[chasd00]

What does it take to setup a decent size solar farm? There’s a lot of cheap, flat, easy to develop land in far west Texas (Brewster county).

[epistasis]

The hardest part tends to be the interconnection to the grid, at least in most of the country. I think that ERCOT is also experiencing geographic regions with consistent grid congestion, though I can't recall which. That data is all public, but there are some providers that make it nice and easy to view:

https://www.energyacuity.com/blog/ercot-lmp-map/

[Mvandenbergh]

Grid connection, land use permissions (i.e. local planning). The latter is very easy in rural Texas so just the former really.

[voxadam]

Don't forget about environmental studies and approval.

[catawbasam]

That's a big problem in most of the US, especially the Coasts. Not so much in Texas.

[JasserInicide]

In Texas?? Lol

[rtpg]

One thing I wonder about is how far can you be from population centers in practice? I remember hearing that you want to be close or else you lose a lot to transmission but that might not be at all true

[Aloha]

Long distance synchronous AC transmission or HVDC transmission is pretty efficient - enough to overcome the inherent land pricing differential.

[fragmede]

You make the X vs Y call.

Assuming it is material, at some distance the cost of land (X) vs the transmission loss (Y), it becomes economical to choose X instead of Y

[sn9]

It doesn't take much honestly: https://www.erthos.com/