Sure, no different than coal producing more energy than required in diesel to dig it out of the ground. But a solar panel has way higher output on a net basis over its 30yr life than required to make it and at a much cheaper price than coal. You would have been better choosing nat gas as your source.
Where is your source that shows that solar power is cheaper than coal? If it was, China would be using solar power to power their solar panel manufacturing plants. They are using coal.Sure, no different than coal producing more energy than required in diesel to dig it out of the ground. But a solar panel has way higher output on a net basis over its 30yr life than required to make it and at a much cheaper price than coal. You would have been better choosing nat gas as your source.
EIA. I can't speak to exactly what China is doing or why, but it might be because a legacy coal plant has already eaten most of the startup cost in the plant and equipment. So maybe at this point it would be on par cost wise in trying to switch it over. But if you are comparing all-in costs, solar is much cheaper than coal in US. Coal is dying. There is no saving it. But the culprit in US is nat gas, not renewables. Also, China doesn't have a 50yr supply of nat gas to rely on so their demand for coal can ebb and flow with economic activity and it is harder for them to get off it. No doubt that coal has high energy density and the prices of US coal are depressed because the US has changed to nat gas. Lots of moving pieces to the global energy market.
The carbon capture sounds great in principal, in reality it is just another hoop for generators to jump through at a large additional cost per Mwh of generation. A large part of the reason coal isn't cost competitive in the generation market is the already added costs of scrubber operation (additional electric consumption, limestone cost, man hours), mercury technology, NOx reduction, etc. Carbon capture would be far more expensive to operate than all these other efforts. Coal has come a long way in cleaning up it's act, but it's at a point where it can't really compete economically, especially when large government subsidies are getting poured into renewables. I'm all in on cleaning up the environment, but you can't pour money into one segment of the business who isn't capable of sustaining steady output and force the reliable, steady generators out of business and expect good things in the future.What about this part of the 60 Minutes segment?
That was the part I found the most interesting and least discussed. Is it possible to do this economically? It would make coal or nat gas generated electricity carbon neutral.
China plans to build 300 new coal fired generation plants. I'm fine using natural gas to fire our generation plants. Show me the EIA data that breaks down solar power generation costs. I'm not finding it.
google is my friend. All data from EIA buried in the levelized cost report I believe.
Wikipedia. Wasn't Sam Backman Fried one of the original founders of wikipedia?google is my friend. All data from EIA buried in the levelized cost report I believe.
Cost of electricity by source - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
You could have saved me the time and just said you weren’t going to trust whatever source I provided. Anyone that wants to argue coal has an attractive cost of production vs solar in this country is not rationale. Maybe China will assume that Roundup MT will ship them coal for $0/ton and make those new coal plants attractive financially.
China has energy needs and is building dams and coal plants and solar fields and nuclear plants. An all of the above approach insulates them from external political pressures.
Funny how “consume less energy” never seems to be on anyone’s list of solutions.
May I recommend that they bury this stuff in the following areas: NYC,NY, CT, RI, MA, VT, NY, San Francisco, LA, CA, WA, OR, MN, WI, MI, PA for starters.
This has nothing to do about the economics of alternative energy. Do you really think these politicians are altruistic and concerned about "Mother Earth"??? If you do, I have a bridge to sell ya. You shouldn't be asking questions like you did above. You should be asking: Where are they getting their skim. That's it in a nutshell.I’m an engineer and I evaluate things at a pretty technical level. There’s a zero percent chance anyone can convince me that these wind farms are a positive impact for carbon emissions or the basic environment. Same goes for solar, they just cleared 100 acres of prime habitat near my house for solar panels. They ran equipment for nearly a year before being done with the clearing. Once you look into it, you quickly find out that it’s still about the money for big players and utilities. It’s pretty sobering to plot past electric rates and extrapolate it over the next 30 years. Ours raises about 6% a year consistently and we heat with geothermal so we use a ton of electricity. The cost of energy is going to grow as a problem for people.
So I slapped these on the barn. Carbon emissions from installation were low but F bomb emissions were high. Especially when I took a ride down the roof while holding a panel.
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And yes that loose wire was cleaned up
I worked at a 1080 mW coal plant as a contractor that had a consent decree forced on them 10-12 years ago. It basically forced them to shut down a smaller plant so they poured $2 billion into this plant. Just last year they announced they were going to close it, but I think another company ended up buying it.
Funny how “consume less energy” never seems to be on anyone’s list of solutions.
There were 2 coal plants located in SW Penna back 10-12 year ago under Oscama that were shut down out of the blue. A friend said that he didn't understand why they shut them both down because they could have easily converted them to nat gas. He wondered if it was a corrupt deal. According to him, coal is much more efficient for generating electricity than nat gas.
I believe that their ultimate goal, in a round about way is population control. Remember when that was going around 20- 30 years ago? And how it fell flat on its face? The same people are still around.
Nat gas is cleaner burning, more efficient, and right now, slightly more expensive per mmbtu than coal. It can also be transported in a pipeline verses rail car for coal.
westgov.org
