FYI this was like 10 years ago. Reddit moment

There are several on Facebook. I know people can be reluctant to use Facebook and god knows I understand, but it's really how small town Maine communicates. Luckily, it's easy enough to block the unpleasant people and just tune in to the positive ones.

It's an odd thing to miss, but I miss that. Doesn't really happen in southern Maine. So closed in down here. You have to go to the ocean for openness.

Listen OP we are moving forward now, not backwards :)

You’ll get downvoted but you seem to be the only one here that knows what they’re talking about. The price per MWH will actually go in the negatives making you have to shut down your main power suppliers when the suns out, then a cloud goes by, these things drop their output by 70% and now all the sudden things need to be up and running again. Without battery storage these things are creating disasters for grid stability.

A cloud makes solar power scarce….

Theres a Facebook group named 'Maine Hiking' that is very active. You could try there as well.

I can't say I miss Caribou, but I do have fond memories. I have no real reason to ever visit, but I'm planning to visit Maine in general for the 2024 solar eclipse, so maybe I'll end up in my old stomping grounds just for fun. I haven't been up there since 2008.

Maine does not own I-95, thats a Federal highway and as such is Federal property.

Yes, China needs to modernize, that's why they're building a shit ton of solar panels, and it seems to be working pretty well so far.

US also needs to modernize, maybe we could also build a shit ton of solar panels, since it seems to be working in other places.

The new solar incentives in the IRA are pretty substantial so no better time than now.

What if we took it out of the pockets of the wealthy, but didn't let them continue to charge us? Can we do that one? They've been taking shit out of our pockets for ages now.

The problem is solar panels aren't lightening the load. Solar panels work when we have the least amount of load. We'd still need all the other means of energy production for dusk to dawn. And those other means of power can't be shut down by a flip of a switch, and they can only be idled down so far if at all.

Solar is good, but it won't be great until we have energy storage.

So really, how?

Lol glad I’m not the only one who noticed his emphatic H

Fuck all that, the energy consumption duck curve alone.

Also I'd imagine the trees/plant life in the median are stopping a fair bit of erosion, and cutting wind speeds.

Dust here could mean air particulates, as in salt/sand, exhaust fumes and residue, or a plethora of others.

Pretty sure that area doesn't have the snow fall we do.

People leading you away from just solar panels are your friends. Solar panels can't fix the world right now, we don't have adequate energy storage, especially in Maine where we have massive needs for power at the exact times solar stops producing. The duck curve just doesn't allow for it

In fact I'd argue only adding solar panels wouldn't change prices at all. Power plants are super costly to shut down and start up, and they have set flexibility in how much or little output they can sustain. So we can't just shut them off when the solar panels start producing and turn them back on when we need the power, and it turns out we consume the most power right before and right after solar panels produce.

All a massive solar panel project would do, right now, is flood the market with power at the times we need the least amount of power.

Now lunar panels, that's what we need.

Pretty sure you could get the time and cost way down by reestablishing maine Yankee and not building from scratch.

Solar and wind have time and costs associated as well, and adding in batteries to combat Maines duck curve would add a metric fuck ton of cost, if it was even feasible.

I used to work for the video company that makes those ads 😶‍🌫️ one of the bosses really likes the “bad deal” messaging.

I think if we built a bunch of nuclear plants, the cost would be less. and if they weren't criminally mismanaged like vogtle and vc summer (literally, in the case of vc summer) it's certainly possible, plenty of other countries have built new reactors in the last 40 years.

also I don't think cost is the number one obstacle. New England already has the most expensive electricity in the nation, (outside of Hawaii where you don't need heat or air conditioning), and we refuse to do collectively agree to do anything about it.

I do support a combination of renewables and nuclear.

The only US nuclear power plant under construction (Vogtle 3 and 4 in Georgia) will cost more than $30 billion for 2234MW and has taken over 13 years to build. Hinkley Point C in the UK will cost £32.7 billion for 3200MW and will take over 11 years to build. Right now it's straight up not a feasible solution unless you can get the costs and time way down.

Solar and wind, even with batteries, are a fraction of the cost.

The money comes from the fed who print as needed. Your money and this whole economy is a joke

Aroostook born and raised. They shut down the road to PI from like Caribou? Damnnnn I do miss home, but central Maine feels like South Carolina

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