Coal plant forced to stay open due to emergency order isn't even running
arstechnica.com
Department of Energy's attempts to prop up coal can look pretty pointless.

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.

  • partial_accumenEnglish
    51·
    2 days ago

    That’s… Not very impressive? Don’t get me wrong, renewables are just better and coal is even worse than other forms of generation, but that number is nothing to brag about. It’s like saying i did 15 push ups last year in response to the person who did their first set of 10 or whatever for the day.

    I may be making a mistake in engaging in dialog with you. If so, I might bow out fairly quickly depending on your response. Your response here shows me you’re not even close to understanding whats occurring with this power plant and the comparison to my solar panels.

    I’ll start with some facts and see if this helps your understanding:

    • The TransAlta Centralia Coal Plant employs 300 full time people (source). My solar panels on my roof employ ZERO full time people.
    • The cost to operate the TransAlta Centralia Coal Plant is $615,000 per day. (source) If we do simple math of multiplying the daily cost by 365 that translates into $224,475,000 per year to operate the plant under the conditions forced by the trump DoE. My solar panels on my roof cost $0/year to operate.
    • If we take the current production for the year of 8MWh (source, the OP article) and project it over the year at the same rate for the remainder of the year that would be 48MWh produced for the year. As I reported before, in 2025, my rooftop panels produced 19.5MWh for the year.

    With all of those employees, and all of that operational cost I’m producing not quite half the the same amount of electricity and I’m doing zero work with zero dollars to accomplish that.

    All of this together means that the operational cost per MWh from this particular coal plant under these particular conditions is $4,676,562.50 per MWh for coal. For my solar panels is $0 per MWh.

    Do you see how just crazy insane this situation is? How much of a waste of money it is to keep this coal plant operating as it is? Do you see why even the owner doesn’t want to operate this plant like this but is being forced to by trump’s DoE because trump likes coal?