In a First, Renewable Energy Is Poised To Eclipse Coal in US (nytimes.com) 177
The United States is on track to produce more electricity this year from renewable power than from coal for the first time on record, new government projections show, a transformation partly driven by the coronavirus pandemic, with profound implications in the fight against climate change. From a report: It is a milestone that seemed all but unthinkable a decade ago, when coal was so dominant that it provided nearly half the nation's electricity. And it comes despite the Trump administration's three-year push to try to revive the ailing industry by weakening pollution rules on coal-burning power plants. Those efforts, however, failed to halt the powerful economic forces that have led electric utilities to retire hundreds of aging coal plants since 2010 and run their remaining plants less frequently.
The cost of building large wind farms has declined more than 40 percent in that time, while solar costs have dropped more than 80 percent. And the price of natural gas, a cleaner-burning alternative to coal, has fallen to historic lows as a result of the fracking boom. Now the coronavirus outbreak is pushing coal producers into their deepest crisis yet. As factories, retailers, restaurants and office buildings have shut down nationwide to slow the spread of the coronavirus, demand for electricity has fallen sharply. And, because coal plants often cost more to operate than gas plants or renewables, many utilities are cutting back on coal power first in response.
The cost of building large wind farms has declined more than 40 percent in that time, while solar costs have dropped more than 80 percent. And the price of natural gas, a cleaner-burning alternative to coal, has fallen to historic lows as a result of the fracking boom. Now the coronavirus outbreak is pushing coal producers into their deepest crisis yet. As factories, retailers, restaurants and office buildings have shut down nationwide to slow the spread of the coronavirus, demand for electricity has fallen sharply. And, because coal plants often cost more to operate than gas plants or renewables, many utilities are cutting back on coal power first in response.
Let's be completely honest here though (Score:5, Interesting)
Natural gas burns "clean" while coal leaves ash behind. Cheap natural gas made coal an inefficient form of power generation due to the costs of coal ash.
Natural gas may burn clean... (Score:2, Insightful)
...but the extraction sure as hell wreaks havoc on the environment. What's the point of a clean fuel if your drinking water can literally catch on fire?
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...but the extraction sure as hell wreaks havoc on the environment.
Not compared to coal, although to be fair we haven't reached peak fracking yet. I anticipate environmental effects to worsen as we crest the peak, because things like produced water will be peaking just as marginal profits start to shrink to zero.
But at present, every BTU produced by natural gas over coal is probably a net win, environmentally.
Re:Natural gas may burn clean... (Score:5, Insightful)
I think you are debating the fact we can't have a perfect solution is justification to keep the current bad one.
There will be trade offs for any source of energy. A solar farm will make pollution in order to create it, also large slats of land will need to be cut down too.
However the net cost is lower compared to the net benefit.
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> I think you are debating the fact we can't have a perfect solution is justification to keep the current bad one.
Hey, it's the 'net, that's what we created it for. Like this...
> also large slats of land will need to be cut down too
How do you cut down land?
See? /s
Problem drilling water wells, not gas wells (Score:5, Informative)
...but the extraction sure as hell wreaks havoc on the environment. What's the point of a clean fuel if your drinking water can literally catch on fire?
Except it's not the gas drilling the caused such a scene; it was the drilling of the water well.
From SciAM [popularmechanics.com]:
It's an iconic image, captured in the 2010 Academy Award—nominated documentary GasLand. A Colorado man holds a flame to his kitchen faucet and turns on the water. The pipes rattle and hiss, and suddenly a ball of fire erupts. It appears a damning indictment of the gas drilling nearby. But Colorado officials determined the gas wells weren't to blame; instead, the homeowner's own water well had been drilled into a naturally occurring pocket of methane.
Re: Problem drilling water wells, not gas wells (Score:2)
I honestly don't know a whole lot about the topic... but I get where you're coming from.
It's almost like coming to the conclusion that fire fighters are probably the cause of most fires, because we observe them present at so many fires.
Frankly I agree with you. Coming to the conclusion that flamible gas was present in the well being the cause without considering the industrial work being done nearby dealing with forcibly extracting flamible gas is a little short sighted, especially since flammable taps in
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> Coming to the conclusion that flamible gas was present in the well being the cause without considering the industrial work being done nearby dealing with forcibly extracting flamible gas is a little short sighted,
It's called Occam's razor.
They determined that there was gas in his well from a natural pocket. That explains the facts.
