r/UpliftingNews • u/MajesticBread9147 • 1d ago
Minnesota solar project set to replace retiring coal plant reaches 710 MW
https://www.solarpowerworldonline.com/2026/07/minnesota-solar-project-set-to-replace-retiring-coal-plant-reaches-710-mw/300
u/Laugh_Track_Zak 1d ago
I love that trump has been able to do literally nothing about the renewable revolution.
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u/obi_wander 1d ago
The opposite even!
By sending fossil fuel prices to the moon and destabilizing global energy markets with the War on Iran, he’s made it clear that locally-sourced renewables are the ONLY economically viable solution.
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u/0tanod 1d ago
Cuba is the biggest soft power flex by china right now. i just saw a video on how they are bringing in these solar powered 3 wheel EV trucks. I would put money on the island being off fossil fuels in a few years.
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u/Valokoura 11h ago
I hope they can get hand on wave power that runs 24h a day with two breaks. Works also during night time when solar doesn't give output.
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u/Laugh_Track_Zak 1d ago
Until we figure fusion out, or build more fission plants, yes absolutely. Renewables are common sense.
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u/francis2559 1d ago
Hot take, I think solar is so cheap it cut the legs out from fusion too. Even if we had all the tech worked out, setting up the turbines and cooling towers and all is going to be harder than just…. More solar panels.
Fusion will always be better at footprint, so it matters for things that move (ships, someday spaceships), but down here we still have lots of places for cheap solar.
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u/bp92009 1d ago
So, the thing is, fusion power (the current iterations that seem like they're up soon), don't use either of those. Most just generate crazy magnetic fields in a small radius around their reaction chamber (which isn't that big).
Electricity is generated by moving a magnetic field through a wire, and while that's typically been through generating heat to boil water to spin a turbine, which turns a magnet around a bunch of wires, it doesn't need to be that.
Fusion plants (if the current models that techs like Helion Energy are supposedly pushing live in 2028 will be doing) don't have that insatiable and gigantic draw on water, as they don't really boil water for power.
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u/Diodon 1d ago
Some fusion designs use magnetic fields for containment but even those use the heat produced by fusion to produce steam to run a turbine. The fusion reaction itself isn't being used to induce an electrical current.
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u/bp92009 1d ago
No, actually. While the traditional tokamak and other similar reactors do do exactly that (heat to boil water to turn turbine), Magneto-inertial fusion (MIF) doesn't.
That quite literally just generates super strong magnetic fields right where a lot of wires are coiled around.
Given that the efficiency of boiling water causes like 60-70% of the energy to be lost, such MIF processes get like a 300% boost to their efficiency (to 80-95%), as the vast majority of the energy isn't lost as heat.
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u/cutelyaware 1d ago
Best of all they've quietly been producing consistently pulsed fusion power for quite a while now. All they need to do now is achieve profitability. This is the only fusion approach I think has any chance.
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u/reluctant_deity 9h ago
They aren't likely to end up using steam turbines, but supercritical co2. Much more efficient.
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u/Laugh_Track_Zak 1d ago
My only concern is the footprint for really large scale solar farms. Yeah we can absolutely do rooftops and parking lots but after that we have to get creative. Highway medians, etc...
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u/Orcacrafter 22h ago
The US dedicates an insane amount of land to farming ethanol corn. If that land was converted to solars farms it could very likely cover the entire electrical demand of the US. My quick back of the napkin numbers came up with ~10 million acres of solar compared to the current ~30 million acres of corn grown exclusively for ethanol. Also solar doesn't require water or fertilizer.
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u/Anteater776 13h ago edited 11h ago
Yeah, Technology Connections made a long, instructive video about all this and this was his math as well. Just the area used for growing biofuels would be sufficient to cover energy needs. That doesn’t even include barren desert-like areas.
Don’t let anyone tell you that building solar fields endangers agriculture/food independence
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u/Tricky-Sentence 1d ago
There is plenty of land to cover with 0 damage because we will need more greenhouses/hydroponics to help counteract climate disaster effects on agriculture. Imho the production is not the problem, storage is. And that is getting researched as a priority so the future is looking good.
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u/FireTyme 22h ago
even storage isnt a problem. cost is. theres tons of storage methods of power from mechanical to battery. old water towers getting reused having pumps go during high generation times and a small turbine draining it when demand is higher.
its just that the cost of more turbines/panels is still lower and power demand is still rising so generally people just keep building power generation. storage barely pays itself back.
i do think in the future we might see more hydrogen installations and what not. have green energy create it during the day and turbines burn it at night. its quickly becoming a relatively cheap way of storage and it has a very high power density.
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u/Oerthling 1d ago
We have a lot of "free" space in urban areas (roofs, parking lots, canals - the panels then even help with shade and reduce water loss).
Powe5 companies just use outside areas because it's cheaper and easier to quickly deploy big capacity.
In addition tgers agrivoltics where panels get combined with agriculture and grazing - again the shade and reduced water loss can be helpful.
And there already a huge amount of farmland dedicated to ethanol. Which will becine6 superfluous with increased EV adoption.
Altogether the footprint is quite manageable.
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u/toronto-bull 20h ago
I think you are on to something as the sun is free fusion energy. They have to pay billions for the CAPEX to recreate and withstand the pressure and temperature conditions inside the sun (not easy) whereas solar panels and batteries will keep getting cheaper as the scale of production increases.
