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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

#271

Post by discordance »

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.

Calling solar panels sintered sand is an over simplification. Aside from the amount of energy and water it takes to produce them, a lot of older panels have some pretty toxic materials that can leech out... lead, cadmium etc.

We will need to process these appropriately at their end of life and not just landfill them.

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

#272

Post by [deleted] »

EasyMark wrote: post #67
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…

I know it took my local utility about 5 years just to run about 30 miles of HV wire from me seeing "announcment of public commentary" -> studies -> "final notice of commentary on route" -> building starts. The building itself took about 6 months, as it ran along a road I travel a lot. That's a long time for 30 miles of HV towers.

[deleted]

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

#273

Post by defrost »

krupan wrote: post #268

Just like damming rivers to generate carbon free energy turned them into lakes and changed the climate and ecosystems that we are trying to preserve, paving over many square miles of land with solar panels (that will all end up in landfills eventually) will change ecosystems and climates. Carbon gas is not the only thing we need to be focused on if preserving our earth the way it is is our goal. Low carbon and low fo…

> turned them into lakes and changed the climate

Global climate? or strictly local area effects?

Global nuclear currently generates approximately half the energy that hydropower does, and less than an eighth of that generated by coal and gas which is the goal to replace - to replace that with nuclear will take many many years which will then no longer be "low foot print".

All this focus on wind and solar is largely because it is delivering replacement power now and at less cost than nuclear.

> paving over many square miles of land with solar panels

You can graze animals | have market gardens | etc. underneath you know (maybe you don't, perhaps you might wish to learn more).

Solar farm trial shows improved fleece on merino sheep grazed under panels

https://www.abc.net.au/news/rural/2022-05-30/solar-farm-graz...

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

#274

Post by BurningFrog »

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.

The material came from the ground, and the landfill puts them back in the ground.

Sounds pretty circular and sustainable to me.

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

#275

Post by solardev »

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…

It is really complicated, and I'm not at all an expert, but I believe it is more complex than "they are sovereign, end of story".

Through centuries of conquest and betrayal, the US governments have eroded much of the tribes' previous power, and these days they exist under a complex legal framework in which they have some sovereignty and some autonomy, but not to the same degree that, say, Canada or China have. Their rights under US law are granted by (and can be revoked by) acts of Congress. Lacking their own militaries and international diplomacy, they are more like states than countries as we think of them.

But it's actually way more complicated than that and depends on whether the tribe is federally recognized, what specific rights Congress withheld from them, whether they are prosecuting tribesmembers, other Indians, or non-Indian Americans, etc.

At the end of the day, it unfortunately comes down to who has the bigger stick. Tribes can say no all they want but it's up to the US Congress to listen or not. And they don't necessarily have the same Constitutional protections that US states have, either. It just really depends. And again, I'm not an expert at all!

This page has more detail: https://www.uaf.edu/tribal/academics/112/unit-4/generalprinc...

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

#276

Post by XorNot »

BurningFrog wrote: post #274
XorNot wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The material came from the ground, and the landfill puts them back in the ground. Sounds pretty circular and sustainable to me.

That's my point: we really don't need to recycle solar panels. We could land fill them for the next 500 years and they'll be the least of our problems, even accounting for heavy metals.

The quip about "cheap" was that recyclability has nothing to do with it (it would likely add cost, not remove any).

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

#277

Post by latchkey »

doodlebugging wrote: post #250
latchkey wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

My partner thinks so.

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

#279

Post by FpUser »

r00fus wrote: post #233
bobthepanda wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

most of the onshoring is not dictated by cost but the realization that something that looks like COVID lockdowns of Chinese factories and ports makes just-in-time untenable. Most likely, you will see a lot of made in Mexico/Caribbean/Canada

Aka “friend-shoring”. Honestly I struggle to see why we can’t start bootstrapping some tech build here in the US.

You might want to check how much of the stuff made in Mexico uses components and materials from China

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

#280

Post by cornholio »

AtlasBarfed wrote: post #264
cornholio wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Solar is cheaper when you have a flexible and well interconnected grid capable of smoothing out, say, a cloud passing over Ute nation land and abruptly pulling 1GW out of the grid. That kind of grid costs money and we have no idea how much and how achievable it is. The alternative, grid scale storage for the full rated power, is still insanely expensive and makes renewables completely uncompetitive. Yes, nuclear is g…

Considering that full economies of scale and technology has not yet been matured in solar certainly, and possibly wind, and certainly in battery storage... Look, you're treating the current LCOE numbers and making the (mistaken or disingenuous) implication that solar/wind won't fall EVEN FURTHER, but they almost certainly will. With solar, there is perovskites and many other avenues of improvement in the core technol…

Again, this is not about the production price of renewables, which is low and falling quite predictably, but the unknown long term costs of integrating substantial intermittent production into the grid.

Believable models of achieving that goal call for setting up capacity markets where traditional suppliers are paid to not emit, and stand by to intervene when required by weather conditions, achieving close to net zero year round emissions (¹. Nobody really knows how this will end up costing because no such grid exists today.

Grid scale battery storage is still very far from competing with traditional baseload production, even when supplied with free renewables. Sodium has been the next big thing for the last decade, but its only deployments are in the experimental, MWh range. It's still far from a mature, proven technology, let alone one that can disrupt lithium in the gridscale storage space.

Perhaps you are handwaving substantial technical and economic details away and making too bold claims insufficiently supported by data. Not unlike the nuclear fanboys who are seeing thorium fast breeders just around every corner.

(¹ Btw, this is just another nail in the nuclear coffin - coal too - because they can't play nice with a fast moving grid.

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