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Toyota to buy clean power from a $1.1B solar farm in Texas
- tppiotrowski 2y ago$1,100,000,000 / 815000 kW = $1350 per kW Seems kind of expensive at this scale
- vdvsvwvwvwvwv 2y agoMy naive calc: At 10% interest and 4c/kwh guess at a wholesale price: You pay $135 interest for $350 of power. So there is room for profit and operational cost.
- toast0 2y agoDoesn't seem out of line with the average reported by lbnl[1] of $1.43/WAC (or $1.08/WDC) in 2023. [1] https://emp.lbl.gov/utility-scale-solar/ https://emp.lbl.gov/utility-scale-solar/
- wafflemaker 2y agoEnergy costs $0.1 per kW in Norway. What's wrong? Ok, energy costs $0.1 per kWh (h is important) and that's operational cost, while the number above is the infrastructure cost of creating an installation able to supply the wattage above.
- voiper1 2y agoCompared to what? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source#Capital_costs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source#... Coal is $4000 per kW This solar project is right on the average at $1,327, although NREL says it can cost upto 2743. Some investment group says a 1MW coal plan would cost similar or upto 4x the cost: >estimates suggest that the construction cost of a coal-fired thermal power plant can range from less than $1,000 to $4,500 per each kilowatt of installed capacity. https://esfccompany.com/en/articles/thermal-energy/coal-fired-power-plant-construction-costs/ https://esfccompany.com/en/articles/thermal-energy/coal-fire... So, seems just about average and on just the construction cost - cheaper than coal.
- tppiotrowski 2y ago> Compared to what? My comment was based on 1kW panel on Amazon.com is $500 delivered but there's likely a lot of nuance in quality and lifetime and labor for these projects
- Faaak 2y agoAnd what about the inverter, the mounts, cables, high voltage grid connection, monitoring, land purchase?
- lazide 2y agoThat is… literally not how solar works. Coal runs 24/7 pretty predictably. 1kw of coal means 1kw of power 24/7. Solar output varies heavily throughout the year, with only limited times where 1kw will be produced by that panel. On average, you’d be lucky to get 2-3 hrs a day at that capacity, and 8 hrs total of any significant output. Also, the output from that panel needs to be converted/inverted to be used, and those inverters are expensive too. If you want to produce electricity 24/7 from those panels, you’ll also need batteries. So figure 5-10x the cost of a single panel to somewhat reliably produce that panels equivalent in energy 24/7 - assuming you have the space.
- pastage 2y agoThere are so many problems with simplifying power usage and production, there is no silver bullet. The costs are always based on todays markets. I think coal should be relegated to a baseline emergency power role, there are several problems with that statement depending on where you are in the world and what role coal has there.
- bamboozled 2y ago[flagged]
- MrVandemar 2y ago[flagged]
- oldpersonintx 2y ago[dead]
- notTooFarGone 2y agoThe good old "no ethical consumption under capitalism". Solar is the best we got for a good price. And it's clean AF in comparison to the common alternatives.
- throwawaysleep 2y agoThese people tend to be climate change denialists trying to say that we should just use coal as it works out the same.
- XorNot 2y agoHow about you go look up the answers to all those heavily studied questions, published in freely available reports by numerous organisations if you're so concerned? Apparently your concern doesn't rise to any desire to seek out data which is readily available.
- MrVandemar 2y agoNone of that information you mention was in the cited article; the rest was my own musing on the topic. And reasonable too: there's a lot of green washing about, and it is better I think to be sceptical than to take the foaming press-releases of marketing departments (or superficial articles) at face value. As for researching the minutae and coming up with a definite position on the issue: like many of us who live under capitalism, I don't have time. I've spent the last two weeks intermittantly planting about 200 tree seedlings, a much better use of time I feel.
- XorNot 2y ago
- smolder 2y agoI commend Toyota. I don't know to what degree this is greenwashing, but I suspect it's... less than average. I may be biased, but I think they're responsible stewards of their market share. They seem to be huge for the right reasons: concentration on quality and doing right by customers, and investment in technology that raises the bar for what to expect from cars and automakers, going back decades. HFC vehicles might not be the [near] future but I can't complain that they've tried.
- christkv 2y agoI mean considering this. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c1wwj1p2wdyo https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c1wwj1p2wdyo I don't know about responsible stewards.
- smolder 2y agoI sort expected a reply like this or something about their faulty ECU code and unexpected accelerations. I can't really argue these points effectively, so I'll just say: maybe I'm wrong.
- christkv 2y agoFunny thing is they are still my preferred brand just from reliability and the low cost of ownership
- belorn 2y agoThe goal of matching 45% of its purchased power with renewable electricity (in 2035) seems fairly average of what the typical grid user will likely get in 10 years. The word "matching" is what carries the implications. They could be saying that during optimal weather conditions when solar/wind is flooding the grid and the prices are at the lowest, they will pay an additional to 45% of their purchased power, in order to "compensate" during periods of suboptimal weather when gas, goal and oil is the primary energy (which also mean when the power supply is low and prices are high).
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