Massive Nevada Solar Farm on BLM

[mevertsen]

Here's the EIS for a massive solar farm on BLM being proposed.

BLM seeks public input for seven solar projects in Nevada | Bureau of Land Management

Proposed projects could add up to 6.2 GW of clean energy to the grid, power 1.6 million homes

www.blm.gov

 

[SD_Prairie_Goat]

Man am I conflicted on this topic as a whole.

First, I don't love the idea of losing our public lands for energy production. But we already do for oil and gas and this really isn't much different at the end of the day, especially for animals that avoid human activity, thinking primarily antelope when I picture this.

Second, that's a whole lot of power generation which will do good. I am a little concerned about the quality of writing because 6 GW is a massive amount of power. Most existing power plants are 0.75-2GW in size so either they're making a mistake in calculating and documenting the power amount or they're swinging for the fences with this project.


Hmmm, I'm going to let my internal battle rage for a bit before I decide how to feel about this. Overall I don't love it at the moment but I'm on the fence.

 

[Scott85]

100% opposed. Tons of wasted space on the roofs of buildings in Vegas. Put solar on roofs first.

 

[Hammsolo]

100% opposed. Tons of wasted space on the roofs of buildings in Vegas. Put solar on roofs first. View attachment 334283

Preach it brother.

 

[Trial153]

Solar should be on all new construction, and installed on land that is already developed.
We should not be destroying habitat to install solar or any other energy development.

 

[BigHornRam]

Lot of solar scamming going on in Nevada these days.

VICTOR JOECKS: Greenlink will cost you a lot of green

The greenest thing about Greenlink and green energy more broadly is how much money it costs you.

www.reviewjournal.com

 

[Steiny77]

Why don't they put this crap on blighted industrial sites rather than eating up undeveloped land?
They are currently taking out thousands of acres of prime, productive farmland in the midwest for solar farms.

I'd rather see one coal fired electrical generation plant occupying a hundred acre site -vs- however many thousands of acres of solar farm it requires to duplicate the same electrical consumption.

 

[Forkyfinder]

100% opposed. Tons of wasted space on the roofs of buildings in Vegas. Put solar on roofs first. View attachment 334283

Impossible to utilize this for the kind of power we are talking about generating.

Its a convient thought - but its incompatible with how this works operationally.

 

[ismith]

Nuclear, everything else is a money grab.

 

[p_ham]

Impossible to utilize this for the kind of power we are talking about generating.

Its a convient thought - but its incompatible with how this works operationally.

Can you expunge more on that? Why would panels on 500,000 Sq ft warehouses be less effective?

 

[Ben Lamb]

Her is the DEIS: https://eplanning.blm.gov/public_projects/2020804/200568720/20116188/251016168/Esmeralda 7 Solar Project Draft Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement and Resource Management Plan Amendment.pdf


Wildlife potentially impacted by this development are: Big Horn Sheep, Mule Deer, Pronghorn and a host of small game species & nongame animals.

The development's maximum footprint is 62,500 acres, or roughly half of the project side which is located in the south end of the valley. There is a supplemental biological resources amendment to the DEIS that I haven't looked at yet. The BLM has provided a ton of data for those looking to comment.

Your comment will be far more pertinent if you spend some time with the planning documents and call out specifics you disagree with, as well as generalities. Simply stating "no development" is going to get to put in a pile of comments that are counted as 1 comment submitted several times and does not carry the weight of a thoughtful, well-researched submission.

 

[LopeHunter]

Nuclear, everything else is a money grab.

Check out the nuclear reactor which China built starting in 2012 and tested last year. They tested the Gen 4 design by turning off ALL cooling. No meltdown. Went online Q4 last year. Brilliant. By the way, we have all the needed fuel for nuclear within our borders. We are morons for generating electricity any other way than nuclear. You can debate whether EVs or diesel is better for powering trains and commercial trucks but for sending electricity to a stationary object close to a grid then the clear winner is nuclear via Gen 4 design. Will we? Ha ha ha. As I said, we are morons when we continue to fear great solutions for the future based on our experiences with old technology designs.

 

[mtmiller]

I'd rather see one coal fired electrical generation plant occupying a hundred acre site -vs- however many thousands of acres of solar farm it requires to duplicate the same electrical consumption.

I can't debate this specific solar project since I haven't researched it much to this point. I did see that the proposed, full development foot print would be 62k acres (wow) including roads, power lines, etc...

That being said, and as I am certain you are aware, "a hundred acre site" is not the footprint of a coal fired power plant. I just grabbed the first link on my google machine search.

Someone smarter than me can compare the produced energy.

Maybe we can recontour the coal mine and place solar panels?

Either way, there is a huge impact to the land from surface disturbance/disruption and connected actions.

North Antelope Rochelle Mine 5,344 acres (I don't think this includes roads and rails disturbance/disruption?). Who wore it better?

North Antelope Rochelle Coal Mine

North Antelope Rochelle Coal Mine is an operating coal mine in Wright, Wyoming, United States.

www.gem.wiki

The solar pic is a screen grab from a farm in TX.

 

[Forkyfinder]

Can you expunge more on that? Why would panels on 500,000 Sq ft warehouses be less effective?

Sure - ill have some more time later and will add to this response.

