Today's U.S Energy Jobs Are in Solar, Not Coal

>>61592303
>being this ignorant about the energy sector

listen here you little shit, i dont care where the power comes from, you will need a way to power the turbines, the real problem here is baseline power the only sources of baseline power that are currently available is coal, natural gas, oil derivatives like gasoline/diesel/fuel-oil (which the US does not use since the oil embargo for obvious reasons) and nuclear.

Any intermittent power sources will never be used for baseline power until a better battery technology exists. So stop it with the bullshit headlines. Sure solar works great, it would actually be awesome if cities and counties woke up to this very fact and began local initiatives to cover every single free space with solar panels or wind turbines even if small in order to utilise the space they have available at the best possible scale and with all these efforts across the country you could simply reduce your need for power for the majority of uses that can be reduced light lighting.

A incredibly good way to do this would be to finally enforce the building displacement tax across the country (taxing you for the square footage of land you made impermeable to water) and reduce or eliminate that tax if the impermeable surface has a solar panel/energy generation on it youd end up with a lot of solar power installations country wide and wide reduction in electricity consumption.

If we start using solar panels en masse shouldn't we switch to direct voltage?

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>>61592303
Fuck off back to ribbit

>>61593010
since when do we value or devalue a product or service based on how many people it employees? literally no one gives a fuck about how many people it employees or not, people just want to have power, they want it to be cheap and they want it when they want it.

>>61593010
>conveniently cuts out the amount of workers needed to harvest coal or work in gas fields (sun rays don't need to be harvested btw)
>conveniently ignore the fact that solar is growing and therefore needs initial large workforce
>conveniently ignore the fact that coal is dirty and causes early deaths
>conveniently ignore the fact that gas is imported, therefore sending money to foreign workers instead of employing americans
fuck off back to le donald.

>>61593010
Dont we want people to have jobs? What's your argument?

>>61592303
Get fuck, West Virginia.

>>61592687
This.
You can't tell the sun's rays to just hang out in a warehouse until you need it.

>>61593691
Not if it launches energy cost up through the roof

>>61593935
You could with a series of mirrors

>>61593691
How would the cost of energy from solar, which is completely hands off and requires no input after installation, go up if there are more people installing and building equipment?

>>61593994
This was meant for >>61593948

>>61593951
Well if you want to be retarded you could just use batteries.

>>61593010
Now how many workers are required to produce 10 times as much electric power in nuclear ?

>>61593865
>west virginia

I actually lived ten feet from the border in east kentucky. The very ironic thing is these coal companies could become no1 solar energy producers because they have the land rights for so much god damn flat land, yet they leave it alone and with grass and claim "we done reclamation its better now than when we mined the coal out of it"

Fucking red neck idiots, making over $80k a year and dont have a god damn thing to show for it except maybe a quarter of a acre lot with a single wide on it and a old 1500 chevy truck, god damn idiots

>>61593148
>since when do we value or devalue a product or service based on how many people it employees?
This is the age when the working class supports the industry, not their own rights.

>>61594039
mirrors are more fun

>>61595679
is english your second language? did you even read the post you replied to?

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>>61592303
solar-electric is vastly inferior to solar-heat which serves as its own battery

>>61595901
>solar-electric is vastly inferior to solar-heat which serves as its own battery
guess that comes pretty handy in your cloudy shithole doesn't it Nigel, those solar thermo tanks heat up the water pretty well even in cloudy weather and solar heaters work pretty well too

>>61592687
>Any intermittent power sources will never be used for baseline power until a better battery technology exists
This is correct and everyone who talks about any new energy source disregarding this fact is a moron.
[spoiler]t. student in renewable energy[/spoiler]

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>>61596181

the counter argument is often that combining several intermittent power sources (wind/solar/geothermal/waves) you even out the ride to the point of continuity

Is this correct or bs?

>>61596305
About as correct as building a car body out of pure bondo.

