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It absolutely does not. But having electricity 13 days every two weeks is much better than not having it at all. This isn't about China building out their gri
by noosphr 1y ago
It absolutely does not.
But having electricity 13 days every two weeks is much better than not having it at all.
This isn't about China building out their grid with an over capacity factor of 200% so they can keep everything running even if rain, sun and wind all fail for months on end. This is a developing county getting to the point they can charge mobile phones consistently.
- badpun 1y agoSounds good until you try to run a business. Having businesses randomly out of commission is not a way to bring country from developing to developed status.
- o11c 1y agoBetter make sure they don't depend on AWS, then.
- jchanimal 1y agoIf that’s your first thought, then you’ll hate this influential perspective: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worse_is_better https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worse_is_better
- epistasis 1y agoEven if you have an under-provisioned solar+storage solution and don't want to splurge for a generator, even on cloudy days you still get power, just less. Generally businesses are really great at balancing costs, and for highly-cost-constrained businesses if you give them 95% uptime at half the cost, the equation becomes clear. And in Africa, if the option is 95% uptime or 0% uptime, the choice is even clearer.
- pfdietz 1y agoWhen I go to https://model.energy/ https://model.energy/ and ask it to solve for providing steady output in China from 100% renewable energy (wind/solar/battery/hydrogen) at minimum cost using 2030 cost assumptions and 2011 weather data, the solar curtailment is just 7.3% (and most of the energy is coming from solar, not wind). If I remove hydrogen and solve again, solar curtailment increases to 16.7%. "200% overcapacity" is completely bogus.
- noosphr 1y agoIt's their 2060 plan. Take it up with the CPP.
- pfdietz 1y agoPress 'X' to doubt. Assuming someone actually told you that, I think you need to reevaluate the credibility of that source.
- Steven_Vellon 1y agoAnd what was the storage requirement? I just ran those parameters myself with China's 2.9 TW of constant electricity demand, and the storage requirement was over 70,000 GWh of battery storage. By comparison, global battery production is around 1,000 GWh per year.
- pfdietz 1y agoIt was around 14 hours of battery storage. Seems reasonable. Realize that replacing all ICE road vehicles in the US with 70 kWh BEVs would require storage equal to ~40 hours of our average grid usage. The future is going to need large numbers of batteries, which is why China has been all in on this.
- Steven_Vellon 1y ago
- numitus 1y agoUnfortunately, all such calculations are egocentric. People assume that everyone can use solar panels for 13 days 2 weeks, and when needed, we’ll just get electricity from the grid. But what they don’t take into account is that when there’s load today but none tomorrow, the grid becomes unstable. 2) This also increases costs. You might save electricity consumption in 14 times, but your expenses for grid electricity can increase in 14 times, because the grid still needs to be maintained — staff must be kept at power plants to ensure you can be supplied with 100% of your energy at any moment.
- incompatible 1y agoThe tricky thing in cold climates is the part of the year when solar power is lowest but electricity use, for heating, is highest. Sometimes they have hydro or something.
- noosphr 1y agoThese people don't have access to the grid. That's the issue to begin with.