Saturday, March 10, 2007

Coal Power Plants

From an MSNBC article on coal fired power plants:

Companies say the new coal plants are better than old ones, though both use the same approach: pulverizing coal, then burning it in huge boilers to power giant turbines. The new $1.1 billion MidAmerican facility will be one of the nation's biggest, with 790 megawatts of capacity. Its boilers and pulverizers will devour 400 tons of coal every hour, 3.5 million tons a year, Sokol says. Combined with an existing plant next door, it will require a fresh train of coal every 16 to 17 hours; each train will be nearly 1.5 miles long and lug 135 cars about 650 miles from Wyoming's Powder River Basin.


Wow. That's a lot of coal, and that's just one power plant. Anyone thought about what we should do try to reduce the rising demand for electricity?

Food for thought.

ELMO

3 comments:

  1. It would only cost about 4.4 million dollars to open a PV solar plant that burnt NO coal and created zero carbon footprint with zero pollution. Electricity production cost would be dramatically reduced over a very short time span. In turn, the end user price per kilowatt hour would see a steady decline. Seems like a no brainer.

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  2. Geothermal power plants work 24/7 and require no fuel. They use the free energy of the earth. They cost a little more to build but don't require trainloads of fuel and don't pollute the atmosphere. Ormat is a profitable company that is a leader. www.ormat.com

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  3. Good ideas both....

    Investment capital into renewable or sustainable energy seems to be the barrier...

    Better to spend it now while we have it.

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