Comment by vasco
2 days ago
If they didn't need maintenance why upgrade them? You didn't address that part of my comment. You can put upgrades on new ones that you'll deploy and track performance of each deployed cohort. You only go and remove already deployed ones if you really have to.
>If they didn't need maintenance why upgrade them?
We don't know, but there are other reasons besides maintenance and it is a huge unfounded assumption to say that is the only reason. Upgrading an existing installation for better performance is likely orders of magnatude less expensive than building additional units, building the archor points, and emplacing them, so it could have been getting more data out of less budget.
They may not have permits/authorization for additional locations yet.
The upgrades may provide a significant ROI improvement and the only reason they didn't upgrade all of them was to leave one to look at long term reliability while sacrificing the improved ROI.
But fundamentally, we just don't know. While required maintenance is one possibility, it is by no means the only one.
as this seems test plant, research/testing seems also possible