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100-MW solar farm just broke ground in Wisconsin
- JumpCrisscross 2y agoWhat are the implications of a zero-emission renewable grid in part of the country and carbon-intensive grid in another? (As a hypothetical.) Can we extrapolate power prices and volatility? Transmission opportunities depending on time of day?
- jeffbee 2y agoIf you're going to transmit energy it is easier to do it in the time domain than over a distance. MISO does not seem to report storage resources, so maybe they are only just getting started in terms of time shifting.
- tencentshill 2y agoWhy choose a state that gets heavy snowfall? Is the solar potential in all the sunny states saturated?
- largbae 2y agoWhy not both? I don't think solar panels are scarce, no need to hold back investment up there.
- bryanlarsen 2y agoOverbuilding & batteries in snowy areas is cheaper than an HVDC line from a sunny area. https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2020/12/27/the-future-of-electricity-is-local/ https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2020/12/27/the-future-of-...
- nilsbunger 2y agoIt’s hard to wrap your head around how cheap solar is getting. Only get 1/4 as much sunlight? Just deploy 4x the panels!
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago> Just deploy 4x the panels This is where we're having issues. Solar production is ramping up spectacularly. But if we're going solar only, we need to move our 2050 targets out.
- cowsaymoo 2y agoYes, globally we are pretty behind on our wind targets, which have much denser output per turbine than square unit of panels. It's important because the wrong land use changes can be self defeating for some carbon accounting scenarios.
- ellisv 2y agoI really want solar just to power my AC in the summer – any extra production would be bonus. However, the payback period is still too long for me to justify it.
- ericcumbee 2y agohave you looked at the mini split units by EG4 that take MC4 connectors straight in from a bank of PVs? it might be cheaper than you think.
- Scoundreller 2y agoI’m waiting for a refrigerator that does this and uses grid for backup/high demand. Refrigerator is an almost ideal use case because newer ones are inverter-drive and run around the clock. And inverter drive means it runs off DC at some level. A fridge is the one thing I really want to have work at some degree in a grid outage. Everything else I can work around pretty well.
- nilsbunger 2y agoOh that sounds useful. Basically bypass the grid and just power an ac directly. Do you have any examples of units like this?
- philipkglass 2y agoThe US does not have a nationwide electric grid, so adding more solar power in Arizona or Florida can't supply Wisconsin with electricity. Early solar farms were very concentrated in sunny states because the equipment was expensive enough that they couldn't make money elsewhere. As solar equipment has fallen in price, there are more places where a solar farm can turn a profit. That's why solar farms are now being built in places like Wisconsin. States like Arizona are still adding solar farms each year but now less sunny states are also building solar farms because falling equipment prices have made it practical.
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago> US does not have a nationwide electric grid, so adding more solar power in Arizona or Florida can't supply Wisconsin with electricity The Midcontinent ISO stretches into East Texas [1]. A unified grid wouldn't solve the problem, because it's one of transmission capacity and thus cost, not integration. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midcontinent_Independent_System_Operator https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midcontinent_Independent_Syste...
- timerol 2y agoBecause the local power economics favors some solar everywhere, due to congested transmission. Compare to Antelope Valley in SoCal, where one ranch is 230 MW, and to total CA solar, which has almost 50,000 MW and is projected to grow 50% over the next 5 years, according to https://seia.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/California-1.pdf https://seia.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/California-1.pdf
- Auracle 2y agoTransmission isn’t free. Also, there are usually only a few really heavy snowfalls a year. The rest would presumably melt off pretty quickly, though I’m no expert.
- nilsbunger 2y agoIn California we pay a lot more for transmission than generation. Is that true in most places ?
- nobody9999 2y ago>In California we pay a lot more for transmission than generation. Is that true in most places ? I can't speak for anywhere else, but had my bill handy and it's 2/3 delivery/transmission and 1/3 electricity here in NYC.
- JumpCrisscross 2y agoWould note that both New York and California have absolutely garbage transmission economics.
- s1artibartfast 2y agoYep. Wholesale electric contracts for electricity producers in California are as low as 3-4 cents per kilowatt hour. Many prices at the meter are closer to 45 cents per kilowatt hour. It certainly doesn't help that our monopoly transmission companies are regulated by price caps set on a cost plus basis. They have every incentive to drive up their costs and make transmission as expensive as possible.
- nobody9999 2y ago>Would note that both New York and California have absolutely garbage transmission economics. Is that as compared to other places in the US? Around the world? That's not a gotcha question, as I've lived in NY for most of my life and more than the last 25 years, so I don't really know how utility companies in other places operate. Although I'd expect it would be pretty similar across the US, no?
- renewiltord 2y agoIt’s profitable everywhere right now. The limit is whether you can build.
