Climate Change and Renewable Energy News and Discussion

Finally, some fair coverage from Bloomberg on China's energy plans. Pointing out correctly that the new coal plants are meant to be operated at loss with low utilization to cover power gaps when renewables aren't generating enough electricity.


I think eventually, this will have to be covered by nuclear and energy storage. However, we are a long way from those 2 being able to cover the peak electricity needs. I think they were led here after several well known analysts that are more aware of Chinese thoughts gave them a hard time on twitter about their previous articles.

Coal is not a good energy source to cover the intermittence of renewables. Coal power plants take a long time to ramp up and down. It is just how things are. The best option for that is pumped storage hydropower or natural gas power from gas turbines.

gelgoog said:

Coal is not a good energy source to cover the intermittence of renewables. Coal power plants take a long time to ramp up and down. It is just how things are. The best option for that is pumped storage hydropower or natural gas power from gas turbines.

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There still is the issue of longer-duration electricity shortfalls in the winter (when there isn't much sun) or droughts that last weeks.

tphuang said:

Finally, some fair coverage from Bloomberg on China's energy plans. Pointing out correctly that the new coal plants are meant to be operated at loss with low utilization to cover power gaps when renewables aren't generating enough electricity.

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I think eventually, this will have to be covered by nuclear and energy storage. However, we are a long way from those 2 being able to cover the peak electricity needs. I think they were led here after several well known analysts that are more aware of Chinese thoughts gave them a hard time on twitter about their previous articles.

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If you do a back of the envelope analysis, when the entire Chinese vehicle fleet became electric, there would be more than enough battery capacity to balance out daily electricity consumption in China.

If I use the UK as an example, about half of daily electricity demand is baseload, with the other half due to daytime/evening peak demand.

If you go with the following cost assumptions in China:

1. Nuclear electricity is the same cost as Coal
2. Wind is generally cheaper than Coal, but not too much
3. Solar can be 2-3x cheaper than Coal
4. Storage is still really expensive

Then in an optimal electricity generation mix, you end up with nuclear accounting for the baseload, which is at least half of the 8000 TWh of electricity that China currently uses.

So for 4000 TWh of electricity, China would need at least 500 GW of nuclear plants
At the moment, there is 50 GW in operation and plans for another 150 GW from 2020-2035.

Solar supremacy...

That 8% polysilicon in Europe is going to go straight to zero. You basically have to melt silica sand a thousand degrees to make polysilicon and good luck doing that without cheap energy.

I think this is pretty big news

Once you can build offshore wind cheaply, then you can have them right next to them next to your main industrial zones and feed those markets. No need to spend money on those long ultra high voltage lines. Also, I'd think offshore winds are more sustained than on land, so utilization probably goes up.

A lot of solar and wind. Although cautionary note is that the utilization on wind/solar is quite low compared to other sources.