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Some land is expensive, but outside of cities it need not be. And coal plants aren't exactly small. They are surrounded by all the apparatus necessary to move
by metalliqaz 8y ago
Some land is expensive, but outside of cities it need not be. And coal plants aren't exactly small. They are surrounded by all the apparatus necessary to move tons of fuel.
And consider that even if the footprint of a coal plant is smaller, that doesn't mean it would be cheaper. Coal plants have huge construction costs, and unlike solar, have huge ongoing costs to remediate their waste products. Plus there's the cost of buying and trucking in the fuel.
- maxerickson 8y agoI just measured https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plant_Bowen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plant_Bowen with a generous setback as about 2.5 square miles (so ~1600 acres). That's only accounting for the generator, not the mine or the train track easement, etc. Here's a 120 megawatt project advertised as needing 1000 acres: https://www.solarpowerworldonline.com/2017/04/120-mw-first-solar-project-texas-begins-commercial-operation/ https://www.solarpowerworldonline.com/2017/04/120-mw-first-s... So coal plants really are a lot more compact than solar, and they do their nameplate capacity nearly 24/7. Which hey, bring on the solar, but expect it to use a lot of land, especially when/if energy intensive industries switch to using it.