Requiem for a Solar Plant

Systemic and Regulatory Obstacles

• Many readers see the story as illustrating broad US failures: mineral-rights law trumping energy needs, utilities underinvesting in infrastructure, and unstable, opaque rules that make serious investment risky.
• Others stress that some constraints (e.g. line limits, safety-driven interconnection requirements) are genuine physical issues, not just bureaucracy.
• Several note that interconnection upgrade costs in US markets commonly hit hundreds of thousands of dollars per MW, causing many otherwise viable projects to be abandoned.

Motives, Taxes, and Ethics

• Strong debate over the project’s origin as a way to mitigate crypto capital gains via Qualified Opportunity Zone and solar tax credits.
• One camp calls this a “tax dodge” that shifts public burden and would be better resolved by simply paying taxes.
• Another camp argues he was rationally “following the incentives” the government deliberately created to spur renewables, no different than any subsidized factory or startup.
• A long subthread disputes whether deferring capital gains is a harmful “handout” or a reasonable way to favor investment over consumption.

Grid, Interconnection, and Project Design

• Several commenters argue standalone merchant solar is a poor model: better to co-locate with a load (factory, water plant, aluminum smelter, Bitcoin mine) or at least add batteries, especially in Texas.
• Others counter that even unsubsidized, storage-free solar is still “free energy” the grid can always curtail if needed; calling it net-negative is seen as wrong.
• The author explains batteries were intentionally avoided to keep regulatory complexity and project size down; the real project-killer was discovering degraded wires and a much tighter export cap than initial studies suggested.

Costs, Geography, and International Contrast

• European readers are struck by high projected capex per watt versus EU utility-scale PV; some attribute this to US trade policy and protectionism.
• Comparisons to Germany show that while mineral rights may be simpler there, permitting, auctions, and environmental reviews can be even more grinding and uncertain.
• Others question why US scores highly on “ease of doing business” given such stories.

LLMs and Trust in the Narrative

• One thread uncovers that the article’s first draft and many internal “quotes” came from an LLM (Claude), based on the author’s outline.
• This raises concerns about blurred lines between factual postmortem and dramatized “movie treatment,” and whether readers are being misled.
• The author defends LLM use as ghostwriting for clarity and style, but acknowledges the broader trust issue.