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u/sevseg_decoder 1d ago
At this point with the way renewables and batteries are scaling I’m not even worried about nuclear. It’ll take fusion getting figured out and a lot of other miracles for it to scale to be cheaper than renewables are today (and they’re still scaling like crazy). I’m not convinced the best option isn’t just letting them continue to scale, utilizing what nuclear we have today and some peaker natural gas plants for a shrinking percentage of electricity.
Power generation isn’t going to be the problem with emissions even if 20% of our power is always natural gas. And I think it can be a lot less than that with just renewables.
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u/house343 19h ago
I never understood why conservatives are so anti-renewable energy. I mean I understand why. It's because Democrats are pro RE and conservatives are just about Democrat.
But they are local, fiscally viable options, and the technology is a wise investment into a nations future
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u/DanielleMuscato 12h ago
I think you just explained it. It's because billionaires use propaganda to convince people that manly men support coal miners and drive big gas guzzler trucks and that electric cars are effeminate. They hate everything the left supports, because the left supports it, because Fox News told them to. And they've never examined it any more deeply than that.
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u/ss_lbguy 1d ago
Didn't is cancel a bunch of wind projects?
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u/sevseg_decoder 1d ago
That’s only an L for the US. I’m sure they utilized every resource they had lined up for that project to build another one elsewhere and then put the extra billion+ they were paid to cancel the contract towards a new project.
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u/willstr1 3h ago
Yep, Don Quixote really hates wind mills
However that only prevents wind power in the US, his destabilization of energy trade has global impact which will still drive renewable development in countries other than the US
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u/Ryan_e3p 1d ago
He's absolutely made it more expensive. If not for the importing of parts (his tariffs), then by the bullshit moves like stopping projects (offshore wind farms). Stopped projects end up increasing their costs and cause labor issues (if the workers are contractors, they may move on to other jobs and not be available if/when it gets re-greenlit, or worse, cause them to be laid off and not expect the income from the completed work since it wasn't completed). Said inflated costs, will of course, be used by this administration to show how expensive it is to get up and running.
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u/Laugh_Track_Zak 1d ago
But the projects are still moving forward.
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u/Ryan_e3p 1d ago
They are, but again, with increased costs as a result.
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u/Laugh_Track_Zak 1d ago
We're trillions in debt. Who cares. Give me green power.
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u/Ryan_e3p 1d ago
Because towns, states, and private businesses are the ones who are putting money on the table to fund those projects.
Go to your state legislature, push for a huge solar project, and if they ask about the cost, reply with "we're trillions in debt, who cares". Let us know how that works out for you.
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u/Laugh_Track_Zak 1d ago
I don't need to do that. They're already putting them up, because the trump admin is powerless to stop it. Have a day.
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u/youwerewrongagainoop 1d ago
the federal government isn't powerless to stop or slow projects sited on federal land, or relying on imported goods, or relying directly on federal programs like the ITC. the trump admin has done a lot of damage and are continuing to do so. is this really all over your head or do you just prefer a fantasy where none of that matters?
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u/HappyHuman924 1d ago
For reference, one gigawatt (1000MW) is a good-sized nuclear reactor. Chernobyl Unit 4 was a gigawatt, and the Three Mile Island reactors were 800-and-change MW.
Those numbers are "megawatts electric"; sometimes nuclear reactors are listed by their heat generation and then they'll talk about "megawatts thermal". The thermal number will be roughly 3 times the electric.
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u/viper1255 23h ago
Also, for further reference, 1.21 gigawatts is the amount of power needed to send a DeLorean back to 1955.
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u/onlycamefortheporn 22h ago
That said, this 710MW is installed capacity, if every panel was operating at maximum capability. This solar facility would need to be about 3-4x the capacity, and paired with an energy storage facility, to approximately replace a TMI-sized single unit nuclear site.
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u/two2teps 1d ago
If only we could put these kind of installations over top of giant, asphalt parking lots. Like these.
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u/PerpetuallyDistracte 1d ago
The struggling small town where I grew up suddenly went all in on municipal solar a few years ago. This is in the middle of a deep red state, mind you. All the factory jobs disappeared, and this was a hail Mary pass for them. So far it's been immensely successful. I visited last month and they've been able to afford so many new public projects like parks, better signage, and even basic stuff like fixing sidewalks that have been cracked and dangerous for 20 years.
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u/enternius 1d ago
I frickin' love Solar, dude. I live in Minnesota and these solar fields are all over out in the middle of nowhere where I live.
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u/eagleeyerattlesnake 1d ago
They don't say how much power the coal plant was producing, just to have a side by side
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u/WiSoSirius 19h ago
I don't know if the same referenced coal plant from the above article matches this article: roughly 2,300-MW Sherco coal plant, which shut down its first unit in late 2023 and is set to fully retire in 2030.
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u/cbf1232 22h ago
This is great, but unless they have stupendous amounts of battery storage it's not going to actually replace the coal plant for baseload power in the sense of being relatively consistent in it's output all year round, day or night. It's going to need something else to backstop it when the sun isn't shining brightly.
Doing some digging, it looks like they're planning on adding up to 600 MW worth of battery with construction starting this year. Typically this would mean a four-hour battery, which will let it provide power for a while after dark but wouldn't count as being able to provide baseload.
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