> You misunderstand, the two hypothetical power plants have an equivalent instantaneous power output in watts. Yes, but they have different capacity factors.

> You misunderstand, the two hypothetical power plants have an equivalent instantaneous power output in watts. Yes, but they have different capacity factors. That is, the solar plant is not producing power at night, but your calculation gives it credit for it. It's best to just keep sane units; e.g. say this plant generates 3 petajoules each year, and kills 6000 birds/year, so it kills one bird per 500 gigajoules. A coal plant is about 33% efficient, and coal has about 30MJ/kg of specific energy; so we get about 10MJ of electrical energy/kg. So each 50,000 kg of coal mined and burnt would produce the same amount of energy that Ivanpah does between killing birds.