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Believe it or not, retrofitting a single large coal-fired power plant can cost more than a billion dollars.

by rz2k 10y ago

abakker 10y ago
Does that mean retrofitting is more expensive than just building a net new solar plant of the same capacity?
- nbarbettini 10y ago
  In some cases, I believe so. But a solar plant is only useful for half the day (at best).
- rz2k 10y ago
  I'm not in the power industry, but you can read more about the economics of retrofits here[1], and technologies here[2]. I'd imagine the cost of retrofitting depends on how much pollution needs to be mitigated to make the (pollution*dollars)/power figure acceptable. This industry source[3] seems to have about as many stories about stations being decommissioned as it does about large retrofit projects, which says that in the US the cost assigned to the pollution often is more expensive than moving to another source. Like a lot of environmental issues, I think concerns about emissions tend to be treated as though they are decadent compared to immediate economic impact, until a crisis is underway. That is, people notice their power bill, brownouts or their factory shutting down from a shortage of electricity, but they may not directly attribute their children's asthma or getting cancer a decade later to the power plant. Furthermore people can bemoan the waste of shuttering a functional power plant if the harm the decommissioning averted is not tangible to them. Crisis-level smog days can help justify policies that take action, as well as create an appreciation for the importance of air quality in general. These jet engines sound like the equivalent of building a taller smokestack. They're probably a cheap way to lessen some of the health effects during a smog crisis, but not any sort of long term solution. [1] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/us-coal-fired-power-plants-update-close/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/us-coal-fired-pow... [2] http://nma.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Fact-Sheet-Clean-Coal-Technology.pdf http://nma.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Fact-Sheet-Clean-C... [3] http://www.power-eng.com/coal/coal-retrofits-upgrades.html http://www.power-eng.com/coal/coal-retrofits-upgrades.html
john_reel 10y ago
That seems kind of absurd. Where does all of that cost come from?

Believe it or not, retrofitting a single large coal-fired power plant can cost more than a billion dollars.

by rz2k 10y ago

Believe it or not, retrofitting a single large coal-fired power plant can cost more than a billion dollars.

abakker 10y ago

Does that mean retrofitting is more expensive than just building a net new solar plant of the same capacity?

nbarbettini 10y ago
In some cases, I believe so. But a solar plant is only useful for half the day (at best).
rz2k 10y ago
I'm not in the power industry, but you can read more about the economics of retrofits here[1], and technologies here[2]. I'd imagine the cost of retrofitting depends on how much pollution needs to be mitigated to make the (pollution*dollars)/power figure acceptable. This industry source[3] seems to have about as many stories about stations being decommissioned as it does about large retrofit projects, which says that in the US the cost assigned to the pollution often is more expensive than moving to another source. Like a lot of environmental issues, I think concerns about emissions tend to be treated as though they are decadent compared to immediate economic impact, until a crisis is underway. That is, people notice their power bill, brownouts or their factory shutting down from a shortage of electricity, but they may not directly attribute their children's asthma or getting cancer a decade later to the power plant. Furthermore people can bemoan the waste of shuttering a functional power plant if the harm the decommissioning averted is not tangible to them. Crisis-level smog days can help justify policies that take action, as well as create an appreciation for the importance of air quality in general. These jet engines sound like the equivalent of building a taller smokestack. They're probably a cheap way to lessen some of the health effects during a smog crisis, but not any sort of long term solution. [1] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/us-coal-fired-power-plants-update-close/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/us-coal-fired-pow... [2] http://nma.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Fact-Sheet-Clean-Coal-Technology.pdf http://nma.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Fact-Sheet-Clean-C... [3] http://www.power-eng.com/coal/coal-retrofits-upgrades.html http://www.power-eng.com/coal/coal-retrofits-upgrades.html

john_reel 10y ago

That seems kind of absurd. Where does all of that cost come from?