The “emegency” was not enough profits for the fossil fuels industry, rather than a need for the electricity an ancient coal-burning power plant might generate, and the Trump administration plan has been to prevent all coal-burning power plants from shutting down — even if they’re already broken, don’t work, aren’t needed, or are simply more expensive than wind, solar, and utility-scale batteries.
Wind is just infinitely cheaper than coal in every way. The scrubbers for sulfur alone in a 200 MW plant cost just to keep it from killing everyone and everything around are $400 million. A 2MW commercial wind turbine cost $4 million to install roughly $65k a year to maintain, which include admin, legal, leases, etc. so 200 MW of wind cost about the same as just the scrubbers in coal plant and $650k to maintain, vs Millions in maintenance in coal. Wind is not just greener, it is cheaper and better. The power source to turn the turbine is free!
Wind has about a 30-40% capacity factor (varies by location) so maybe multiple by about 3 to get to the roughly 90-95% capacity factor of coal plants. Wind also requires a lot more regulation because it doesn’t ramp up/down easily. Wind is cheaper than coal, but the math is way more complicated than what you’re presenting.
Not really, have a friend who is inhouse counsel for bp, they are investigating heavy in wind and have been since 2009. The industry speaks for itself.
What’s not really? Do YOU know anything about energy markets?
A little, handle oil and gas litigation in TX
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In that case I can tell that you don’t!
Naw, but seriously, I would like to hear the more complicated answer to why wind isn’t as viable. Even with needing three to have the same capacity, and even assuming that it scales linearly, it still seems like wind is a lot cheaper for what they’re presumably trying to accomplish, which is to provide energy rather than extract value, right?
I didn’t say wind isn’t viable. I said it was cheaper than coal. I just think the explanation of the costs here is wrong. And then I went on to briefly mention some of the big costs that are missing. There are others, such as modernizing the transmission system, but I didn’t want to get too technical. For those that don’t know, regulation is the term they use for the flexible energy that is needed to match energy supply to demand at the sub-hourly level. Also, sorry I realized that comment was condescending and regretted it immediately. I thought I had deleted it right away but I guess not. I also edited my comment to try to make it more clear that I am saying wind is cheaper, even though I don’t really see how that was ever read the other way. I have a lot of experience in energy market analysis and am just trying to drop some knowledge here.
Not that I’m disagreeing with your point, but $65k multiplied by a hundred is $6.5 million, not $650k
Yeah that is true…
Do you have the values on which these back-of-the-napkin calculations were based? As a natural sciences teacher, I’d love to discuss it with my students as an example.
Wind Turbine:
https://sigmaearth.com/cost-analysis-how-much-do-commercial-wind-turbines-really-cost/
Part of the Coal - ie scrubber costs
https://mostpolicyinitiative.org/science-note/cost-of-coal-power-plants/
Thank you!!
But what about the birdsssssss
The whole thing about birds is propaganda. Look at how many birds are killed directly by pollution and indirectly by habitat destruction due to burning coal. It’s a huge number compared to windmill strikes.
Also, look at other living things besides birds. Coal kills more in every case.
No no, SO many birds are killed by wind turbines and this is TOTALLY the most important social issue we need to solve