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Utilities Vote To Close Largest Coal Plant In Western US (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: At 2.25 gigawatts, Arizona's Navajo Generating Station is the biggest coal-burning power plant in the Western U.S. The plant, and the nearby Kayenta coal mine that feeds it, are located on the Navajo Indian Reservation, and the Navajo and Hopi peoples have had a conflicted relationship with coal since the plant opened in the 1970s. Almost all the 900-plus jobs at the mine and plant are held by Native Americans, and the tribes receive royalties to account for large portions of their budget. Negotiations were underway to improve the tribes' lease terms, which expire in 2019. But on Monday, the four utilities that own most of the plant voted to close it at the end of 2019. They decided that the plant's coal-powered electricity just can't compete with plants burning natural gas. A press release from Salt River Projects, which runs the plant, explained, "The decision by the utility owners of [Navajo Generating Station] is based on the rapidly changing economics of the energy industry, which has seen natural gas prices sink to record lows and become a viable long-term and economical alternative to coal power."
This plant is one of the worst polluters in the west. It was exempted from the mercury limits rule when they went into effect and it's responsible for 90% of the air pollution and haze in the Grand Canyon. This plant should have been shut down as soon as viable alternatives existed and market forces are finally doing it in.
322 kW panels?
You lost a 10^3 and are ignoring capacity factor.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Don't look for crony-free capitalism in big energy. It won't and can't exist. Like capital itself, energy is too important to leave to the whims of the market. And where you don't see in-your-face subsidies (like Ethanol/corn producers), there's back-end subsidies like tax breaks, easements, or permits for getting rid of toxic waste for free. Coal ash is a particularly nasty nasty toxic waste, for example, full of heavy metals and even radio-active materials, that has to be dumped in horrid "ponds" that look horrifying from the air and that the companies promise will NEVER leak into the ground-water while there are ANY family-members of the board of directors still living within 1000 miles of there.
No, coal still receives massive subsidies. It gets to ignore the pollution costs, medical costs, causing up to 1/3 deaths, and so on.
For comparison, nuclear, beside all the regulation coal doesn't have to cope with, is required to store every bit of its waste for hundreds of years. Please tell me when coal plants have to put condoms on their chimneys that collect all the CO2, sulphur, nitrogen oxide and even radioactive isotopes, and instead of dumping them into the air stores them underground. Only then you can talk about a fair competition.
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
No-one said they would be coal jobs
The only argument you could possibly have for that statement to be true is to argue that Trump's speaking style is so vague as to be meaningless. He did say this:
"We're gonna open the mines"
And this:
"Let me tell you: the miners in West Virginia and Pennsylvania, which was so great to me last week and Ohio and all over, they’re going to start to work again, believe me. You’re going to be proud again to be miners."
He told the miners to get ready to "work their ass off". He made several statements like those after Clinton said that, if she were elected, a lot of coal miners would be out of jobs. Naturally, Trump sensed a weakness and attacked. And people responded to him with statements like this:
One of [West Virginia's] delegates, donning a coal miner's hat, used the state's time to complain about how President Obama has wrecked the state's economy: "It has been devastating what has happened all across Appalachia and this country," the delegate said. "Tens of thousands of coal miners have lost their jobs over the last seven-and-a-half years under this administration - it's time we change course with a man named Donald J. Trump."
And this:
"I did vote for Donald Trump," Moeller says. "It's really hard to even say that because I so dislike his rhetoric. But I voted for him on one singular issue, and that was coal."
And this:
"I voted for Trump - I mean, a coal miner would be stupid not to," Hathaway says.
And this:
"He is a whacko; he's never going to stop being a whacko," Hathaway says. "But I mean, the things he did say - the good stuff - was good for the coal mining community. But we'll see what happens."
And this:
“I have said to Mr. Trump on a couple of occasions, 'Please temper your commitment to my coal miners and your expectations of bringing the coal industry back.' It cannot be brought back to what it was,” said Robert Murray, CEO of Murray Energy Corp., the nation's largest coal producer. “The destruction is permanent,” said Mr. Murray, a Trump supporter.
So, SuperKendall, why do you think all of those people would say things like that if Trump never promised to bring back the coal industry? Do a search for "Donald Trump coal jobs" and go and look at all of the articles going back to last May. Notice him standing on stage with a sign saying "Trump Digs Coal". He's got the CEO of the largest coal producer telling him to temper his promises to bring the coal industry back.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
One of my uncles works on control systems and environmental systems for coal plants. He's had to travel to visit that plant several times. It's truly decrepit and the plant is dangerously lacking in written procedures. Some of that comes from being on Tribal land, so State of Arizona laws do not generally apply. If I remember right it's been a known cause of pollution affecting the Grand Canyon and other parks and monuments too.
That part of the Colorado Plateau is pretty sunny. It does snow from time to time but it's not the kind of climate where the snow just builds up all winter, so it probably would be practical to keep the panels snow-free.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Yeah right, Dinowic (a pumped storage in Wales) can go from zero to 1800MW in 75 seconds. If the turbines are pre-synchronized (aka spinning in free air for a small power draw) they can go from zero to 1800MW in 16 seconds.