China's total wind and solar capacity outstrips coal

[teractiveodular]

Worth highlighting: The research firm projects that by 2026, solar power alone will outstrip coal as China's main energy source, reaching 1.38 TW in cumulative capacity, 150 GW above coal.

Last year, China added a record 293 GW of wind and solar, driven by gigawatt-scale renewable hub projects. Coal power additions were about 40 GW in 2023, while the first half of 2024 saw only 8 GW of new coal capacity, according to Rystad Energy’s estimates.

After a record 216 GW of solar installations last year, China is expected to exceed 230 GW this year. Wind capacity additions are projected to be 75 GW in 2024.

To put those numbers into perspective, the largest nuclear power plant complex in the US (Vogtile) has a capacity of 4.6 GW, while the world's largest power plant at the Three Gorges does 22.5 GW (max).

[Workaccount2]

I'm not one to champion China, but thank god that they seem to be pretty co2 conscious. It's easy to envision China having leadership that didn't give a fuck about climate change (or didn't want to hear it was real) and just went full on coal energy independence.

[asdefghyk]

How long is the 294 GW produced , For solar is the rated output only produced when sun shining?- which means the quoted OP is only for a few hours a day? The nuclear power plan OP would be constant.

[alwa]

Those quantities are astonishing, no doubt. Does “capacity” here mean “nameplate capacity,” in the sense of the maximum that the installation can produce under peak input conditions? So for solar, the actual energy flowing into the grid would be on the order of 10-20% of that?

[pcchristie]

Yes, spot on, but it'd be closer to 25% for a grid-scale solar PV installation.

[dn3500]

Seems like a less than useful comparison, given the very different utilization factors. For solar you'd need five times the capacity to get the same average power.

[bryanlarsen]

Not as much as you'd think. China's coal capacity factor is around 50% and dropping rapidly. Much of their coal is used in peaker plants.

[taneq]

Depending on the uptime requirements you probably want more like 10x base load. Solar generation will cap out under good conditions but for year round, you’ve got to handle stints of bad weather and much shorter winter days.

[ggm]

If this reflects a goal set in the 13th 5 year plan, I am pleased their intent is both stated publicly, and being achieved.

From the plan:

> Key objectives of China are to: Increase share of non-fossil energy in total primary energy consumption to 15% by 2020 and to 20% by 2030. Increase installed renewable power capacity to 680 GW by 2020. Increase installed wind capacity to 210 GW.

https://policy.asiapacificenergy.org/node/2837

[loongloong]

Humans have managed to build out a global network of fiber to enable a global Internet.

I wonder if we can do the same for electricity distribution, mitigating the uneven electricity generation of solar (day vs night, summer vs winter, etc.)

[dbetteridge]

While it's physically possible it's likely not economical to setup a full global network.

What is more likely is projects like

https://www.energymagazine.com.au/milestone-for-nt-solar-far...

Where neighbouring countries share generation and consumption (lots of western European countries already do this)

[BurningFrog]

A good start would be for the US to legalize building new power lines.

https://www.route-fifty.com/infrastructure/2022/10/bidens-pe...

[skybrian]

There might be other ways. I’m guessing this will just be a niche when extra power line capacity is unavailable, but here’s a startup that wants to build giant batteries as railway cars and ship energy by rail:

https://www.suntrain.co/

[blackoil]

For net emission, that investment may be better utilized in upgrading transportation and infrastructure and run peaker gas plants.

[Gare]

At some point storage or overbuilding capacity becomes more cost effective than long transmission lines.

[aquamar2]

China accounts for close to 60% of global coal-fired electricity generation and coal-fired power emissions

In 2023, China's total emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) from coal-fired power generation hit 5.56 billion metric tons, an all-time high that was nearly 6% greater than 2022's record. https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/china-may-upend-...

[pixl97]

Ya and they have 1.2 billion people they are bringing out of poverty while becoming the manufacturing hub of the world. They do realize they need massive amounts of power to keep up the growth. They also realize pollution is a huge problem and that they can't continue to burn coal supplies at their current rate forever.

[whatever1]

Someone is lying.

Either the coal capacity is flat (as the main article of the thread suggests), or the coal-fired emissions are still rising (aka they are still bringing coal-fired capacity online).

It wouldn't be the first communist regime that is lying though.

[whatever1]

Max capacity is not equal to actual production volumes.

Also some of that capital would be better invested at cleaning up the outputs of the coal plants. Supposedly there are desulfurization units in 90% of their plants. The actual pollution numbers disagree with that.

[ApolloFortyNine]

It's still a good thing, but isn't this misleading, since solar capacity would only be able to run 1/3 of the day-ish? Not sure about wind but again guessing it's not 100%.

[duckmysick]

Depending on the location, it's between 10-25%. The EIA data says it's around 25%. Wind is 35%, nuclear 92%, gas combined 58%, coal 40-50%, hydro 35-40%. As you can see, the capacity factor is not 100% for pretty much everything.

https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.ph...

https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.ph...

Again, it all depends on the location. The US has a pretty high capacity factor for nuclear at over 90%, but the UK has it at 60-80%. Wind farms can go over 50%.

[acdha]

A third of the day is the winter solstice in fairly northerly latitudes. It’s better the rest of the year and the further south you go.

The other thing to remember is that production and storage capacity are cheap to expand, so the better question is how often it’s the case that it’s dark at times of peak demand long enough to exhaust the grid storage capacity. Currently, that’ll be the case but I’d bet that a decade from now it’ll be much less common.

[asdefghyk]

The problem is wind and solar are un reliable. Need massive storage needed for them to be 24x7. Then there is the 2nd problem problem that transmission line capacity is needed to get it from its stored location ( maybe hydro or batteries ) to where it's needed.

[lolinder]

I love Technology Connections' take on this line of argument [0]:

> When there's a new innovation which changes how we do things for the better, its benefits are obvious. ... However when the "But Sometimes" rears its ugly head, people tend to freak out. Suddenly all those benefits go away, because in this one particular facet of stoplight functionality, the wasteful and maintenance-heavy incandescent lamp is accidentally superior. Suddenly, when a new solution presents a new problem, all we think about is the problem.

Yes, there are problems that exist with solar that don't exist with other electrical generation systems. That is not, by itself, evidence that solar will not be sufficient by itself as we solve those problems, and it's not a good reason to slow adoption of a piece of technology that is better in almost every way.

Everything suggests we're going to fix the "but sometimes"—as others have noted there are many different paths being successfully explored at this point—and everything suggests that solar will still be both cheaper and better for the environment even when you factor in the fix.

[0] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=GiYO1TObNz8

[yen223]

It amuses me to imagine engineers reading this comment and going "Oh crap - we totally forgot that the sun doesn't shine at night! Kill the projects immediately!"

[icehawk]

Please, name a generation technology that does not need transmission capacity to get it from where it is generated to where it is needed.

Even coal plants stopped being built in the middle of cities half a century ago.

[pfdietz]

There is no reason why many of the batteries can't be colocated with PV. They take up much less area. Properly configured, batteries can take DC from the PV modules and share the same inverter and grid connection. This is especially useful because typically a field will oversize the PV modules relative to the inverter.

[hooverd]

They're also building out crazy amounts of nuclear.

[bushbaba]

Water heaters are 18% of a homes U.S. energy usage. No reason I can’t shift when my hot water is heated throughout the day.

Lots of similar industrial use cases

[bamboozled]

It's getting old now

[mgfist]

Just another problem to be solved (and which is already in progress)

[xiaodai]

But cup blah blah blah