I am always wondering why the US scores so well on these "ease of doing business" rankings???
Even taking into account that this was a risky business idea, relying on subsidies etc., both property and interconnection to me seem like areas where the legislation could be clear and predictable. Adding in the ever-present risk of litigation in the US, I wonder if my stock portfolio is maybe a bit too reliant on this market.
Requiem for a Solar Plant
91–100 of 119 posts
Re: Requiem for a Solar Plant
#92One of the problems with undisclosed and thoughtless use of LLMs for writing, like ChatGPT in this case, is that it undermines trust. Take the many quotes in this article, which all sound like ChatGPT. Obviously, none of those people said those words, or even anything all that like what they supposedly said, because that's not what real people sound like. If the author is willing to silently do that (which could be u…
Hi Gwern, I'm the owner of 7goldfish, the developer in question, and a fan of yours via reputation and the occasional comment I run into on Reddit. First I want to acknowledge that draft one of this was LLM written, by Claude, though it reflects a pretty detailed outline of an experience pretty accurately. As you point out the quotes from both Mr. R and myself were also mostly spat out by the LLM as well (though not…
I think writing fiction with LLMs is fine. "based on a true story" or roman à clef fiction is also fine. I would have no objection to this if it were clearer that this was a "movie treatment". (As LLM fiction goes, this isn't even all that bad.)
However... Look at this HN page! Not a single person here realized (before my still-downvoted comment) that this was a 'movie treatment', or that the 'quotes...were also mostly spat out by the LLM as well'. They all are taking it as 100% gospel, and engaging with it in good faith, as if it were genuinely a 'technical post-mortem' (as it takes pains to present itself) instead of your fiction-writing hobby,
Just make it clearer that this is a fictional story.
> I'm curious if you consider having a ghost writer to be lying, or a cinematic re-enactment
Yes. This is why ghost writers are supposed to be credited as such if they are contributing non-trivial content rather than simply serving as a amanuensis or an editor, and cinematic re-enactments are flagged as such if it wouldn't be obvious to a reasonable person (by reputable documentarians, anyway).
Re: Requiem for a Solar Plant
#93Aside from all the turbulence of trying to get a project off the ground, the deciding factor was that the electrical transport infrastructure (aka wires) couldn't support the desired load of 4.5MW-10MW and was slashed to 3MW, making the project inviable?
To me, the "obvious" solution is to create solar plants closer to their use and lay down new infrastructure. From my understanding, one of the major reasons to have power plants so far away from urban centers is because they were dirty or location locked (waterfalls, etc.). With solar, this need essentially goes away with the ability now to put solar plants essentially in the middle, or directly adjacent, to urban centers.
Could someone enlighten me as to why this is not feasible or if someone is already discussing this idea?
Re: Requiem for a Solar Plant
#94Aside from all the turbulence of trying to get a project off the ground, the deciding factor was that the electrical transport infrastructure (aka wires) couldn't support the desired load of 4.5MW-10MW and was slashed to 3MW, making the project inviable? To me, the "obvious" solution is to create solar plants closer to their use and lay down new infrastructure. From my understanding, one of the major reasons to have…
Urban land is expensive.
Re: Requiem for a Solar Plant
#95Ah 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.
Batteries are very important to reliability, but not the only way to exploit solar. Not all loads are the way you think they are. And it wouldn’t have a net negative value to the grid (it is literally free energy, I am always shocked as to why this is so hard to understand) because the grid can always curtail it if it impacts grid’s reliability, or if it increases transmissions costs beyond a certain threshold which they have already calculated (as a good legalised monopoly that they are).
You are propagating some decades old ideas which don’t hold anymore.
Re: Requiem for a Solar Plant
#96Earlier quoted context omitted.
The tax credits aren't coming out of the grid somewhere else. The project is a negative to tax revenue, positive to the grid, and positive to CO2 levels.
He's using the tax credits to undersell projects with storage that would have been more positive for the grid. Solar without storage in Texas is coal to Newcastle. Subsidizing bare-bones solar is not good for the grid.
Because they don’t want to upgrade the grid, don’t want to compromise even in flexible cases, and want to keep everything as is.
Re: Requiem for a Solar Plant
#97If the interconnection costs were such a headache, why didn't he convert the solar farm to produce electricity consumed only locally to mine Bitcoin?
Hey, I'm the original author here. I didn't want to do BTC for two reasons: 1) I'm already WAY over exposed on crypto in my portfolio 2) I consider energy burn on mining to be part of a "zero sum helps no one" situation. I was trying to actually do something net positive for the world so didn't want to just drop more into that bucket.
As for (2), there are so many other ways to exploit that electricity. Mining Bitcoin isn’t the only way. But I agree, you should have considered batteries, and more flexible loads into your calculations as to how to be profitable. 3MWh is considerable for many usecases.
Re: Requiem for a Solar Plant
#98Zero sympathy from this quarter - what started as a tax dodge to, let's face it, defund schools, hospitals and social security, ended up as a "poor me" self-effacing blog post.
tax incentives to create solar infrastructure are designed to create solar infrastructure, I don't understand why it's being described as a pejorative "tax dodge" when the government directs funds this way rather than takes the money directly and buys those things.
Re: Requiem for a Solar Plant
#99Every time I learn something new about Texas, I like Texas less. At least Dr Pepper comes from Texas. There’s that to like. Everything else just always seems upside down absurd.
I'm curious what part of this you thought was an indictment on Texas.
ERCOT has the most generator-friendly interconnection process in the nation and leads the country in both renewable generation and utility-scale solar installations.
Mineral rights are dominant over surface rights in most jurisdictions, including other states like California. To call it "insane" just shows how little experience Mr. R has in land development.
OP lost the game playing on easy mode because he was purely chasing tax breaks with zero experience. The area OP is trying to develop in is a QOZ for a reason; he should have expected there to be upgrades necessary to delivery that level of power to a substation in an area where nothing else is going on.
OP is actually lucky that this project failed. Expecting to get the ISO-average solar PPA price for a project in Coleman County is nuts. This solar farm would have lost even more money had he continued.
Re: Requiem for a Solar Plant
#100Ah 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.
> His install would have a net negative value to the Texas grid without it. Absolutely untrue. Solar and wind can always just be disconnected at any moment. Wind resources are also a huge inertia source- windmill blades are massive grid stabilizers. Renewable tech does not have a big coal fire they need to keep at a constant temperature. How about instead of requiring batteries with solar, we require coal plants to h…
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