4 ms·
In terms of scaling PV, there's some lag time before grid-scale issues appear (due to percentage of total) and battery / nuclear et al. are need to solve them.
by ethbr1 1y ago
In terms of scaling PV, there's some lag time before grid-scale issues appear (due to percentage of total) and battery / nuclear et al. are need to solve them.
China is coming from a huge (and still growing) base load of coal. Still 60%+ of electricity mix. [0]
So even with PV's growth, it's not a systemically problematic component.
Compare that to Germany's mix [1], and you realize that China is aiming their reactor building at a problem they'll have in 10 years. (Depending on how aggressively the rest of the world makes China and India stop burning coal...)
[0] https://www.iea.org/countries/china/electricity https://www.iea.org/countries/china/electricity
[1] https://www.iea.org/countries/germany/electricity https://www.iea.org/countries/germany/electricity
- matthewdgreen 1y agoI don’t think the percentage of nuclear was ever planned to be high enough to serve as a replacement for storage, and China is badly behind those plans.
- ethbr1 1y agoNuclear isn't storage: nuclear is base generation and frequency intertia. I.e. the thing that makes the grid as a whole reliable even with fluctuating renewables For that, only a fraction of the total is needed.
- matthewdgreen 1y agoI mean, unless we're turning electricity into Uranium, nuclear obviously isn't storage. But when it comes to reliability, storage absolutely is the alternative to generation like nuclear. China already has 57GW of pumped hydro storage (about equal to their whole nuclear fleet), and they added 42GW of new 2.5hr battery storage just in 2024 alone. Given the declining price of both types of storage, it's likely that these will dominate nuclear when it comes to short- and medium-term grid reliability.