In the US, the economics of coal power generation are marginal at best, and a large number of coal plants have shut down as cheaper renewables and natural gas have surged. The Trump administration has used a number of methods to swim against this economic tide, the simplest of which has been to order plants scheduled for closure to remain operational.
In response, the Environmental Defense Fund checked the generating stats for the area served by the TransAlta Centralia Coal Plant, which is the last remaining coal plant on its segment of the grid. According to Energy Information Administration data, coal contributed just 8 megawatt-hours in January and February, an amount of energy the solar panels on my house can produce in roughly eight months. This, the EDF said, is consistent with the plant simply maintaining the capacity to come back online.
From Jan1 to Dec 31 2025, my home solar panels generated 19.5MWh. That’s well over double what that coal plant produced in two months, and I produced far less CO2 doing it.
That’s… Not very impressive? Don’t get me wrong, renewables are just better and coal is even worse than other forms of generation, but that number is nothing to brag about. It’s like saying i did 15 push ups last year in response to the person who did their first set of 10 or whatever for the day.
Just to cut this off right here: you people are incredibly stupid. In this comment I’ve pointed out that coal is the worst form of power generation that we have (that i know of, anyway), just that it’s pointless to compare your solar panels to an inactive power plant. No where did i even imply any of this was good.
Buddy he’s comparing his rooftop solar to a dang power plant. In your analogy he’s saying “I did 15 pushups myself” to a football team that just managed 10. Dude has enough solar he’s probably selling back to the grid if they allow it, let me inform you that it is in fact kinda impressive
Comparing an entire year of what you generate to what a plant that isn’t even actually online can generate in 2 months is beyond pointless, especially when they didn’t even get very much more then the coal plant.
This take is making me dumber and I have no idea how to meaningfully engage further. Maybe someone can animate the situation for you with the power plant as a six thousand year old high schooler or whatever and it’ll click. A small appliance on dude’s roof is making ~1/6 the power of this entire piece of infrastructure. That absolutely speaks volumes as to the utility of keeping it online
It’s not online, it’s maintaining it’s capacity to be restored. If it was actually in use it’d produce much more energy. You can’t be this stupid.
The owner of the plant is trying to take it offline to convert it to natural gas to be cheaper to run, less environmentally damaging, and produce more electricity. source The DoE under trump is not letting the owner upgrade it to methane (natural gas) because the plant won’t be consuming coal after the upgrade.
Forget environmental benefits for a second. Just from a money perspective electricity from coal is a money loser.
I’ve never said coal was good you halfwits, i said it’s pointless comparing your solar panels to an inactive power plant.
Thank you for showing us who you are.
“My solar hotdog cooker cooked more hot dogs than the pilot light on your gas oven!”
Basically yeah. These people are so desperate to look environmentally conscious they refuse to actually think about what they’re reacting to.
I literally cannot bend my brain in a way that makes what you said make sense.
Using simple math, we can divide the 12-month total by 6 to find out that this guy’s house produces almost half as much electricity as an entire coal-fired power plant, all without having to buy and burn any non-renewable fuels.
No it doesn’t. The plant isn’t producing energy right now. It’s only doing the bare minimum to make it viable to start actual production later (which it probably won’t do btw). And I’ve specifically said coal was worse than even other nonrenewable forms of energy production.
Exactly.
How many millions are being wasted to maintain a power plant that isn’t even running?
I may be making a mistake in engaging in dialog with you. If so, I might bow out fairly quickly depending on your response. Your response here shows me you’re not even close to understanding whats occurring with this power plant and the comparison to my solar panels.
I’ll start with some facts and see if this helps your understanding:
With all of those employees, and all of that operational cost I’m producing not quite half the the same amount of electricity and I’m doing zero work with zero dollars to accomplish that.
All of this together means that the operational cost per MWh from this particular coal plant under these particular conditions is $4,676,562.50 per MWh for coal. For my solar panels is $0 per MWh.
Do you see how just crazy insane this situation is? How much of a waste of money it is to keep this coal plant operating as it is? Do you see why even the owner doesn’t want to operate this plant like this but is being forced to by trump’s DoE because trump likes coal?
Please show me where i have professed any support for this decision, I’ll wait.
Yep, it was a mistake to respond to you. Have a nice day!
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This site suggests average home.energy use is 10.5 MWh
https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/use-of-energy/electricity-use-in-homes.php
OP is genererating almost 2x that.
Without the CO2 overhead.
Without the need for a massive lamd footprint of a giant plant.
You’re not very smart, are you?