Sure, one can postulate *additional* gas might be from fracking, or maybe dead trees in a bog, or aliens.
But none of those are *required* to explain the facts. We already hav
Gas extraction happens where there is gas, too. (Score:2)
Coming to the conclusion that flamible gas was present in the well being the cause without considering the industrial work being done nearby dealing with forcibly extracting flamible gas is a little short sighted, especially since flammable taps in homes aren't a common thing;
It also seems a bit short sighted to ignore that (unlike drilling for natural gas, which may be speculative and fail to find it) fracking only occurs where there IS natural gas to extract and it has already been proven by finding it in
Re:Natural gas may burn clean... (Score:5, Informative)
The Natural Gas caused methane to be dissolved into the drinking water, which caused 1) explosions, and 2) as the water poured from the tap, allowed the water to "catch fire" by igniting the methane escaping the water supply.
Which to most persons, is reasonably described as "drinking water literally catching on fire"
https://www.scientificamerican... [scientificamerican.com]
https://www.scientificamerican... [scientificamerican.com]
https://www.the-daily-record.c... [the-daily-record.com] (references the paper from Duke about methane contamination)
https://www.latimes.com/nation... [latimes.com] State officials finding methane in texas drinking watetr
https://s3.amazonaws.com/propu... [amazonaws.com]
Cleveland, Ohio, an entire house exploded in late 2007 after gas seeped into its water well.
The Ohio Department of Natural Resources 153-page report that blamed a nearby gas well's faulty concrete casing and hydraulic fracturing for pushing methane into an aquifer
That it is causing water to ignite, and explode, has been well documented by state governments over the years.
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Neither of your two Scientific American links talk about water catching on fire - at all. They talk about people being fired, or leaks in a person's home (from their natgas supply) catching fire. Not the water.
The 3rd link doesn't even contain the word fire.
The fourth link is behind a clickbait wall - I'm not checking it. But given it's the LA Times, chances are IF it says anything about fires, it's not what you claim.
In other words, your claims are fake, and your own links prove as much. Too bad you g
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However, I will note that he said:
1) explosions
Which they absolutely do talk about, making:
They talk about people being fired, or leaks in a person's home (from their natgas supply) catching fire.
A flat-out lie.
First link:
In one case a house exploded after hydraulic fracturing created underground passageways and methane seeped into the residential water supply.
Second link:
Norma Fiorentino’s drinking water well was a time bomb. For weeks, as workers drilled natural gas deposits nearby, stray methane worked into tiny crevasses in the rock, leaking upward into the aquifer and slipping quietly into her well. Then, according to the state’s working theory, a pump turned on in her well house, flicked a spark, and caused a New Year’s morning blast that tossed aside a several-thousand-pound concrete slab.
Third link:
The contamination from drilling is “not an epidemic. It’s a minority of cases,” said Rob Jackson, a Duke University researcher and co-author of the study released Monday. But he added the team found that serious contamination from bubbly methane is “much more” prevalent in some water wells within 1 kilometer of gas drilling sites.
In other words, he definitely made a mistake in his claims... But he was far closer to the truth than you were.
I'll also note that article 3 also points out that natural contaminated wells do occur, and it also notes that this means the prevailing theory by the gas industry that gas can't migrate from so far below the
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Fun part. The claims by anti-fracking propaganda you are citing are physically impossible. Gas extracted by fracking it too deep to "seep into aquifers". It would get absorbed by layers in between.
This is not a fact.
In fact, it's come largely under question at this point not because of the drilling directly, but because analyzing natural methane gas migration from those depths without fracking has made it well within the realm of possibility that fracking can induce such migration where it was previously otherwise stable.
It's that whole "fracturing" part.
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Dear ignorant/moronic/stupid poster. It is in fact a fact that this "migration" is impossible to occur. See link above.
Events with "fire water" are typically caused by near surface reservoir breach. You get those naturally across the planet every few decades. Most common sources are right below swamps.
Fracking involves drilling deep, where even if gas where to magically escape, against laws of physics which do not allow for teleportation of matter as far as we understand them, it would need to travel throug
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> it would need to travel through several air tight layers.
Which, of course, *have* to be there, or there would be no gas to frack in the first place.
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But the renewables can keep going for several years without having to continually dig up those resources the entire time.
It's all going to come crashing down inevitably though. There just aren't the resources available to sustain the current world population indefinitely. What renewables are doing to pushing out that crash and burn date further into the future. Of course in some political wings they don't care, and they state with confidence that the Second Coming will occur any day now.
