Re:The lesson about the end of nuclear in Germany
by Turing_Machine on Thursday April 27, 2023 @12:16PM
(#35730348)
We were comparing nuclear and solar, not coal and solar.
164 megawatts (328 / 2, to account for the fact that solar plants are offline a minimum of half the time) is not anywhere in the same league as nuclear power plant, which are typically in the 2-3 gigawatt range, with modern large-scale plants producing 6-8 gigawatts.
The Mount Signal 3 plant also used up 2,000 acres (800 hectares of Imperial Valley farm land.
https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=7290
The table above shows that the coal generators that retired between 2009 and 2011 had an average size of 59 megawatts (MW). By contrast, the average size of a coal-fired plant planned for retirement between 2012 and 2015 is 154 MW, more than twice the average size of the units retired during the 2009-2011 period.
In 2022, coal fired generators had a capacity factor of ~48% in the United States:
https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.ph...
Photovoltaic solar farms attained ~25% capacity factor in 2022:
https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.ph...
So as a rough guide you can estimate that a solar farm will generate about as much electricity annually as a coal plant with half the nameplate capacity. The Signal 3 facility would roughly match a 164 megawatt coal generator for annual generation.