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posted by martyb on Wednesday September 11 2019, @07:31AM   Printer-friendly
from the things-prior-to-2038 dept.

Gas Plants Will Get Crushed by Wind, Solar by 2035, Study Says

By 2035, it will be more expensive to run 90% of gas plants being proposed in the U.S. than it will be to build new wind and solar farms equipped with storage systems, according to the report Monday from the Rocky Mountain Institute. It will happen so quickly that gas plants now on the drawing boards will become uneconomical before their owners finish paying for them, the study said.

The authors of the study say they analyzed the costs of construction, fuel and anticipated operations for 68 gigawatts of gas plants proposed across the U.S. They compared those costs to building a combination of solar farms, wind plants and battery systems that, together with conservation efforts, could supply the same amount of electricity and keep the grid stable.

As gas plants lose their edge in power markets, the economics of pipelines will suffer, too, RMI said in a separate study Monday. Even lines now in the planning stages could soon be out of the money, the report found.

Hopefully our electrical distribution grid will still work.


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  • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 11 2019, @11:12AM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 11 2019, @11:12AM (#892618)

    And there's no mention of the massive land area needed for 68gw of panels. A single gigawatt facility requires an incredible 400+ square kilometers of panels

    Land is not the problem. There are enough rooftops for 10x as much area. Maybe read Forbes, the real "tree huggers" I guess, because they estimate 971 GW of solar capacity nationwide (that's US only) by 2050. And they say 50GW installed as of beginning of *last year*

    https://www.forbes.com/sites/rrapier/2018/04/29/the-solar-power-potential-of-rooftops-in-the-u-s/ [forbes.com]

    Also not mentioned is the even greater impact of covering such large areas with black heat producing panels.

    As opposed to even much larger area with black, heat producing asphalt????

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 11 2019, @11:41AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 11 2019, @11:41AM (#892626)

    Instead of "twice the size of Connecticut," maybe "10% of the area of Arizona" or "0.2% of the area of the contiguous US" (they're all equally true) sounds less extreme. Because it really is not all that much land.