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Renewables means burning trees. Watch "Planet of the Humans"
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Further, natural gas has been getting cheaper and cheaper in real dollars since the advent of fracking. It's the sure fire economic play right now, being, by far, the cheapest source of electric power over the plant full life cycle, bar none. Further, in the USA the price of natural gas isn't likely to go up much for the next decade (factoring in inflation) or more, so it is going to kill Coal, Nuclear, you name it, for the foreseeable future.
In fact, I've argued that we need to push natural gas as a mo
Re:Let's be completely honest here though (Score:4, Informative)
Fracking has been shown by multiple studies plus literal satellite photos to be releasing *huge* amounts of methane linking the particular radioisotope released to whats in the atmosphere. And it's 20x as effective as CO2 for capturing heat.
https://archive.thinkprogress.... [thinkprogress.org]
https://www.sciencedaily.com/r... [sciencedaily.com]
and it was *predicted* it would do so.
https://www.scientificamerican... [scientificamerican.com]
https://www.nasa.gov/press/201... [nasa.gov]
And finally...using natural gas only produces about 30 percent less than oil and 45 percent less than coal. It's less. Not zero.
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And it's 20x as effective as CO2 for capturing heat.
True, but methane also persists for around 12 years. Where CO2 is estimated to take anywhere between 20 and 200 years for 65 to 80% to be absorbed by the ocean and photosynthesis. The remaining 20 to 35% takes thousands of years to be removed from the atmosphere.
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> We are *literally* burning coal which took 60 million years of plant growth to produce. Do you really think that 1 year of plant growth is going to negate that?
This.
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Nope, nat gas (and helium) is often vented anyway and not just at fracking sites, oil companies have been doing that for over a century. A couple hysteria videos on youtube were showing wells that were drilled into methane deposits false blamed on fracking too.
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... - and they have good motivation to do so, remember methane is a valuable resource too and they want to keep any of it from escaping.
No. The price of natural gas is currently about a dollar sixty per thousand cubic feet. It costs more than it's worth to deal with small leaks.
They'll stop leaks if they're legally forced to, but otherwise, it's usually more cost effective to just let it leak than it is to spend the upfront money to deal with it.
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"The price of natural gas is currently about a dollar sixty per thousand cubic feet."
You can't measure a gas by just volume, you need a pressure as well.
Or preferably measure by mass (Kg)
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There is a bit of range reduction (natural gas takes up more space for the same energy output) but the refueling times are comparable to gasoline. We should be pushing it's use as a motor fuel...
We should be pushing CNG as transportation fuel.
What can help with this "range anxiety" from CNG are lessons learned from electric cars. First is that CNG cars can be filled up at home for people that already have natural gas service for heating and cooking. Second, electric car range improved once car manufacturers started to design cars around the electric drive train instead of trying to shoehorn an electric drive train into cars designed for running on gasoline. Most CNG cars take a hit in range and/
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We should be pushing CNG as transportation fuel.
No.
Any internal combustion engine loses about 2/3 of the chemical energy of its fuel as rejected heat, either through the radiator or in the exhaust. Our next transportation fuel should be hydrogen, and it should be burned in fuel cells (around 80% efficient), not engines.
Ahd where do you think you will get that much H2? Right now the primary source of H2 is reformed natural gas, a process that consumes quite a bit of energy and releases C02. This is the most efficient way (energy wise) to produce H2 and it is just about equal to just burning natural gas in an internal combustion engine. However, you still get the 20% loss when you pass this though your fuel cell, so it turns out to be less efficient than just burning it direct.
By the way, don't even think that electroly
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It's strange, about 30 years back there was quite a few natural gas cars around, most gas stations had a natural gas pump, a lot of the cars were dual fuel. My neighbour had one, a Hyundai IIRC and he was pretty happy with it, then they vanished. Propane was a lot more popular back then too, especially for trucks where you could use part of the bed or under the bed for the tank. They seem to have gone too. This is in a market with the most expensive gasoline in N. America
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Gasoline is cheap, cheap, cheap considering. And CNG, while still popular in some locations (like around here in Dallas, where I know of at least 10 CNG providers within about 10 min driving distance of my home) there are other economic factors that affect CNG use. Maintaining the systems can get expensive, because the DOT requires that pressurized gas bottles, especially those that carry flammable materials be regularly tested to make sure they are still safe. This testing requires removal of the tanks
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Re:Let's be completely honest here though (Score:5, Informative)
This is the technically wrong on both kinds, so best kind of wrong.
