Interesting article about repurposing grid infrastructure as fossil fuel plants are shut down. (CNN) [View all]

A polluting, coal-fired power plant found the key to solving America’s biggest clean energy challenge

By Ella Nilsen and CNN Chief Climate Correspondent Bill Weir
5 minute read
Published 4:00 AM EDT, Mon September 16, 2024


Becker, Minnesota CNN —

The smokestacks on the aging Sherco coal power plant tower over gleaming solar panels that stretch across thousands of acres of farmland.

The polluting coal plant is on its way out, scheduled for retirement in the next five years. It’s generated billions of dollars’ worth of electricity in its 50-year life, but the most valuable of its parts is the plug — how it connects to the grid that powers our homes.

Instead of letting it go to waste as the fossil fuel plant closes, Xcel Energy is going to leave it plugged in to connect the largest solar project in the Upper Midwest, and one of the largest in the entire country, directly to the grid.

Repurposing the so-called interconnection system is short-circuiting what could have been seven years of bureaucracy and red tape to get this electricity distributed to its customers.

Experts say this is the secret to solving America’s clean energy dilemma: There is more electricity from clean energy waiting to get connected to the grid than the entire amount of energy currently on the grid. The years-long delays are an existential threat to many projects’ chances of getting built.
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more: https://www.cnn.com/2024/09/16/climate/coal-to-solar-minnesota/index.html


The attention-grabbing headline is a bit exaggerated, of course. But it draws attention to a bottleneck that I don't think most of us are sufficiently aware of.

The Berkeley researchers apparently don't mention if they found cases where nuclear plants could be advantageously sited near old FF power plants. I suspect that by deploying smaller reactors, instead of pursuing what Freeman Dyson analyzed as "false economies of scale" through huge, multi-gigawatt installations, there would be no shortage of such sites. After all, both FF and nuclear power plants use cooling towers and need to be near a reliable flow of water. It might be best to consider retiring FF plants for new nuclear installations first, to take advantage of those water sources before other generators are built "in the way".