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China Is On an Epic Solar Power Binge (technologyreview.com)
An anonymous reader links to an article on MIT Technology Review: It's worth taking a minute to appreciate the sheer scale of what China is doing in solar right now. In 2015, the country added more than 15 gigawatts of new solar capacity, surpassing Germany as the world's largest solar power market. China now has 43.2 gigawatts of solar capacity, compared with38.4 gigawatts in Germany and 27.8 in the United States. According to new projections, it seems that trend is going to continue. Under its 13th Five Year Plan, China will nearly triple solar capacity by 2020, adding 15 to 20 gigawatts of solar capacity each year for the next five years, according to Nur Bekri, director of the National Energy Administration. That will bring the country's installed solar power to more than 140 gigawatts. To put that in context, world solar capacity topped 200 gigawatts last year and is expected to reach 321 gigawatts by the end of 2016.
Good question. I also know that China is an an 'epic': Coal power binge, Gas power binge, nuclear power binge, hydro power binge, etc...
I don't read AC A human right
A lot of people's supply chains have been disrupted, because China is modernizing, building industrial scale solar and wind nationwide, and took all their coal plants offline to convert those they could to cogeneration.
Which is a good thing.
But it has meant they have reduced use of steel and coal dramatically.
Many modern universities and entire cities on the coasts of the US and Canada now require all new construction be built with either super efficient HVAC or with load-bearing roofs and electrical systems that can handle rooftop solar. Since 2004.
The future is here, you just can't see it yet.
Fossil fuels are dying off.
And, good news, solar and wind creates, on average, about 10 times the jobs per GW that fossil fuels do.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Against solar city? Seriously, China invests far far more into coal plants and mines each year. Heck, China is around 1100-1300 GW of coal plants ( Chinese gov numbers do not agree with what locals claim and what the plants are ). And this is growing at ~52 GW/ yr. Solar will not make a dent in their coal unless they stop building new plants and stop their old ones.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
The air pollution might actually be one driver for solar deployment: yes, it will definitely reduce effectiveness in the short to medium term; but the quality-of-life costs of some of the nastier power plants make them desirable targets for retirement in order to improve public health and reduce dissatisfaction.
If a given city is so polluted that it's cutting solar efficiency; that's a good sign that the people there probably aren't happy about it. It'll involve a bunch of shuffling around of the grid; but you would likely make people considerably happier if you can shut down the worst pollution sources, tide yourself over with power from elsewhere on the grid, and then get increasing amounts of local solar as the worst of the smog eventually settles out or blows away.
Indeed. China's current situation isn't just a large environmental cost... it's also a large financial cost. Medical care, sick days and disability cost an economy serious money.
I'm sure China would love to be able to shut off a large chunk of their current hardware today. But they need more, not less. It's amazing the lengths they've gone to try to stretch what they have... for example, pumped hydro to let them shift daytime loads into the night. China has nearly half of the world's large pumped hydro stations, including two of the three largest. They really need daytime capacity.
Hourglass says she knows a kid in Iowa who grows up to be president.
Not really. The desert southwest is good, but there are places that are better. You can see why for example Europe really wants to use the Sahara as a power plant. Which would be win-win for everyone (well, except Russia)
Hourglass says she knows a kid in Iowa who grows up to be president.
Your statement about penetration levels is seriously dated. What they've found in Germany and Hawaii and other places where solar is reaching 30% of power generation is that everything people assumed about maximum amount of solar energy is wrong. It was all theoretical anyway but what they find is that those peak generation periods you allow rates to fall to zero then people will jump in with storage technologies (batteries, fly wheels, pumped hydro, etc) and will use that free peak power to generate stored energy that the grid can use later. Recent research is indicating that rates as high as 80% generation by PV would be sustainable.
The reality is that it will never reach that point because a balanced portfolio of solar, wind and either geothermal or nuclear and you can meet all needs and power rates will probably fall with periods of free power. But this will require total deregulation of the power market. Honestly at some point in the future power generation will be a commodity service with minor profit margin. I expect that grid maintenance and operation will at some point need to be picked up either by a non-profit or government due to the lack or profit from generation and power rates will fall through the floor. This will be good for everyone. One particular thing I like about wind and PV solar is you don't need to waste water generating power, particularly for those of us that live in the desert.