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piratecheese13 t1_jd991zn wrote

Reply to comment by BeatNick5384 in Maine's Energy future by mainething

Cost less than maintaining a coal plant

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BeatNick5384 t1_jd99ma5 wrote

Maine doesn't have coal plants. The closest is in Rumford and only uses coal as a secondary fuel source if they run out of biomass. Maine hasn't burned an ounce of coal for generation since 2019. Even then I highly doubt maintenance on any of our generation facilities would even begin to touch the operating costs of underground transmission lines and solar panels that only generate at 30% capacity, with no ability to store energy for peak usage time after sundown.

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piratecheese13 t1_jd9dn34 wrote

My dumbass thinking Wyman in Yarmouth was coal. It’s #6oil. Still cheaper at 3 cents to 5 for oil per KWH

Also, solar panels work at night now and storage of that energy is an issue but really, every single grid should have more battery power than it does

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BeatNick5384 t1_jd9fccm wrote

Radiative cooling is a great developing technology, but ultimately puts out a tiny percentage of what the panels put out. Your link leaves out that it's about 3% of the generation of panels during the daytime, leading to an incredibly inefficient system to handle even the smallest portion of the peak load around dusk. Batteries are a great idea for homes with current technology, but on a generation and delivery scale ultimately useless with what we have today. I'm not saying emerging or green technology is a bad thing by any means, but before an investment like that is made by a state, there needs to be the technology to generate a fiscal return or the bills will get loads higher than when they started. Small applications of this around Portland, OOB, Lewiston, Scarborough, Bangor, even Sanford would be great, but 300 miles of underground transmission and possible generation is beyond foolish with the current infrastructure and technology we have. Money much better invested in a state wide rail system in my own opinion.

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