How the US gets its electricity

[cartman]

Here is a pretty cool graphical article on the methods used for power generation in the US.

Mapping how the United States generates its electricity - Washington Post

[CU Tiger]

For whatever reason the progressive state that SC is (chuckle) has led the charge in Nuclear and continues doing so.

They have 4 nuclear plants utilizing 7 reactors in use and have since the 70s they also have 1 new plant under construction as well as 2 expansions to existing plants under construction that will bring the total to 5 and 11 by 2020.

Its long confused me why this state is so, relatively, nuclear dense but I am glad that it is.

[Alan T]

The solar power map was interesting to me. One of my quiet dislikes that I have felt more and more disgruntled with the past few months is just how many solar farms are showing up in Massachusetts. You can see in the map that they pretty much are all over the state. Even though it generates such a small percentage of the power seemingly.

I actually really like how houses look with solar power panels on them, for some reason it makes them look futuristic to some extent which I find pretty cool. These huge solar farms that are literally everywhere though just bug me. When I go for runs or bike rides, places where there used to be beautiful open fields or nice wooded areas are just big fenced in areas with huge amounts of solar panels.

I find that I just never really complain about it much to friends because it feels "wrong" to me to complain about solar power in such a trivial way though..

Looking at the map though, it really looks like this is pretty much only a Massachusetts issue, as no where else really seems to have this density of solar farms.

[thesloppy]

It still kinda blows my mind to think that a lot of these power sources are still being used to boil water in order to generate electricity, and that the world is basically steam powered.