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Minnesota solar project set to replace retiring coal plant reaches 710 MW
(www.solarpowerworldonline.com)
this post was submitted on 06 Sep 2026
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Where did you find this info? I found this "Battery storage is planned as well, with as much as 600 megawatts eventually possible if approved" which assuming it's 600MWh, it'll provide less than an hour worth of energy. But even 3GWh covers only 4 hours.
Would that not be 4 hours of not consuming non-renewables? Like not burning so much coal is a good thing no?
Are we arguing about the measure of progress in the United States? Cuz buddy I'll take any progress at this point.
Are we arguing? I thought we were talking 🤷 . Yes, but that also means that the rest of the time the energy has to come from somewhere. Like a coal power plant or similar. So this photovoltaic power plant is not a complete replacement for old power plant, but more like a partial one while still relying of fossil fuel, especially during winter and cloudy days.
We typically use more power during the day (industry, mostly), so the solar helps us reduce carbon based infrastructure need even without batteries. And it's just a baby step in the progression to renewables. Yes, we have a long way to go.
As all the world has. If we really want to prevent CO~2~ (and other bad) emissions, we need energy storage and a lot of it. Or nuclear. That said, these are steps (without proper energy storage) in right direction, but only as long as they replace energy from fossil fuel power plants.
Sorry, I might have gotten a little defensive there.
My point is if it supplements their energy consumption with cleaner energy it's a good thing.
Even if its for a couple minutes or a couple hours its a positive improvement.
No worries. It is, if it replaces fossil fuels. But it soon gets tricky if it is supposed to be a stable source of energy. For that we'd need awful lot of energy storage, probably in some form of batteries (sodium perhaps). Today it's relatively easy to slap solar panels everywhere, but it's not that easy to provide energy outside of daylight.
Yes we need to go further but, sometimes it feels like we make perfect the enemy of progress.
I'd love to see a large public works project that aims to increase the energy storage capacity/development across the world.
I don't feel like we get there by focusing on it not being a complete solution.
You aren't assuming peak hour load levels, right? Load at night when you run off batteries is lower
@kindtoeveryone in another thread:
Also, overnight you won't be needing the full output, I would guess. And I'm sure they can draw on other sources.
So it is 3GWh. Better than 600MWh. While the power requirement during nights might be less, it's still a problem, specially during winter (short days, clouds, heat pumps etc.). And you need to charge those batteries as well which significantly lowers the power output during the day.
You can see California moving to deal with this issue via battery storage:
https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/zone/US-CAL-CISO/live/fifteen_minutes
Pumped hydro is better, but not available everywhere.
I expect sodium-ion batteries to be the main type of storage going forward, but who knows?
Depending on geography, but yes, it's rare that you have all requirements for it (hill, river etc.)
These certainly seem like the future. There is also fusion, but it won't be feasible in near future if ever.
Honestly fusion isn't worth talking about. The closest fusion has gotten to a viable power plant is Quaise, the geothermal startup that uses a maser (microwave laser) for drilling.
Speaking of which, geothermal might well be the main baseload power plant.
Fusion is still making progress, though. Slowly, but progress nevertheless. I'm not sure how geothermal is viable in general but if we can harness it, it might do very well also for heating.
I mean, yeah, that's kinda how it works.
That's industry standard at this point: storage of 4 hours worth of the nameplate power rating of the battery storage system.
If we really want to get rid of bad emissions for good, it should be way above that.
No, if you're only now discovering this fact, you're probably not very familiar with the engineering tradeoffs that led the industry to settle on 4 hours of capacity for any given power rating. These systems are designed to fully discharge every night, and 4 hours is a good guarantee that it can.
If you have the batteries to build an 8 hour system, it's more effective, at this stage in the game, to build 2 separate 4 hour systems and place them in different places. That will offset more high-carbon peaker plant usage, compared to a single 8-hour system.
In future buildouts, the number might be able to creep higher after peaker plants are obsolete year round, but for now building a bunch of 4-hour storage sites is the most cost effective way to decarbonize.
How does that work during winter?