Coal jobs are a waste if you aren't bringing back the nice steam locomotives

>>61596305
No. Not stable enough. Like you have wind whenever and sun only about, let's say 12 hours. The waves is worth shit and geothermal worth on a few certain spots.
You won't have enough energy for the baseline at night, morning and evening.
The only way to have that is getting the peak of the sun and the wind energy production into a huge storage system. And the capacity + possible output needs to be really high. And such a storage is not invented yet. Pump hydro power plants are the biggest storage we have at the moment and the installed capacity is laughable low.

Also stability of the grid isn't that easy. You cannot just drive up and down in your energy production all you want. That would fuck up your 50 (or whatever your country is using) HZ and cause a blackout.

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>not riding the wave power meme
I bet you ohmlets get brown outs.

>>61597205
you sound like you know about this sort of thing more than me so I'll ask you something I have always been extremely curious about.

Couldn't you combine certain industries with power generation?

I remember during the fukushima the thing that made the buildings explode was the build up of hidrogen gas (? I don't remember correct me if I'm wrong) that came from the water cooling (?). Could you not take the byproducts of certain industries like heat, gases that have to be burned or hidrogen, and literally put a power plant on site? I know of a refinery that I drove by and they literally burn byproduct gases, they just burn it, its a big ass flame just shooting up in the sky.

Why is such a waste allowed?? I know it wouldn't be massive power, but it would be a major reduction in consumption, they could simply do the old reverse the meter trick and just feed it back to the grid.

>Jobs are in green energy!
>Says green energy lobby
>Continuing to ignore the fact they're only economically viable through subsidies
Fuck off to california

>>61592303
Expensive and labor intensive energy source subsidized by the government employs lot of people.

Is that news?

>>61598179
>>61598184
samefagging this hard

>>61598254
>Anybody who disagrees is the same person
sad!

>>61592303
>it takes more jobs in solar to generate a fraction of the energy as coal

WTF

>>61598166
>Couldn't you combine certain industries with power generation?
Yes, power to gas or power to heat are 2 of those combinations.
Problem with some of these wastings is the fault of politics. Like in germany you are only allowed to use co2 from renewable energies to convert hydrogen into methane . But you are not allowed to take it from other industries so they just pump it into the air.

For heat wasting in a process: you can't just feed back heat into power generation. That would not work. But to explain that you have to get a deeper knowledge on a clausius-rankine process. You can look it up or just believe me.

>>61598489
>For heat wasting in a process: you can't just feed back heat into power generation

Isn't that the whole idea for the process behind "heat recovery systems" at newer power plants? You're saying it's all buzzwords?

>>61598533
I only know about overheating in a few steps trying to use as much as you can. Never saw a plant process that could use it all.
But maybe there is a new technology I just don't know about to be honest.

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>>61598166
A light water nuclear reactor has enough high energy neutrons smashing around that water is broken into hydrogen and oxygen all the time. The gas is collected and converted back into water and returned to the reactor.

It doesn't make enough hydrogen to be a cost effective source but it does make enough to be a problem. Also for regulations they keep the reactor a closed cycle. Greenies would flip their shit if slightly radioactive waste from a nuclear reactor was released into the air. The hydrogen and oxygen can both pick up stray neutrons and form radioactive isotopes.

>I know of a refinery that I drove by and they literally burn byproduct gases, they just burn it, its a big ass flame just shooting up in the sky.
The flare stack is the final line of safety to prevent explosions if every other method of containment or control fails. The amount of fuel that is burned is negligible to keep them going and when they do need to make an emergency flare that's an explosion that was prevented.

~

The most common co-generation of electrical power and by product is for industry that needs heat for process operations. They will normally have a gas turbine and a heat recovery steam generator. They will take some of the steam off the HRSG for their process need, or if they only need a small amount of steam they will pull it off the end of the steam turbine.

