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> evidently they did not 'drop solar panels [in the desert] and tramsmit power to the nearby megatropolis' I mean, I browsed the desert northeast of Beijing a
by jldugger 4y ago
> evidently they did not 'drop solar panels [in the desert] and tramsmit power to the nearby megatropolis'
I mean, I browsed the desert northeast of Beijing and found what looks like a solar installation, right next to some wind turbines. No idea how to estimate capacity from that, and without streetview to confirm it, I'm just making guesses based on how the pixels look.
- kragen 4y agocan you estimate what fraction of their power generation does that installation account for like roughly how many square meters is it
- jldugger 4y agoAlmost certainly fuckall. I found three of these just by browsing the area but I'm not convinced they're even solar and not just... random arid agriculture I don't understand. More likely these are demonstration installs. The big ones seem to be more in the northwest[0], much further out. The land there is even less productive, but I don't understand how transmission losses don't eat them alive. [0]: https://www.nsenergybusiness.com/features/largest-solar-plants-china/
- kragen 4y agothey've built all of the biggest hvdc systems in the world since 02010 and are building more all the time prc has had 800 kilovolt uhvdc since 02010; 12 years later there still aren't any in europe, north america, africa, or australia, though a european company was the lead contractor on the 02010 project but plausibly the answer is that transmission losses do eat them alive and they have to curtail pv output in the northwest because there isn't enough local demand