar Plant
#3So with mineral rights in Texas, could you just buy/lease them out from under one of your rivals/enemies and just bulldoze their buildings for the lulz? "Sorry, I just really needed that teaspoon of dirt from under your multimillion dollar factory". I guess that's the whole idea of the insurance/waivers, so do you need 50% of the owners of the rights to agree?
Also, I heard that Texas was the best place to build things (cf. Abundance by Thompson & Klein)
Re: Requiem for a Solar Plant
#4Sounds like you need to bribe some people. It is Texas
I'm sorry. Did I say bribe? I of course meant campaign donation?
Re: Requiem for a Solar Plant
#5I worked for about 8 months on an internal product for doing transmission studies at a large utility company. Basically, it would feed a PSS/E [1] file specifying most of the transmission grid into a power flow simulation software called TARA [2]. We would add a few extra elements to the grid to simulate a wind or solar plant. TARA would spit out all the components that would be overloaded, with or without contingencies. We would read the results and estimate the transmission costs.
Essentially, we were replicating the process that the ISOs used internally. The users of this product were all former ISO employees. The goal was to speed up the process of determining whether transmission costs were going to ruin a project before any money was spent. ISOs take months to do their analysis. The users told me that they were usually looking for $0 transmission upgrades on $50m+ projects.
The grid and contingency files from the ISOs were under confidentiality agreements. This rubbed me the wrong way from a competition point of view. We also had data about projects slated to be built which could take away capacity from our projects.
I could see a SaaS in doing this sort of analysis. It's probably bureaucratic between reselling TARA, NDAs, and maybe legal issues if the analysis was wrong. I have doubts about the market, most of the money is in big projects at big companies that are already doing this sort of thing.
[1] https://www.siemens.com/global/en/products/energy/grid-softw...
Re: Requiem for a Solar Plant
#6This is a good story that taps into a lot of the systemic failings in America that hinder progress. Failure of the state to prioritize energy sufficiency over hypothetical mineral rights. Failure of utility companies to maintain their infrastructure to modern standards. Failure of governments to produce consistent and predictable business environments. Failure of bureaucracy to prepare creators and visionaries for su…
yes, but... if youre manufacturing plant with expected electricity usage, then build solar plant next / close to your manufacturing facility. or municipality or water treatment plant or .... build solar plant because you need electricity, do not build solar plant because you need money. same as with agriculture, it is nonprofit endevour, you are not getting rich from corn, you are rich from corn sirup, from tortillas... ( unless you are bill gates and divert tax breaks / subsidies away from agriculture and put them into your wallet instead, worsening situation forr every person inside of US borders )
solo solar plant are very weird edge case which was viable only because people with 20 years of schooling could not understand why is solar important, (after multiple oil crises ) so govs invested in this nonsense to speed up adoption. not because it was sensical thing. to open eyes to people that solar is working.
build solar as part of your corps supply chain. dollars are not goal, dollars are means for better life, stronger communities, better republic.
"Failure of the state to prioritize energy sufficiency over hypothetical mineral rights. "
where is battery ? so no this is not about energy self sufficiency, this is just pure only money endeavor. soft power here is not sane. also with battery you can get order of magnitude higher profit AND higher UTILITY, so there are multiple bad things in that endeavor.
Re: Requiem for a Solar Plant
#7Sounds like you need to bribe some people. It is Texas I'm sorry. Did I say bribe? I of course meant campaign donation?
capital in capitalism.
Re: Requiem for a Solar Plant
#8Quick summary: Author had money "from crypto" and wanted to create a solar power plant in Texas. After dealing with challenging mineral rights and health issues, interconnect fees to the power company were too expensive to make the project worth it.
Re: Requiem for a Solar Plant
#9Ah yes the age old story of a rich guy without a clue diving into a new industry and failing.
They should be requiring batteries with solar as well.
His install would have a net negative value to the Texas grid without it.
Re: Requiem for a Solar Plant
#10This is a good story that taps into a lot of the systemic failings in America that hinder progress. Failure of the state to prioritize energy sufficiency over hypothetical mineral rights. Failure of utility companies to maintain their infrastructure to modern standards. Failure of governments to produce consistent and predictable business environments. Failure of bureaucracy to prepare creators and visionaries for su…
yes, but... if youre manufacturing plant with expected electricity usage, then build solar plant next / close to your manufacturing facility. or municipality or water treatment plant or .... build solar plant because you need electricity, do not build solar plant because you need money. same as with agriculture, it is nonprofit endevour, you are not getting rich from corn, you are rich from corn sirup, from tortillas…
or let me say it differently, my house needs as much energy to make it luxuriously comfortable in coldest of days, as my neighbors house loses just thru chimney, when there is no fire burning... ( he needs 50times more energy then me, but he is not comfortable, he wakes up into cold house )
there is insanely huge gap in peoples perception of reality, schooling failed many.
less energy i need, less energy we need to capture (new word for generate), transmit, curtail, store,.... my heat pump is smaller then heat pump in costcos meat refrigerator, so smaller device is easier, quicker to manufacture, less people, cars , cubic feet to store, transport,.... and all this effect from on freaking house.
or hurricane, tornado, flood disables grid in my area, my house will stay livable for 3 days until i have to put on sweater... or today, there is heat wave predicted, at least 10 people will die today,... why?