For large electrical generators it is possible to skip the last stage of efficiency and not have condensing turbines. Use that last bit of heat for heating in homes and businesses. However that requires expensive heating pipes and for your power plant to be very close to your population center. It's really only viable in a tiny number of locations.

>>61593657
>Ignoring the fact that we don't have a way to store solar energy for long term unlike most fossil fuels
Yeah off yourself. Until we do, solar energy won't catch on.

>>61598533
New plants can have a thermal efficiency above 97% if they have a use for their low energy, low pressure, low temperature steam.

In terms of electrical production if you are pushing past 45% conversion efficiency you are really rocking. Although those types of plants tend to be very expensive to build and have very dangerous setups, in terms of ultra super critical steam generators. Some of the pressure can push into the 40MPa range which is pants shittingly high pressure on a large vessel.

>>61598714
Also,
>Ignoring the fact that there have been multiple natural gas reserves found within the US, dropping the price of gas over the past few years

>>61598644
>The amount of fuel that is burned is negligible to keep them going and when they do need to make an emergency flare that's an explosion that was prevented.

It literally burns all fucking day every day of the year its a huge flame from a distance, you're saying that energy is negligible? Couldn't you at least power something with it? It seems like a terrible waste, even if "negligible" it could be supplying a local office or some shit in their headquarters and they'd get green bragging rights for it.

>It doesn't make enough hydrogen to be a cost effective source

You couldn't have a bunch of fuel cells over somewhere in a corner and power a office in their headquarters as well?? Again, it seems like a motherfucking waste.

But, I'm just a guy, barely got my high school diploma so what do I know.

>>61598748
>It literally burns all fucking day every day of the year its a huge flame from a distance, you're saying that energy is negligible?
Yeah it's a very small amount of fuel. Likely less than 0.01% of refineries gas use.

>Couldn't you at least power something with it? It seems like a terrible waste, even if "negligible" it could be supplying a local office or some shit in their headquarters and they'd get green bragging rights for it.

The stack isn't structurally strong. It's just enough to keep standing and avoid falling over. The elevation is required to avoid damage to structures when they have a need to flare on the ground and to prevent any possible ignition source to nearby flammable substances.

I've seen a flare stack shoot 200m high flames into the sky and that roasted a truck that was near the tower when a chemical plant had a major accident.

How do you propose to capture that amount of heat in an emergency?

They are safety devices. They only have one job and that's to be the last line of defense against explosions.

>You couldn't have a bunch of fuel cells over somewhere in a corner and power a office in their headquarters as well?? Again, it seems like a motherfucking waste.
You need water in a LWR to allow the reactor to work. You need that water to be pure which while not an expensive process is a critical one. Constantly emitting small amounts of potentially radioactive hydrogen isn't worth it.

>>61598714
except that no one argues to replace all power sources with solar and wind. solar and wind will compliment existing power sources, especially during peaks. a coal power plant would need less increment in power supply during the winter if there are enough wind turbines to cover for it. same with solar power plants during the summer when everyone uses an air conditioner.

honestly if you browse /g/ and for some reason don't think that nuclear-wind-solar is the only sustainable clean way to produce power, then you are a low IQ retard that needs to fuck off.

>>61598748
>literally burns all fucking day every day of the year its a huge flame from a distance
On oil wells, gas is an undesired byproduct that has no economic value according to many lease agreements. If lease owners would demand that flared gas be charged back to the operator at market rates, you'd see a hell of a lot less of that.

>>61599048
This. At the same time, we can't trust private individuals to own and operate power sources according to the public good, so maybe NPPs ought to be nationalized before we get too serious about rebuilding NPP capacity.

>>61599048
>except that no one argues to replace all power sources with solar and wind.

thats the problem, lots of people argue to replace it all with renewables, that IS the mainstream opinions out there, that is what the conversation has become today. I don't see a lot of people explaining the issue of baseline vs intermittent.

