I used to live not far from there, in Monticello. Everybody knew there was nuclear power plant in town, but most people when asked where it was pointed to the coal plant in this story which a couple towns away.

I think we should keep the coal plant in warm storage just in case. One big hail storm/tornado could cripple this system. Just food for thought in an emergency.

I'm not sure why you're getting down votes for this. Isn't having some redundancy or backup plan a good idea? What am I missing here?

Likely because the coal plant was set to retire anyway. No point in paying someone millions to keep this coal plant as a backup for rare events.

The Power company will have contingencies and the national grid to rely on, which are cheaper than keeping an old coal plant warm.

Because small scale breakdowns are irrelevant with today's power grids. Redundancy is provided via the next city/country nearby. Importing the power might be a few cents more expensive during peak hours, but that's nothing compared to the costs of having an outdated power plant doing nothing for years.

However, the real answer why he's being down voted is because it's a pretend intellectual argument favoured by people against renewable power generation, without actually contributing anything of worth.

It is neither cheap nor easy to keep a coal plant in working order with a supply of fuel, “just in case”. Especially one that was set to retire anyway so probably has a lot of deferred maintenance and end of life components. Very much not worth it

Redundancies for plant outages are already a feature of the grid

Hail isn't a big problem for solar

That's not possible. We need clean, beautiful coal!!! Drill baby drill!!!

/s

In fairness, I don't think that a coal power plant would fare any better against a tornado.

300 MW of grid storage too btw.

Nah, convert it to nuclear

I would have suggested that as its the best bang for the buck. But people lose their mind when its on the table...

In 2024 a tornado hit a solar field. I was wondering how the industry was responding to this.

Found this article.

https://www.powermag.com/the-solar-industry-is-getting-smarter-about-storm-defense/

Some solar trackers, for example, offer dynamic stow angles that adjust based on real-time weather conditions. Whether it’s high winds or hail, these trackers can optimize stow angle to minimize damage. A key feature of these systems is their ability to vary stow angles across a site, accounting for both complex weather patterns and diverse land contours.

I cannot find details on if these are fixed or tracking panels.

Also looking at the map, it doesn't seem like this is all one big facility, but distributed across a few miles.

https://xcelnew.my.salesforce.com/sfc/p/#1U0000011ttV/a/R300000FUW0E/7e5aROHbB8Gc6t9GXRh3bZLWmosuYiDjb7ZPfTVZYHg

You want nuclear plant and natural disaster to meet each other?

all this solar projects are going to fail

300 MW for how long? A second? An hour? A day?

Building nuclear in a country with proper safety standards and everything is insanely expensive, where did you get the idea that it's the "best bang for the buck"? There are always cost overruns and they tend to be a multiple of the original project cost estimate.

A good chunk of the cost of a nuclear plant is all the steam driven turbines and power infrastructure. That's already there in a retrofitted coal plant. And even without that, nuclear is cheaper in the long run. And even without that, not everything is about the god damned money.

explain why, please justify this comment?

I have committed the sin of mixing energy with power units.

I think its 300 MWh. Phase 3 just completed. Here is the proposal from Phase 4, which is supposedly going to increase from 300MW(?) to 600MW(?). The proposal is also kinda loose with their units.

https://efiling.web.commerce.state.mn.us/documents/{A0804E95-0000-C61C-8A33-56DF203E417D}/download?contentSequence=0&rowIndex=31

In the same way that you failed language?

If it's Lithium-ion battery storage, I'd wager the dis/charge rate is anywhere from 2-4 hours.

Assuming 300 MW, that's a 600-1,200 MWh battery.

Assuming 300 MWh, that's a 75-150 MW battery.

Rodents generating energy on a hamster wheel thingy is our last, best hope! /s

im against , i see them fail at Greece and now are just rusty metals at the field instead of farms

Also you need to keep buying/extracting nuclear fuel to run a nuclear power plant... With solar, the sun is the fuel! With no buying or extracting, it removes a big ongoing cost from the equation and significantly improves self-reliance. I don't understand how this seems to not communicate to people.

Sure thing buddy.

The exact figures:

735.5 MW AC
2,942 MWh

Verified from Minnesota PUC and EQB.

Oh that's pretty damn beefy

Psch, set up a bike/pedal generator and make people pedal to power their TV/ laptop/ video games. That way we'll have energy and everyone will be super in shape! /s

You mean like what happened in Texas? Oh wait that happened to their coal plants too.