Less profitable than a comparable gas turbine because it couldn't perform the same grid role of peaker plants. Make no mistake it was gas which killed coal here not wind.
A coal plant even with all of the modern upgrades is and always has been happiest as a baseload generator. It takes about 4-6 hours for a coal plant to come up from cold start, compared to about 5 mins for a gas peaker plant. This means you can use it for planned/predicted grid peaks but you'll have to run during some unprofitable times to do so.
Essentially coal has the same problem as wind, it's producing at the wrong times. If you want it to be really profitable you need pumped storage and batteries to hold that energy for peaks, something we're still short of in the UK.
I don't know for sure, but I'd guess so. Use of coal as an energy source is fairly commonplace. Germany is an example of a country where coal makes up a huge make up of it's power.
It's probably becoming less profitable though- there aren't a lot of guarantees because coal takes a long time to start up, and the UKs energy price is volatile due to the ammount of wind energy in the system.
Probably a reason why natural gas continues to be a fossil fuel with a lot of use in the UK. It's very quick to turn on and off at times when wind is low/high.
TechnicalVault|1 year ago
A coal plant even with all of the modern upgrades is and always has been happiest as a baseload generator. It takes about 4-6 hours for a coal plant to come up from cold start, compared to about 5 mins for a gas peaker plant. This means you can use it for planned/predicted grid peaks but you'll have to run during some unprofitable times to do so.
Essentially coal has the same problem as wind, it's producing at the wrong times. If you want it to be really profitable you need pumped storage and batteries to hold that energy for peaks, something we're still short of in the UK.
benrutter|1 year ago
It's probably becoming less profitable though- there aren't a lot of guarantees because coal takes a long time to start up, and the UKs energy price is volatile due to the ammount of wind energy in the system.
Probably a reason why natural gas continues to be a fossil fuel with a lot of use in the UK. It's very quick to turn on and off at times when wind is low/high.
Symbiote|1 year ago
The UK (or EU?) introduced air pollution limits and carbon emission taxes. That made coal power unprofitable.
Ratcliffe had a supplemental income as an emergency producer of power, which presumably left it profitable, but it is no longer needed for that.