First one, renewables aren't replacing coal. They can't. Coal is base power and spinning reserve. Renewables (wind and solar) are intermittent. Intermittent power sources cannot replace base power nor spinning reserve without large scale energy storage in the grid, unless you like having power on a few hours a day.
Second, coal ash is borderline irrelevant for the problem of coal vs natgas. The primary advantages of natgas over cola come from the following:
1. Approximately half CO2 emitted per unit of energy generated. Natgas is the primary reason and responsible for clear majority of CO2 emissions reduction per energy generated in US grid today. Renewables can't come even close until most of coal is phased out.
2. Much simpler systems needed to burn natgas compared to coal. Modern CCGTs help a lot here, as compared to burner + steam turbine needed for generating power with coal.
3. Aforementioned CCGTs typically have a much faster spin up time from various reserve states to fully operational, enabling them to act at very good reserve power for intermittents. This is why renewables are actually growing. You can even unhook the steam turbine part and run most of those in much more wasteful but very quick to spin up OCGT cycle in case some idiot decided to go full Denmark and put far too much wind power in relation to everything else, and then there's a sudden calm period or a storm.
4. Natgas is essentially a free byproduct of shale oil extraction in US. It being free is so ridiculous, that US refineries are in process of actually retooling extraction of various chemical products that are usually considered incredibly inefficient to extract from natgas and are extracted from oil in much more efficient way instead. But what can't you do with huge and basically free supply of one of the most flexible (if not the most optimal) industrial chemical inputs.
So today in US as soon as pipe network system connecting a shale field to your region is built and running, everyone retools whatever capacity they have to use natgas for anything and everything that it can be used for. Coal cannot compete because in US today, it's actually significantly more expensive than natgas just on fuel per energy price alone. Because its really hard to compete with "almost free". And in some cases, suppliers will even pay you to take natgas, because it cannot be stored cost effectively in current energy supply situation in US, and it's extremely dangerous if released, as it tends to go boom. Very big boom. And some regions are increasingly making flaring it (the normal way to handle natgas when you don't have a pipe to send it through) taxed/sanctioned. So it becomes more expensive to flare than to build a pipe and send it off. Hence the "producers will sometimes pay you to take it".
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Are you sure? How much electrical demand is perfectly inelastic to price?
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"Replacing" coal is not the goal of renewables. However it does reduce the use of coal and other non-renewable carbon fuels and that is a goal. A diverse portfolio is good for everyone.
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That would be the sane green argument, yes. Sadly, as shown in the OP this argument tends to get shouted down by greentards who have no clue.
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So, as California and other states have long known, natural gas is cheaper than coal.
But now, even nat gas is being disintermediated by wind/solar/batteries. In fact, the 1000+
gas peaker plants in the U.S. are now being displaced by battery banks, courtesy Tesla.
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That's an impossibility. Natgas has been more expensive than coal throughout history, and in most regions on the world coal remains far cheaper than natgas. There are multiple locations in continental US itself that are not connected to the rapidly expanding natgas pipe network where coal is far cheaper than natgas.
Because with natgas, if you can't directly pipe it from extraction operation to end user, it's not competitive with coal. Because storage is expensive and dangerous, as is CNG/LNG transfers. Coal
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Because having extra capacity on grid is free, and giant batteries are a thing that exists in cost-efficient form.
In other news, pigs fly and moon is made of cheese.
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Just like drilling, producing, transporting natural gas is free along with the plants that burn it with no environmental costs whatsoever? Didn't take much to get you from making an argument to derp derp derpity derp.
But at the end of the day, the canards thrown at wind and solar can easily be addressed with tech that has long been used for coal and nuclear. Sorry.
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Thank you for conceding that you lied on all points above, and you're simply gunning for "take money from things that work and give them to my unproven pet projects".
I rest my case.
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And how many will you need when a nuclear power plant shuts down for two months for maintenance - nuclear sure is unreliable garbage, isn't it?
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Or you do what we did ever since we actually implemented electric grids. You calculate the time when demand is at its lowest, for example warm summer time in regions with heating requirements in winter, and you take down generation capacity for maintenance in pre-planned phases, to ensure sufficient reserves remain connected.