I still think the way that solar/wind or anything else renewable could work better would actually be at the local/county level instead of centralized power generation, if every city in america could generate.. idk... lets be generous and say 20% of all their power needs, that would do a lot in the way of not only conservation but to also bring the cost down of baseline power, which helps most people and businesses to reduce their utility costs. If we go with wild jesus dreams and reach for 50% of power generation locally, I can't even imagine the effects that would have on the business of making power.

>>61598970
>How do you propose to capture that amount of heat in an emergency?

idk anon.. but you gotta agree it is wasteful, could you... store the gasses? huge influxes would require large tanks spread out over the place and it would become a risk also. I don't know anon. I just really hate wasting shit.

>>61593148
>no one gives a fuck about how many people it employees or not, people just want to have power, they want it to be cheap
nigger you really don't see a link between the number of people you need to pay to produce shit and the final price of the product?

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>>61598714
Something like the millions of lithium ion battery cells coming out of the Tesla Gigafactory every day? It seems like we've got that one covered, champ.

>>61596181

you're a student and you already know everything.

well isn't that neat.

>Solar energy accounted for the largest proportion of employers in the Electric Power Generation sector, with wind energy the third largest,
Doesn't this mean that it's going to fail?

The number 1 and 3 largest employers only account for less than 10% of power generation? It's going to be expensive as fuck for them to ramp up to the point of coal at 30% or natural gas at 50%. A natural gas powerplant only needs like 10 people working there so they're cheap as fuck to operate. It's expensive to maintain 1000 windmills.

>>61599291
Solar is approaching and in some areas already below, the cost of coal.
Your information and knowledge of the industry is years out of date. Over the next 5 years solar is going to fucking explode.

>>61599291
are you that simple fucking minded that you can't see there are other things that come into the equation of what ends up being the price?

coal is labour intensive as fuck, the only way you can achieve that representation on that chart is if you are adding up the people it takes to manufacture the turbines. I can do that shit to, let me add all the fucking workers at Caterpillar who made that digger or earth mover used in coal mining.

>>61592813
DC is harder to convert the voltage.

>>61592303
free market will do its thing, fuck off libtard.

>>61599333
>Solar is approaching and in some areas already below, the cost of coal.
Only if you include subsidies, exclude transmission costs, ignore battery costs and allow solar users to jump in on the grid whenever they want at the public rate.

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Li iOn battery technology is already "there." Modern cells last for 20+ years and can be recycled endlessly. The only limiting factor at this point is production capacity. With Tesla's Gigafactory and the other similarly sized factories being built, the production capacity will be able to fill demand in a matter of years. South Australia is building the first grid scale battery storage system to go along with their new grid scale solar system. Solar and wind are going to have no problem replacing the majority of our power production in the coming years.

>>61599346
Same way with coal, its only cheaper if you outsource its costs, the healthcare of the workers who mine it to the federal government (black lung benefits), health costs for everyone in the surrounding areas of mines and power plants in higher numbers of breathing related diseases, drug abuse and suicides, its only cheaper if you also outsource the environmental damage of surface mines that cover up streams and damage the land where a habitat once existed, the environmental damage of coal cleaning ponds and underground mines that contaminate drinkable water, ponds and streams.

Guess who subsidize all those costs??? Not the coal mining companies.

>>61599341
I mean converting appliances to dc since that is what most stuff is anyways

>>61593994
It wouldn't be all that hands off. Maintenance costs for individual households would be large considering there'd be an inverter at every house. Also panels only absorb about 1/4 of the suns energy and degrade to about half their effectiveness after 10 years. So that's a pretty high installation costs that has to be paid again every decade or so.

>>61599391
No one is saying that you can't build battery storage. People are saying you can't do it at a price that is viable for grid level applications.

>>61599400
To carry electricity efficiently (as in not using massive copper tubes), you need to carry it in very high voltages. and it's cheaper to convert AC than DC.
Also electric motors, heaters etc..