- LordHeini 2y agoSnow doesn't really matter if you remove it. And solar cells work way better if it is cold due to silicon having a lower resistance at lower temperatures. So it's not all bad if it is not overly dark.
- pfdietz 2y agoAlso, if the modules are put in at high angle, up to vertical, they work better in winter when the Sun is low in the sky, and snow does not accumulate. In the summer one can even grow things between them. If the modules are bifacial, light scattered off the snow or sky behind them can be captured on the back surface.
- vizzier 2y agohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5AVO1IyfA9M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5AVO1IyfA9M Video linked earlier in the thread that gives a visual on what exactly this looks like.
- Molitor5901 2y agoSnow doesn't really matter if you remove it. But.. someone has to go out and remove that snow, unless they have something like the Starlink dishes, but I question the reliability of that in such a cold environment. It might end up costing more to keep the panels clean than the energy they produce.
- simplicio 2y ago"You periodically have to remove some snow" is a reality for basically everything in Wisconsin. Stuff still seems to get built there.
- Molitor5901 2y agoTrue, but are they solar powered? I love solar and want to see it literally everywhere, but think they could have chosen a better spot. I hope it works, very well.
- greenthrow 2y agoBecause people need power in Wisconsin and even there solar is cheaper than fossil fuels. Also snow isn't a big deal for solar. Clouds are the problem.
- lbrito 2y agoThis is really small scale compared to elsewhere in the world. Is this news because of the climate of Wisconsin being unusual for solar energy?
- greenthrow 2y agoIt's news because the US is a big time laggard in renewables for a variety of terrible reasons. (Mostly oil/coal lobbying and utility monopolies stifling competition.)
- rootusrootus 2y ago> the US is a big time laggard in renewables Could you clarify this statement? For Solar, the US seems to be doing fine. Not leading, but not a laggard by any definition. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_by_country https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_by_country And in total capacity: https://www.statista.com/statistics/267233/renewable-energy-capacity-worldwide-by-country/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/267233/renewable-energy-... Solar & wind are the cheapest energy sources by far, and battery tech has gotten much better and much cheaper very quickly. The free market in the US is very responsive, AFAIK we're building new renewable capacity as quickly as it can be attached to the grid.
- Temporary_31337 2y agoI assume OP was talking about US manufactured solar panels. Just buying PV from China is good for China only- they keep the profits, expertise and can choose to deploy the best panels for themselves if they feel the need.
- nojvek 2y agoPV themselves aren’t the most expensive part and US PVs aren’t double the cost of China. Competition is progress.
- burkaman 2y ago
- dr_orpheus 2y agoI don't know how common it is, but this is the first time I had seen an announcement of a large solar installation with bifacial modules. I assume that the bifacial modules are more expensive, but I don't know what goes in to the math to make them worth it or not. Does somewhere snowier get more benefit from the bifacial solar arrays because you can get a lot of albedo from the snow?
- xnx 2y agoThere seems to be a real interesting mix of pros and cons (total watts generated through the year, by time of day, susceptibility to dirt and hail damage, reflections, etc.), especially with regards to mounting. This guy goes into a lot of detail: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5AVO1IyfA9M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5AVO1IyfA9M
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- pomian 2y agoAlmost the same cost. It seems the frames and connections are decisive. Let alone mounting system. ( Ref: Just recently priced 20kw options.)
- megaman821 2y agoMaybe they will angle the panels differently during the winter so snow falls off, and then the back panel will become more important capturing reflections and low sun.
- nojvek 2y agoLand per sqft is usually a lot more expensive than panels. Bifacial above ground capture more of solar, esp if the ground reflects solar back. Many YouTube experiments where people have captured an extra 100-150W from back panels yielding 500W+ per panel. And bifacial is only slightly more expensive than mono panels. With higher efficiency the price is worth it. For residential solar with batteries, the price of panels is barely 10% of the cost. Labor, permitting, connectors, inverters, framing take a huge chunk of the cost. I imagine utility scale has lower overhead but the tradeoff for bifacial would have given positive ROI.
- chickenbig 2y agoRoughly speaking https://globalsolaratlas.info/detail?c=45.346354,-92.69989,9&s=45.41966,-92.452698&m=site&pv=ground,180,39,100000 https://globalsolaratlas.info/detail?c=45.346354,-92.69989,9... . It has a predicted 5.5GWh (7.4% capacity factor) in December versus 14.7GWh in July (20% capacity factor) and an annual capacity factor of around 15%. This is still a good deal better than in Northern Europe where 10% is more typical.
- OptionOfT 2y agoPolk County, Wisconsin is at a 45.46 N. That is the same latitude as Milan, Italy and Southern France!
- ourmandave 2y agoAre they going to build it in the shadow of the Foxconn factory?