View Single Post
Old 03-30-2019, 04:10 PM   #5496 (permalink)
aerohead
Master EcoModder
 
aerohead's Avatar
 
Join Date: Jan 2008
Location: Sanger,Texas,U.S.A.
Posts: 15,861
Thanks: 23,922
Thanked 7,207 Times in 4,640 Posts
China coal

Quote:
Originally Posted by oil pan 4 View Post
If wind and solar are really cheaper then why does china (where most of the worlds solar panels are made) open a new coal plant almost weekly?
If solar is cheaper then why is only something like 0.2% of electricity in the United States generated with solar.
If solar is cheaper why are the utilities getting so much "other people's money" to put up solar?
Aerohead pays 1 cent a kwh more for "wind power". If it's cheaper why is he paying more?

The observation doesn't support the statement.
Maybeyou are only looking at installed watts of capacity?
The whole world told them it was okay to do it.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
As to solar's contribution to the mix,I believe that we need a clarification on the EIA data.
It appears that for fossil-fuels,they are listing energy 'inputs' rather than net outputs.
This doesn't affect renewables,as they do not reflect entropy in the same manner as fossil-fuels or even nuclear.
A coal-fired power plant requires 3.21847 times more Btus into the boiler than it gets out of the generator.
A 1-TW plant consumes 3.2-TW of energy to produce it.
Depending on how you spin the numbers,you could be over rating the capacity of the powerplant by a factor of over three.
And I think that this is exactly what the EIA is doing.
If so,then to keep the same level of intellectual dishonesty,you'd have to call a 2-MW wind turbine a 6.43695-MW turbine.
And the contribution of renewables would have to inflate to 36.6905-Quads for 2017,quite a bit different than 11.14.
It looks like intentional obfuscation,or at least intellectual laziness.
Like saying that Jane Russel wore an A-cup.
__________________
Photobucket album: http://s1271.photobucket.com/albums/jj622/aerohead2/