>>61599341
>DC is harder to convert the voltage.

Yeah, like 100 years ago. Advancements in semiconductors and the creation of high voltage thyristors and IGBTs means we can create switching converters that can boost up into the megavolt range.

HVDC transmission is actually better than AC. They are less expensive and less loss over long distances.

>>61599424
But you can. South Australia proves it. Solar and Li iOn cells have come down in price by an entire order of magnitude in the last 5 years.

the problem with solar is power yield per square metre, not yield per dollar.

solar gives few watts per square metre, and it has to be close by where it's going to be consumed because its dc. converting to ac creates too much power loss.

so, solar works in a farm, but not in a city.

go nuclear or go bust.

>>61599392
>Same way with coal, its only cheaper if you outsource its costs, the healthcare of the workers who mine it to the federal government (black lung benefits),
Because modern coal mine still have people breathing unfiltered air, climbing into little rail carts to go to work? Most coal mining is open pit and is done from inside machinery.

>health costs for everyone in the surrounding areas of mines and power plants in higher numbers of breathing related diseases,
Negligible with clean coal.

>drug abuse and suicides,
Personal freedom.

>its only cheaper if you also outsource the environmental damage of surface mines that cover up streams and damage the land where a habitat once existed, the environmental damage of coal cleaning ponds and underground mines that contaminate drinkable water, ponds and streams.
It's cheaper even done cleanly and safely.

Coal at the low end might be 3 cents per kilowatt and 6 on the high side depending on many factors. But within that price range is a 100% scale between China tier and Germany tier in terms of safety and health.

>>61599441
Interesting.
It's due the wire inductance, right?

>>61599391
did you swallow the good ol propaganda when elon came in your mouth?

Li-on is shit tech for battery because of the raw materials it takes to manufacture it, the problem is not the manufacturing of the fucking batteries, its the raw materials to make it with. Problem is, tesla runs on hopes and dreams, literally, since they make zero cash and live off the investments of rich people, it is a ponzi scheme, even i could make promises like that with other peoples money.

>>61599453
In a city you actually have more surface area on the roofs of buildings than you would in the middle of nowhere. That roof space isn't really productive otherwise.

>>61599473
Batteries can be endlessly recycled you fuckwit. You can't recycle coal.

>>61599441
The DC to AC conversion is a source of huge amounts of loss due to the square shape of the produced sin wave.

Wind power isn't much better due to the lack of frequency control over the output.

The backpressure created causes enough resistance that on day with lots of solar and wind power being generated you can tell by the droop in power lines as they have extra waste heat in the lines heating them and expending them.

>>61599462
It has to do with the fact that your only power losses with DC are due to real power whereas with AC you have losses due to real and reactive power caused by the lines being capacitively coupled to pretty much everything.

>>61599476
but is not enough to power said building.

at this point, having solar roofs is little more than a pr stunt.

>>61599449
>But you can. South Australia proves it. Solar and Li iOn cells have come down in price by an entire order of magnitude in the last 5 years.
Grid level costs for batteries are at best when excluding most of their costs at 60 cents per kilowatt hour. More reasonable prices are $1.20 per kilowatt hour.

For reference most grid electric prices all in with transmission and all the other fees are less than $0.20 per kilowatt hour. Further any possible cheap application of battery tech would be better matched to cheap providers like coal or nuclear. Letting the base load plants charge at night for day use. Lowering the demand on transmission lines and allowing fewer plants to run at 100% output more often. Lowing capital costs.

If you could make a magic batter tech we wouldn't need to build new power plants until we more than doubled the population.

>>61599461
Dude. I lived in fucking coal country.

For your info, yes people do go to work in underground mines breathing unfiltered air because reasons. Go look up rates of COPD in Appalachia. And yes they go inside the mine on a cart except its an electric car that is low to the fucking ground they lay on that shit to get to where they need to go at times.