But you a typical greentard, electricity comes from the socket, so this sort of thing is fucking magic. It's frankly a really good way to separate a person who's genuinely into green id
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I've heard of some small systems being looked at in small fast waterways, but hydro being an old tech has likely been pretty well tapped out I'd think.
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There's a large dam being built in N. BC on the Peace River, Site C projected to produce about 5,100 GWh a year.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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> Is there much hydro capacity left to be tapped?
I looked into this in some depth about a decade ago. Everywhere I looked the answer was "about half is currently used".
Right here in Ontario, we got another 15% (no... it was more than that) just by upgrading existing plants. There was all sorts of untapped power in northern Ontario that will likely never be used but could easily power all of the province.
For Canada as a whole, we currently get abut 50 to 60% of our power from hydro. A study by one of the
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Probably when it becomes an actual myth rather than observable factual reality.
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In short, it is the failure of Coal, vs the success of Renewables.
While Natural Gas is pushing Coal towards failure. I expect there is also a Rise in Renewables too. As I am personally seeing a lot more Solar Farms and Wind Farms in my area, Having to Dodge win turbine trucks on my commute to work. So from my point of view Renewables are succeeding as well.
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Let's not forget that it wasn't just renewables getting cheaper killing coal, it was natural gas.
Natural gas burns "clean" while coal leaves ash behind. Cheap natural gas made coal an inefficient form of power generation due to the costs of coal ash.
Here's the link that should have been provided:
https://www.eia.gov/electricit... [eia.gov]
Over the previous ~20 years, you can clearly see that wind and solar are insignificant. Coal was replaced by natural gas.
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Coal will rebound, but not back to the pre-Covid level.
The cost of renewables is mostly the up-front capital costs. Solar panels and wind turbines are not being idled during the lockdowns.
Fossil fuels are bearing the brunt of the reduction. Some older coal plants and mines that were barely breaking-even will not re-open.
Pandemic is speeding up the collapse of coal [npr.org].
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Not to pre-covid levels? Of course it will go back to pre-covid levels, there isn't something magically being built in the months of shutdown.
No speedup of collapse of anything, wishful happy thinking, mark it down the stacks will smoke
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American electricity consumption was already falling. Covid just made it fall faster.
We have surplus capacity, and the most expensive capacity will shut first. That means old coal plants.
Gas can ramp up quickly to reap profits during lulls in the sun and wind, or surges in demand. Coal can't do that.
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> Of course it will go back to pre-covid levels, there isn't something magically being built in the months of shutdown.
Uhhh, yeah there is. All sorts of new-build capacity is coming online right now. Mechanically complete pre-March, going through commissioning and "spin up" (a term that is now meaningless).
Coal is done and it's not coming back. I would take a large bet that it *never* reaches the 2008 peak again.
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The hidden cost of renewables is the 100% redundant supply needed
Bullcrap. The solution to overcast skies and becalmed turbines is simple: Geographic distribution.
When there is less wind is one area, there is usually even more somewhere else.
There are many places, especially offshore, where the wind never stops.
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> And offshore is about the most expensive source you can have. The answer is simple: nuclear.
Offshore PPA's are around 6.5 cents/MWh in Europe:
https://www.spglobal.com/platts/plattscontent/_assets/_files/downloads/infographics/ppa-series/20200116_ppa_platts-zeigo.pdf
(note the units, GBP)
The PPA for Hinkley is 92.50/MWh, or 11.2 cents/MWh:
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-22772441
Both of your claims are factually incorrect. Offshore wind is far from the most expensive source, and nuclear is obviously not
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> The hidden cost of renewables is the 100% redundant supply
How is that hidden? It's evident in the pricing you can see anywhere.
For instance, the Gemini plant was recently approved:
https://www.utilitydive.com/news/trump-administration-set-to-approve-nv-energys-690-mw-solar-farm-largest/569676/
It has 690 MW of PV and 380 MW x 4 hours of storage. The price for that system is $1 billion. The 25-year PPA is at 38.44/MWh **WITH STORAGE**.
Now the current price for coal power is about 27-45/MWh.
That means it c
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Go check this report from one of the top energy experts, where reports are used by all other the world:
https://www.lazard.com/media/4... [lazard.com]
You can see that coal is not the cheapest power source, by far... even if you try to ignore renewable energy , Gas is lot cheaper than coal!
Coal is a dead-end, the only advantage they have is already build power centrals, where gas and renewable energy alternatives are not enough and are still being built.