A few things:
1. Adding on a rooftop includes derating the cables significantly due to higher than ambient air temperatures present on a roof. Typically these cables are either buried or shaded on a stand-alone system. As a consequence - the cables on the roof top that are the same size can carry much less current.
2. Typically - the system is the following layout - dc panels to inverter (turns dc into ac) then lower voltage ac to "medium" voltage ac. The higher this medium voltage - the less losses and the better efficiency. The MV the industry has settled on exceeds all typical distribution circuits - so the system again loses efficiency.
3. Maintaining these requires peridoic shutdowns and testing - the complexity of doing this on an elevated level on someone elses property cant be overstated.
4. Structually - these might require modification to the existing building support - especially at scale.
5. Modern grid scale solar panels "track" the sun in the east and west direction and are arranged north-south. In so far as what ive seen - none of roof mounts have this system. You can understand how the north slope of a building would limit you - or even an east or west slope from taking full advantage of the solar module.
6. The enitity financing this will have long drawn out legal agreements with landowners (both govt and private). It can take a lot of negotiating to close with a few large landowners. The time (or money since lawyers sell their time) itd take the lawyers and land people to sort through with millions of land owners simply wont work.
7. Typically - these projects deliver power at a point of interconnection (just like a coal plant). For loss reasons (utility owns the loss on t line and distribution, generator on generation t line, sub, and pv system) - its defined at a specific "node" or point in the grid. The generating company gets paid for the power they deliver at that point - how does it work when there are millions of points?
8. How can one entity develop/insure this?

Those are just a few reasons - there are certainly a lot more. The simpliest way i can explain it - its for the same reasons households dont have nat gas generators that sell to the grid everywhere vs a large single gas generator... economies of scale. @p_ham

 

[mtmiller]

Your comment will be far more pertinent if you spend some time with the planning documents and call out specifics you disagree with, as well as generalities. Simply stating "no development" is going to get to put in a pile of comments that are counted as 1 comment submitted several times and does not carry the weight of a thoughtful, well-researched submission.

The non-substantive comment pile.

 

[Ben Lamb]

Why don't they put this crap on blighted industrial sites rather than eating up undeveloped land?
They are currently taking out thousands of acres of prime, productive farmland in the midwest for solar farms.

I'd rather see one coal fired electrical generation plant occupying a hundred acre site -vs- however many thousands of acres of solar farm it requires to duplicate the same electrical consumption.

There's a great opportunity to do this in industrial areas, especially those who are struggling for localized generation. Midwestern farmers are using solar and wind to supplement their income to create some sustainability in farm economics. I'm all for it since you can still raise crops, graze, etc on a solar and wind farm and it keeps the land in a mostly undeveloped state (easier to pull up panels than a coal plant). Any energy development will have impacts, but mitigating and minimizing them through planning is a much better approach than just chewing up more country.

The project in the OP is about producing maximum energy for a large segment of humanity that is transitioning away from fossil fuels. I don't know how you get that with the kind of reliability a larger industrial project gives you through the infrastructure developed specifically for large scale transmission. Localized generation is awesome for households and individual properties and the trickle of return through net metering is handled by existing infrastructure, but to scale that up to the gigawatt level would be another few trillion in national debt.

 

[Dave N]

Can you expunge more on that? Why would panels on 500,000 Sq ft warehouses be less effective?

I would imagine trying to tie multiple smaller arrays into the system would be much more expensive and not nearly as efficient as one large system. Individual businesses might use it for themselves but preparing for the load added to their roofing just to have the juice go elsewhere would probably make people think twice about it.

I'm all for smaller nuke plants scattered around the country. It's not 1960 anymore, things are safer after the lessons we've learned.

 

[Bonasababy]

Her is the DEIS: https://eplanning.blm.gov/public_projects/2020804/200568720/20116188/251016168/Esmeralda 7 Solar Project Draft Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement and Resource Management Plan Amendment.pdf


Wildlife potentially impacted by this development are: Big Horn Sheep, Mule Deer, Pronghorn and a host of small game species & nongame animals.

The development's maximum footprint is 62,500 acres, or roughly half of the project side which is located in the south end of the valley. There is a supplemental biological resources amendment to the DEIS that I haven't looked at yet. The BLM has provided a ton of data for those looking to comment.

Your comment will be far more pertinent if you spend some time with the planning documents and call out specifics you disagree with, as well as generalities. Simply stating "no development" is going to get to put in a pile of comments that are counted as 1 comment submitted several times and does not carry the weight of a thoughtful, well-researched submission.

Exactly. Comment consideration is not a vote...you need to provide specific comments on impact concerns to have the most impact.

It would be good to see some responses from conservation groups to help with individual comments, but there too it's best to try and avoid directly copying responses.

As much as I support renewable energy sources, they are not unlike others where the zeal to support them and increase them can lead to pushing them in the wrong spots.

 

[SAJ-99]

I shall over simplify
1) Ask California to reimplement net metering 2.0 rules and put in other credits for storage, if that is the goal
2) Tell Las Vegas to turn off a few lights FFS
3) increase electricity rates and let the market take care of it.

The reason this proposal gets brought up is because solar, large-scale solar in particular, is incredibly cheap right now.

Solar should be on all new construction, and installed on land that is already developed.
We should not be destroying habitat to install solar or any other energy development.

100%, but builders complain the cost of a new home would be too high. That argument plays well in DC given everyone is screaming we have a "housing shortage".

 

[BigHornRam]

I shall over simplify
1) Ask California to reimplement net metering 2.0 rules and put in other credits for storage, if that is the goal
2) Tell Las Vegas to turn off a few lights FFS
3) increase electricity rates and let the market take care of it.

The reason this proposal gets brought up is because solar, large-scale solar in particular, is incredibly cheap right now.


100%, but builders complain the cost of a new home would be too high. That argument plays well in DC given everyone is screaming we have a "housing shortage".

Large scale solar is not cheap. Without the mandates and huge subsidies, it would not happen. Reason it is being pushed in the southwest is because that is where it pencils out the best, and faces the least resistance.

Google Image Result for http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/42/SolarGIS-Solar-map-USA-en.png