>Most coal mining is open pit and is done from inside machinery.
I can't argue most coal or not, but a lot is done through surface mining.

>Negligible with clean coal.
Another idiot who swallowed the propaganda cum from the coal barons. There is no such thing as clean coal. Coal is mined today much the same way it was mined a hundred years ago, except now its mechanized. And now you can just dig it out from the top without making a underground mine.

>Personal freedom
So you don't have arguments for the externalized costs of coal?

>It's cheaper even done cleanly and safely.
You can't extract coal "cleanly", nor safely. It has an effect on the environment and those who live around it. And it has left over effects for decades to come (Centralia, Buffalo Creek, Kingston flyash spill just to name a few)

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>>61599275
>I don't see a lot of people explaining the issue of baseline vs intermittent.
Americans can't into more than one corporate master at a time. It's all a lobbying """conversation""", not an actual decision-making conversation.

>>61599295
>long-term
>self-discharge rates of 10%/mo
ADHD problem m8?

>>61599341
>DC is harder to convert the voltage.
Tell that to every smartphone that has at least three dc-dc converters embedded in it.
>inb4 four orders of magnitude
True, you need a hell of a lot of semiconductors to switch it. Pic related

>>61599391
>The only limiting factor at this point is production capacity
>at this point
Nice qualification, there. Raw materials may become a problem if the US continues its belligerent posture toward the rest of the world, never mind its own citizens.

>>61599559
>externalized costs
Externalization is the sole reason corporations exist. You're unlikely to find a shill who will argue against it.

>>61599585
I got pushed forward 100 years in time already, and i can quite see why DC > AC when transformers are not a problem.

>>61599559
>>Negligible with clean coal.
>Another idiot who swallowed the propaganda cum from the coal barons. There is no such thing as clean coal. Coal is mined today much the same way it was mined a hundred years ago, except now its mechanized. And now you can just dig it out from the top without making a underground mine.
You don't seem to understand that clean coal is a reference to the combustion of the coal. They filter and chemically trap all but trace amounts of NOx, sulfur and particulates.
The mining process is subject to regulation and control but can be vastly cleaner that ever before leaving little to no waste once mining is complete.
The greentard Germans are scaling up their coal production to meet demand, claiming that it's as dirty as it was 100 years ago doesn't hold up to any reasonable inquiry.

>61599461
I'm an electrician in an underground coal mine. Aside from the drug use and suicide the othrr guy you're talking to is correct. While many pits are open cut, their prevalence will only decrease as coal seams get deaper and machinery prices increase.

>filtered air
Top kek you dumb shit. How do you think ventilation is done underground? The only filters that exist are on diesel equipment and they aren't even mandatory. Diesel particulate related illnesses are the next big thing that has the coal companies terrified. It'll be bigger than black lung ever was and that's why they're taking measures now.

Clean coal refers to the capture of emissions once it's burned, has nothing to do with the extraction process.

I don't know about te legislation rearding land rehabilitation where you are. But in Australia its mandatory to do once a mine closes. So rather than close a mine and spend a billion on rehab mines simply go into an indefinite period of 'care and maintenance.'

In saying that, most of you are foretting that much coal is actually coaking coal used for steel prodiction, rather than thermal coal used for power generation.

>>61599521
>but is not enough to power said building
Let's do the math to find out.

A city of 1 million will consume around 10,000 MwH of electricity. Modern solar is running around 1 mwh per 10,000 square feet. So to power a city of 1 million you're going to need roughly 36 square miles of solar cells.

Now let's take a look at an average sized city of around 1 million, San Jose. The city itself is around 175 square miles. That means you would only need to cover around 21% of the buildings in solar cells to produce the exact amount of energy the city needs at any given sunny time.

If we're being realistic you'd probably need to cover around 50% of the buildings in solar cells and back that up with on-site battery storage.

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>>61599637
>You don't seem to understand that clean coal is a reference to the combustion of the coal.