Coal centrals only still work because in the USA there is not enough
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all true but doesn't contradict what I said, coal will be back to pre-pandemic level when this thing over, there isn't alternative right now.
This is a good thing. (Score:2)
Dead things in coal (Score:2)
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Coal was on its way out already.
https://www.mprnews.org/story/... [mprnews.org]
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it'll be back to where it was pre-pandemic in most places. Was a third of power production before in my state, will be a third after.
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I can assure you coal will be back soon.
Bwahahahahahaha!! Oh wait, you're being serious. BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!
Comment removed (Score:4, Funny)
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Talking points? Well, it's a fact that kitty cats kill far more birds than wind turbines. Need to save the birds, then you're going to have to kill a few cats. *meow!*
Actually, I looked at that study that purported to show housecats are a major hazard to birds, and it turned out to have no actual data. It was entirely a guess.
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This has got to be the strangest line of reasoning I've seen here yet.
You found *a single paper* that didn't have any evidence, therefore you conclude that *no evidence exists*?
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No, no, no! Wind turbines cause cancer!
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Because burning trees is considered "renewable." And that produces loads of CO2.
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Paging blindseer
Here I am!
And what has improved? (Score:3)
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I'm not going to say it changed my opinion heavily, and I know there's beef with some specific facts, but in Planet of the Humans it was good to see a "extreme environmentalist" acknowledge reality ... Tell me I'm wrong.
I hate Michael Moore.
I'm not going to hate him less just because he's being an ignorant jerk attacking left icons instead of attaching right icons.
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I don't think it's the only possible solution, but it may be the most cost effective and therefore sensible solution. The caveat is that by the time wind and solar start to have increasing costs due to storage demands (~40%?), it's possible that there will have been enough advances in battery storage that they can be pushed even higher.
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Don't use the state of todays renewables infrastructure as a finished product its still early days.
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if you are quoting "Planet of the Humans" regarding renewables, you've lost the argument straight away. they used 10-15 year old data/videos about the it and as you should know thats a long long time in technology.
Don't use the state of todays renewables infrastructure as a finished product its still early days.
Perhaps you could convince me on that about wind and solar but that's not going to go over well on the points made against biomass energy. In fact I changed my mind on wind and solar before. I used to think wind power was a waste of time and resources and solar PV would power the world. Since then I've seen wind power develop quite nicely while solar power remained relatively stagnant. Solar PV is an environmental disaster for anything on the grid. Off the grid there's a case that can be made, especial
Ok. You're wrong. (Score:2)
Easy peasy lemon squeezy: putting the astronomical costs and safety issues aside, nuclear plants routinely go down for weeks or months for maintenance. Sometimes even years. So all the handwringing over the power produced by wind and solar applies far more to your radioactive water heaters. Sorry.
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Why do people keep letting this go by? Just because no one complained earlier about your comments doesn't make them true.
Nuclear is one of THE MOST RELIABLE forms of energy:
https://www.energy.gov/ne/arti... [energy.gov]
If plants are going down for 10 years, it's more likely political than technical...
A coal or natural gas plant is more likely to go down for maintenance than a nuclear plant. (and they're more available than most of the others...)
Re:And what has improved? (Score:5, Insightful)
Tell me I'm wrong.
Okay, you're wrong.
We need cheap energy. For cheap energy, Nuclear isn't even a solution, much less the only solution.
Even if Nuclear becomes "too cheap to meter" (say, with molten salt reactor technology), it's going to have to compete with solar's "cheaper than delivery".
Planet of the Humans rightly points out that alternative energy isn't free (pollution or otherwise).
But it misses the fact that some forms are cheaper/cleaner than every other alternative.
We can't run our society 100% on solar, but we can run over 75%.
And we're going to, because for over 75% of us, it's going to be the cheapest alternative.
Re:And what has improved? (Score:5, Insightful)
And the real costs of Nuclear are always backloaded.
We escrow more than we used to but decomissioning still costs more than was escrowed and those costs are always dumped on citizens who were not born yet and who didn't get the artificially cheap power.
But they'll be stuck with the tab for that and for maintaining decades of multi-million dollar security and storage costs.
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> You know what I'm talking about. Nuclear waste.
Not generation 4 nuclear power. Waste for thorium is also not very radioactive.
Good time to also stop subsidizing fossil fuels? (Score:2)
According to the IMF, governments around the world subsidize(!) the oil industry with a whopping $5.7 trillion. Some people think green power is very much subsidized, and in some cases it is. The amount with which fossil fuels are subsidized are pretty extreme though and green subsidies pale in comparison.
