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The biggest solar-plus-storage project in the US just came online.

ksmithaz1 said:
This thread . . .



All over as in the electric grid runs all over the western US and energy from the Palo Verde station is likely to go anywhere on that grid. You asked where the solar farms are going to go, well we are already shipping electricity from here in Arizona, to a big chunk of the nation, as part of the grid fed by the Boulder Dam and other large scale projects. I'm thinking you could get happy in Texas and drive loads up through the middle. North East is a little more problematic, but I'm sure we can find some suitable real estate in smaller chunks that we can keep 1/3-1/2 of the sites in sun most of the time.

Lot's of Big Sky country up to the north actually gets more moderate precipitation and clouds. I saw a couple of solar farms in Boise when I was up there last year. It's coming.
Click to expand...

They consume more than they produce so yes, California has power tentacles that it uses to take power from other states leaving them living like the Amish.
 
OffGridForGood said:
They list the project area as 4600 acres = 7.16 sq.miles
I recall a few talks, where it was stated " a solar area 100miles x 100miles (10,000 sqmiles) would collect all the energy needed by the whole country.
10,000 sqmiles / 7.2 = 1/1389th (0.07% )
we just need 1389 more solar farms this size. {and just need to build 53 of these per year for 26 years...}

Put another way, this solar installation has 1.9 million PV panels, and to build out 1389 more installations of this scale would need a total of 26.4 billion PV panels. (worldwide PV production is about 1 billion panels per year) it would take at current production rates, 26 years to build just the PV panels needed for the USA, alone. If USA energy use is 16% of the world total, then 6x the 26.4 billion PV panels are needed worldwide. About 162 years of 2023 rate of PV panel production.

Put another way, the Installation was quoted to cost $1.7 Billion (including the large ESS and PV)
to build 1389 more of these, at the same cost is about $2.3 Trillion. 10% of the USA annual GDP - spread over the 26 years it would take to produce the PV panels (at current world production rates) this would amount to 90 billion per year. Yes, costs would change over a 26 year period, costs would also scale if 53 installations this size were built per year, every year, for the next 26 years. In 26 years we would be due to change out the PV from the first built installations with new panels.

The 162 years of (2023) production to build out the energy needs of the entire world would cost in the order of 14.5 Trillion, or 14% of the world Annual GDP, ie spread over 162 years, the cost is about 1% of world GDP per year.
Click to expand...
Lovely calculation..
1.7 b is still cheaper than the av nuclear reactor, and this will need no additional investments/ inputs, nor any 100.000 radioactive waste for the next 30 years where as a nuke does...
 
houseofancients said:
Lovely calculation..
1.7 b is still cheaper than the av nuclear reactor, and this will need no additional investments/ inputs, nor any 100.000 radioactive waste for the next 30 years where as a nuke does...
Click to expand...
Technology has changed in modern nuclear generation. In fact, most of the ”spent” rods currently in the storage pools right now can be used for generation of electricity.
 
Checkthisout said:
Yikes. So now you have to generate the entire day's demand in 6-12 hours.

Even nukes don't do that.
Click to expand...
I assume these batteries do get charged from the grid when there is an excess..
In ca all new homes need to have solar, therefor a huge duckcurve will exist.

How come you are so overly negative here ?
Works exactly the same as for your home, just at a much much larger scale
 
houseofancients said:
I assume these batteries do get charged from the grid when there is an excess..
In ca all new homes need to have solar, therefor a huge duckcurve will exist.

How come you are so overly negative here ?
Works exactly the same as for your home, just at a much much larger scale
Click to expand...

Solar doesn't work well in Northern climates, especially in winter with winter weather and cloudy days, snow and day length.

I'm skeptical of the gung-ho ness at installing it at grid level over huge swaths of land and using massive disposable battery banks.

If California cannot meet its own current demand via solar then nowhere can.
 
All this stealing of the sun's warmth to generate electricity is going to create Solar Winter. LA will be covered by an ice sheet a mile high. Penguins will become a common sight in Texas. Polar bears will feast on seals as far South as DC.

On the plus side though prices for solar panels will be practically nothing. Too bad all the copper was used up in the making of all the solar farms and you now have to use steel wire for your PV project.
 
Mattb4 said:
All this stealing of the sun's warmth to generate electricity is going to create Solar Winter. LA will be covered by an ice sheet a mile high. Penguins will become a common sight in Texas. Polar bears will feast on seals as far South as DC.
Click to expand...
Have you notified Al Gore of this?

Mattb4 said:
On the plus side though prices for solar panels will be practically nothing. Too bad all the copper was used up in the making of all the solar farms and you now have to use steel wire for your PV project.
Click to expand...
I don’t see a plus side. There won’t be any sunshine leftover to power the rest of our solar panels.
 
houseofancients said:
I assume these batteries do get charged from the grid when there is an excess..
In ca all new homes need to have solar, therefor a huge duckcurve will exist.