I refereed to the problems of coal mining in the local environment and local populations
You said "muh clean coal"
I said "clean coal" doesn't exist
You're redefining "clean coal" to suit your purpose (moving goal posts)

I am so fucking tired of "clean coal" stickers like pic related, I know what "clean coal" refers to and there isn't a single "clean coal TM" power plant in the country, there was one that got the personal approval of obama to be built in 2008 and they have yet to figure out how to produce power from coal with carbon capture in a way that doesn't use three times as much coal. Other than THAT plant, there are no "clean coal" plants.

Particulate filters are mandatory in coal power plants, as well as others, then they blow water to catch the remaining particulates, that water goes into what is called a "fly ash" pond, which then settles and is transported into a bigger pond, more like a dam, where it will sit, FOREVER, leaching into groundwater.

So don't give me coal company lines I had to listen to for fucking years when I know the truth because I fucking lived there.

>The mining process is subject to regulation and control but can be vastly cleaner that ever before leaving little to no waste once mining is complete.

Those are the ramblings of a ignorant person. How about you go travel in your own country for a while.

>The greentard Germans are scaling up their coal production

You got a source on that? Please give me a source that says germany is spending money mining something that is so fucking cheap right now it isnt even worth getting out of the fucking ground.

>>61592303
Solar is a meme. The demand exists because it can. If coal were to disappear, solar would also die, because coal is what allows solar panels to be manufactured in the first place.

>>61599762
gad damn

>>61599723
In the USA surface mines produced almost double the amount of coal that underground mines do.

https://www.eia.gov/coal/annual/pdf/table2.pdf

That trend has been expanding as machinery has improved.

>>61599637
>greentard Germans
>scaling up their coal production to meet demand
>implying Germans are one person

>>61599763
>Solar is a meme. The demand exists because it can. If coal were to disappear, solar would also die, because coal is what allows solar panels to be manufactured in the first place.
I look forward to a detailed explanation of your premise.
>inb4 leftypol jew faggot
1 out of 3 ain't good.

>>61599813
Mountaintop removal has its own set of externalities.

>>61599813
>That trend has been expanding as machinery has improved.

The trend has less to do with machinery and more to do with the improvements in filters installed at coal fired power plants. Surface mined coal is cheaper because it has higher sulfur concentrations, but who cares about that when you have filters on the power plant.

The machinery used to surface mine coal today is no different than the ones used 30 years ago, maybe they've gotten bigger but thats it. The main differnce has to do with the prices of coal and the sulfur filters installed in coal fired plants.

It has allowed a transition from Appalachia based coal which was higher BTU and low sulfur with literally any other coal.

>>61599762
Water is only one aspect of the filtering. The biggest concern is getting the sulfur out.

The flyash is constantly being extracted and shipped out for use in construction. The settling ponds are not just dips in the ground filled with water leaking away into the ground. They are engineered structures that capture and hold all the water without any leaking.

Clean coal power plants which is the only possible meaning of clean coal exist. Even if clean coal now means to some people with carbon capture. If we back away from CCS almost all US coal plants are now clean filtering for particulate, sulfur and NORMs.

>>61593010
what about hydro? or nuclear? I bet you don't need much people for that shit... much less than those

>>61595901
this, I could be wrong, but from what I've read, solar water heating is like 80% efficient...

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>>61599900

>>61599886
>maybe they've gotten bigger but thats it.
The large equipment has lead to lower costs per amount of coal produced. Making more surface sources viable.

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>>61599585
>long-term
>self-discharge rates of 10%/mo

Self discharge isn't a problem in a grid scale system because each and every cell is run on a charge and discharge cycle to keep it fresh. It's the same system that hybrid cars have been using for decades. No single cell is ever holding a charge for long enough to be effected by self-discharge.

>>61599585
>Raw materials may become a problem if the US continues its belligerent posture toward the rest of the world, never mind its own citizens.

