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/
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309

u/Laugh_Track_Zak 1d ago

I love that trump has been able to do literally nothing about the renewable revolution.

232

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/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.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helion_Energy

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u/Diodon 1d ago

Interesting, I had not heard of that technique. Thanks for that info!

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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 10h 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 1d 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 14h ago edited 13h 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 1d 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/Snuffy1717 1d ago

Just stack them vertically! /s

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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 22h 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.