How come you are so overly negative here ?
Works exactly the same as for your home, just at a much much larger scale
Click to expand...
The California "grid" used to pay other states to _take_ their excessive energy during peak times.
With battery solutions like this you can start charging the batteries instead.
win-win
 
SouthWest USA seems well suited to extensive solar buildout - peak daily solar = peak dail A/C loads generally (yes?)
Winter = less solar AND less A/C loads.
It would be interesting to see solar-PV shade structures for automotive parking lots, and the solar can charge the EV's while they are parked; drivers are Working/Shopping/doing things.

Other areas need other solutions to daily solar collection/night power uses/cloudy weather.
Solar and pumped hydroelectric seems like a good pairing - West Virginia ?
 
There are interties that connect different area grids to each other. I have collected fossils near the Pacific DC Interite that connects Washington/Oregon area to Southern California. This line can send power in either direction ... south to California in summer and north in winter.

There is a proposed intertie in Wyoming that would connect the east and west US grids together. This could accept power from multiple sources and send it to either side to provide more flexibility and resiliency to the entire US grid. We just need more of these.
https://wyomingintertie.com/
 
Q-Dog said:
There are interties that connect different area grids to each other. I have collected fossils near the Pacific DC Interite that connects Washington/Oregon area to Southern California. This line can send power in either direction ... south to California in summer and north in winter.

There is a proposed intertie in Wyoming that would connect the east and west US grids together. This could accept power from multiple sources and send it to either side to provide more flexibility and resiliency to the entire US grid. We just need more of these.
https://wyomingintertie.com/
Click to expand...
Similar strategy happening in my area:
until quite recently, the NW was not electrically connected to the NE/S -Ontario.
 
houseofancients said:
Lovely calculation..
1.7 b is still cheaper than the av nuclear reactor, and this will need no additional investments/ inputs, nor any 100.000 radioactive waste for the next 30 years where as a nuke does...
Click to expand...
Mostly because of two reasons. The anti-nuke lobby does whatever it can to make nuclear as expensive as possible so they can point and say "see this is too expensive". We have not been good about simply improving proven designs (See reason 1). You need a template design that is reasonable, then put it in without spending billions on environmental impact studies and legal costs. Improve this design as you move forward incrementally. I might note that covering 10 acres of land with solar panels is likely to have an environmental impact we are going to ignore because it's solar darnit, but I digress.

We need ALL this stuff. Abundant and inexpensive energy makes the world go round, and brings prosperity to the poorest elements of society. Before someone gets up on a soapbox and starts preaching, you need to follow the money, and look at the real science. Plenty of corruption to go around in anything involving this much money. The only one I'm not fond of is wind, but there are places where it might be ok but if you want to put up your money for it have at it. Yes, it's asthetics, every time I drive down I-10 between here and Cali, I see all those unsightly windmills. Marvel's of engineering, but I thing it really ruins the landscape, and I have trouble believing they truly have a good ROI. Not my dirt it's sitting on so more power to ya.

I think the future bodes well for us to continue to expand the energy supply from a wide variety of sources. We need to use them all and gradually transition to the sources that make the most economic sense for wherever are and whatever you are doing.
 
HighDesertOffgrid said:
Best to avoid the great plains.
https://diysolarforum.com/threads/p...ail-did-to-massive-nebraska-solar-farm.64968/
Click to expand...
Meh,

Poopey Happens. There always have been, and always will be freak events. When stuff like this happens, you may have to re-think your paridigm, come up with more hail resistant designs, automated cover systems, swivel systems, etc, or just plan for replacement. The farm above was decent sized but not exactly huge. If you had 20 dotted around, it's unlikely you would have taken them all out.
 
ksmithaz1 said:
Mostly because of two reasons. The anti-nuke lobby does whatever it can to make nuclear as expensive as possible so they can point and say "see this is too expensive". We have not been good about simply improving proven designs (See reason 1). You need a template design that is reasonable, then put it in without spending billions on environmental impact studies and legal costs. Improve this design as you move forward incrementally. I might note that covering 10 acres of land with solar panels is likely to have an environmental impact we are going to ignore because it's solar darnit, but I digress.

We need ALL this stuff. Abundant and inexpensive energy makes the world go round, and brings prosperity to the poorest elements of society. Before someone gets up on a soapbox and starts preaching, you need to follow the money, and look at the real science. Plenty of corruption to go around in anything involving this much money. The only one I'm not fond of is wind, but there are places where it might be ok but if you want to put up your money for it have at it. Yes, it's asthetics, every time I drive down I-10 between here and Cali, I see all those unsightly windmills. Marvel's of engineering, but I thing it really ruins the landscape, and I have trouble believing they truly have a good ROI. Not my dirt it's sitting on so more power to ya.

I think the future bodes well for us to continue to expand the energy supply from a wide variety of sources. We need to use them all and gradually transition to the sources that make the most economic sense for wherever are and whatever you are doing.
Click to expand...
Nuclear is always more expensive that wind / solar / hydro including massive scale batteries.
Why no new ones are build is simple economics, not even talking about the waste that stays dangerous for 8000-10000 years.
The waste may have become less, yet we still cannot make it safe
 
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