North America has PLENTY of Lithium mines and more are coming online every day. You can almost endlessly recycle batteries witch will keep minding demands in check as the raw number of batteries in the ecosystem increased. And even when all the lithium
has been mined, we're still going to be able to make new batteries from recycling old ones. You can't do that with coal. Just look at what happened with lead acid car batteries. They are the most recycled item in the world and keep the demand for new lead quite low.

You clearly have done no research into the subject and are speaking from personal bias.

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show me a single solar farm with this yield.


And that's just a warehouse somewhere in mexico built in the 90's.

>>61597600
what happens if all the waves get used up though? imagine the consequences with marine life and weather

>>61599900
>engineered structures that capture and hold all the water without any leaking
Tell that to all the spill sites on this map.

http://earthjustice.org/features/coal-ash-contaminated-sites

>>61599585
>Nice qualification, there. Raw materials may become a problem if the US continues its belligerent posture toward the rest of the world, never mind its own citizens.
the US has been doing that for economic purposes, just like the UK did before... and both are still mostly fine. and I say that as someone who opposes this.

>>61599959
>every cell is run on a charge and discharge cycle to keep it fresh
You mean, to wear it down? Lithium chemistries don't wear as well as others.
>implying that lithium is the only ingredient in a lithium battery
ok

>>61599962
>show me a single solar farm with this yield.
Why? One of the advantages of solar is that you can literally put generation in your backyard. It takes a real burger to feel guilty for not pay someone else for the privilege of living.

>>61600008
All empires fall. I can certainly hope that the age of empires will be past us in the not too distant future.

>>61599988
>Tell that to all the spill sites on this map.
I have no context for any of the spills or contamination.

However I'm sure your map would include every case from all of US history. What's at point now is current modern efforts.

>>61599962
>boiling water reactors

It's like you want a meltdown or something. At least bring an example of a fast neutron reactor.

And no single solar facility exists that rivals that of a nuclear power plant. But there are numerous sites that are producing gird scale power with many more currently under construction.
https://www.solarinsure.com/largest-solar-power-plants

>>61599988
dont bother, he is spewing out pure propaganda and ignoring real world facts and consequences.

>>61600037
>One of the advantages of solar is that you can literally put generation in your backyard.

Yeah if you want to live next to constant noise and flashing shadows.

>>61600053
Yeah, this thread has gone full retarded. Facts and numbers are useless here.

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>>61600047
>And no single solar facility exists that rivals that of a nuclear power plant. But there are numerous sites that are producing gird scale power with many more currently under construction.
And causes all sorta of pains to the grid due to over production, subsidies and government mandated premium prices.

>>61600000

>>61600079
>Facts and numbers are useless here
Never mind that, so is actually responding to the text of the post.
>>61600053
> 61600065
Seriously, can't we find these ctr shitposters and brick their PCs?
>inb4 nypa

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>>61600065

>>61600047
I do want power gen in my backyard, but that's gonna do nothing for the real world.
Specially if cars all become electric.

>>61600293
We can have more than one power source at a time, you know. I'm a fan of those Toshiba neighborhood-scale mini-nukes, not least because they make exceptionally poor terrorist targets buried under 200 feet of earth.

>>61592813
DC doesn't work for the grid. High voltage AC was chosen for the energy grid because it is more efficient transmission.

>>61592687
So much hostility.

>until a better battery technology exists.
Don't laugh. Ok well it is actually funny but hemp battery electrolyte chemistry is looking to be as good or better than lithium ion and cheap. Look it up. It's actually pretty cool.

So many here don't like Obama but he was right in his assesment that a lot of these carbons should be left in the ground. I think there might be a benefit to us for them being there. Possibly part of the prerequisites that allow us to exist.

>>61600937
>was more efficient transmission
ftfy

>>61595595
I live in wv and can confirm this... If you install solar on your house it takes 28 years on a 5kw system to pay it off because of fees