Read more: https://www.theatlantic.com/sc... [theatlantic.com]
Trump digs coal! (Score:2)
Graphs make it easier to see what's going on (Score:2)
What's going on with the virus shutdown is that demand has plummeted since huge swaths of industry (consumes roughly half the electricity in the country) are shut down.
problem is, that we are not changing fast enough (Score:2)
Look down at Historical primary energy consumption from 1950 through 2019. [eia.gov]
One of the interesting things is that the BTUs of nat gas + coal COMBINED has not changed since 1995. Because of the far lefties/righties here, all we have done is drop coal and add nat gas in the same amount. This is a losing situation. yes, CO2 has dropped, and will certainly continue
Renewable "Biomass" is worse than coal (Score:2)
Anybody watch "Planet of the Humans" ?
Biomass means cutting down trees to burn instead of coal.
Sure, trees are "renewable" just takes about 9 years.
Coal is Renewable (Score:2)
These people are all daft. Coal is a renewable energy source.
Re:On a cold windless night... (Score:4, Insightful)
Or we could have baseload nuclear. Ultimately we should be aiming for the near total elimination of burning fossil fuels.
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There's such a thing as planning, and most plants don't have to run at full capacity. If you have ten plants, each running at 90% capacity, then you can take one plant down and run the rest at 100% capacity. Or similar numbers. I'm sure the billions of dollars spent on power generation over the decades have paid for an engineer to have worked it out.
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Indeed - but if we can build extra generating capacity and big batteries for nuclear, there's no reason we can't do the same for wind and solar, nullifying the "baseload power" canard thats always used against renewables.
Right, so if we have all these batteries for wind and solar then what happens when there is a year with an insufficient level of wind and sun? Germany found this out, they have to burn coal.
The alternative to burning coal is nuclear power, and we should use nuclear power instead of coal. The reason this "canard" is used against wind and solar is because we have real world experience of it being true. Wind and solar power take up a lot of land, materials, and labor, far more than nuclear power. This make
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creating a waste problem for the next 100,000 years.
Says the person that knows nothing about how radioactive half life works.
You've heard the expression, "The candle that burns twice as bright burns half as long"? That's how half life works with radiation. The longer the half life the less radiation flux it produces. While I would not recommend it for a great number of reasons there is little radiation risk from sleeping on a bed of uranium. The long half life of uranium means that there is little radiation from it.
One reason you would not want to sleep
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great reason to get more EVs on the road and get rid of fossil vehicles then
How are unemployed people supposed to buy these EVs? Will the federal government just print more money?
The vehicles we have now don't have to burn fossil fuels. The US Navy has been working on making fuels for their aircraft at sea using CO2 dissolved in seawater, hydrogen from electrolysis, and power from the same nuclear power plant used to propel the ship. The Navy is interested in jet fuels of course but the process is the same for making any of a number of hydrocarbons. This process doesn't have to
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Just as long as you are not stupid enough to do the same job that your Dad did. The migration to a new energy source isn't going to be overnight. However more of a migration over time.
The problem with Coal miners, is the current coal miners are doing the job that their Dad did, which their Granddad did. And the Coal Mining Economies haven't invested in transitioning their economy to something new.
We see this with other things such as Tobacco, and many of the Vacant Factory towns in the North East.
When thin
Economic growth without energy production growth (Score:3)
Electricity usage is linked to economic activity.
In developing economies, their is a strong relationship. But as economies develop, GDP growth becomes disconnected from energy usage. [eia.gov] Service industries such as IT produce more value per worker, but require less energy than say, steel production.
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hahaha, no, that has zero to do with the plummet in power consumption and large economic collapse in the USA being the sole driver for this article. Coal will be back to its normal usage right after pandemic.
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Interesting but do you have a similar graph with GDP vs actual energy usage? The one you point to only shows electricity use, which is only about 20-25% of energy use, I believe.
I'm asking because I've read the same affirmation as the one in the gp: energy use is essentially linear with GDP, including in developed economies, because service industries only exist thanks to the underlying manufacturing industries (e.g. an insurance
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If the Obama administration hadn't STRANGLED the coal industry with a no win situation of stupidity & regulations, so called renewable wouldn't even been close. Also add all the tax breaks and what not given to renewable. Without those, they would STILL be higher than any fossil fuel.
Wow. Thank you Obama. Well done.