Comment by myself248
1 year ago
Can you clarify your usage of "thermal" here? Most everything except photovoltaic is thermal.
In the US, we usually name the heat source -- coal, natural gas, nuclear -- even though these are all thermal in operation. And the word 'thermal' does not show up in any of those when we talk about them.
The only time the word 'thermal' shows up in US usage is with the 'geo' prefix, and I can't imagine compressing the runtime of a geothermal plant, it's the perfect base-load plant. Are we talking about different things?
I think you’re being a bit pedantic, actually. I work in power systems in the US (though not an expert) and the term thermal being used to refer to coal, gas and nuclear, with the latter a bit flexible, is very common. For example, it’s very common to say “thermal systems provide inertia”.
One could argue concentrated solar power [1] is thermal as opposed to photovoltaics.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concentrated_solar_power
shrug sure, but people don’t talk about it that way, at least around me. They use thermal to mean a power source where you burn something and get energy out.
In following the Ukraine war, I've come to understand that in certain usage, 'thermal' always implies 'nuclear thermal', almost like a euphemism rather than a useful descriptor that includes other forms of thermal.
So I think it's a terrible term in general and it's much more useful to describe the fuel, that's all I was asking for.
I see the word thermal used for coal/gas all the time.
1 reply →
I just finished a day of skiing. I am taking off my thermals. Thermal is an incredibly broad term to let yourself pigeonhole it to a first association.
Coal, oil, or fossil gas are traditionally considered thermal generators. Burn, make water hot, make water do work.
Examples: https://github.com/search?q=repo%3Aelectricitymaps%2Felectri...
https://github.com/electricitymaps/electricitymaps-contrib/b...
> Most everything except photovoltaic is thermal.
Huh? Solar, Hydro and Wind are all non-thermal sources of power.
Edit: Technically I believe Solar can function as a thermal plant as well if you are using mirrors to concentrate light to produce heat.