A milestone

I worked for an engineering firm that specialized in utilities. I got to have a tour at a coal-fired electric plant. How they work is shockingly complex and at a scale that is hard to grasp. It took hours to see and walk from the coal coming in by train all the way to the towers where water condensate reclaimed from the steam turbine was cooled for reuse. In between the coal is crushed, powdered, blown into a giant furnace, the exhaust is filtered with miles (literally) of fabric that gets washed, the water is boiled and pressurized into a turbine. They burned a half-mile of coal train every day.

Solar plant: the sun shines on there and electricity comes out of the wires in the back.

Solar beating coal? Yeah. If course it does.

@urlnotfound ++

A recent mental journey (Pub Quiz > Nixon Founded the EPA > Wikipedia EPA) resulted in me reading all about the Love Canal disaster which predated/precipitated both the EPA and the superfund list, which made me look up what fly ash was: coal combustion products, which lead me down a coal rabbit hole. I don't know what I expected but the more I learn about coal, the less I like. I cheer its decline.