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.
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?