China Installed More Solar Panels Last Year Than the U.S. Has in Total

[Tulex]

I think you have that mixed up.

It's nuclear that's just 2% of their total electricity generation.

Solar PV and wind contributed 30% of China's electrical energy total supply in 2022 and is growing very rapidly (especially solar PV).

Thermal fossil (coal/gas) supply 52%

Hydro 16%

Coal power is still growing, but relatively slowly and coal power output is expected to peak some time next year before beginning to decline. Wind and solar PV in particular have grown very strongly, far outstripping the growth in energy generation by other sources.

Could be, I read it in This article. I guess they meant just for that year?

 

[Brucey]

I believe your navy does. And you guys ship a lot of uranium to China.

There's potentially some second hand US nuke powered subs coming in a few years to see Australia through until they purchase a British design using US propulsion if I'm not mistaken. Nothing right now.

 

[Danke]

I think you have that mixed up.

It's nuclear that's just 2% of their total electricity generation.

Solar PV and wind contributed 30% of China's electrical energy total supply in 2022 and is growing very rapidly (especially solar PV).

30%!

That contradicts the numbers that I’ve read.

Currently, nuclear energy accounts for only 5 percent of the total amount of electricity produced in the country, while coal still accounts for about two-thirds, according to the International Energy Agency.

The country built in excess of 216 gigawatts (GW) of solar power this year, the data indicated, underscoring the scale and pace of China's solar build out. Solar doesn’t produce 24/7.
China's overall power generation capacity grew by 13.9% over the course of 2023 to reach a total of 2919 GW.

China is the breakaway global leader in new nuclear construction.

China has 21 nuclear reactors under construction which will have a capacity for generating more than 21 gigawatts of electricity, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency. That is two and a half times more nuclear reactors under construction than any other country.

India has the second largest nuclear buildout right now, with eight reactors under construction that will be able to generate more than six gigawatts of electricity. Third place Turkey has four nuclear reactors under construction with a presumed capacity of 4.5 gigawatts.

The United States currently has one nuclear reactor under construction, the fourth reactor at the Vogtle power plant in Georgia, which will be able to generate just over 1 gigawatt. (For the sake of comparison, a gigawatt is about enough to power a mid-sized city.)

“China is the de facto world leader in nuclear technology at the moment,”Jacopo Buongiorno, professor of nuclear science and engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, told CNBC.

 

[Tulex]

China uses 2X the electric than the US does (2021), with over 4X the people.
At the rate they are increasing usage, the amount they use will probably be 4X by the end of this decade.
So, with all the smog they are making with all the new coal plants, they will need a lot more panels.

 

[wattmatters]

I believe your navy does.

No nuclear powered subs. We are looking to buy some from the US under an idiotic deal which is yet to get past the US legislature. They would be sealed power plants in any case - would have to go back to the US to be recharged/serviced.

And you guys ship a lot of uranium to China.

Hardly. The USA buys the majority of it. Exports of U₃O₈ to China (~500 tonnes) are ~1/10th of what the US buys (~5,000 tonnes).

Australia's Uranium | Uranium Mining in Australia - World Nuclear Association

Uranium mining and uranium resources in Australia. Australia's uranium reserves are the world's largest, with 23% of the total. Production and exports average about 10,000 tonnes of uranium oxide (8500 tU) per year.

www.world-nuclear.org

Production here has been on the decline for many years, now down to just two mines. Even if we did have nuclear power, all the fuel would have to be imported as we don't process it and have no facility for that - the relatively small quantities required would not be economic to process here.

The current analogues for new nuclear power here are the large nuclear plants, Hinkley Point C (UK) and Vogtle (USA), and those are financial nightmares (layer that on top of building them in a nation with no existing nuclear power industry, skills, expertise etc).

Commercial SMRs for grid electricity just don't exist. If they ever do, and can demonstrate commercial viability, then great. In the meantime we can't wait, so renewables it is. Fortunately we have an over abundance of renewable energy potential.

Nuclear is a great option - so let's build it where it makes sense to. It just makes little sense here. Perhaps some decades down the track that might change. It would also require changing several federal and state laws which currently prohibit nuclear power generation. That's would be harder to do than you'd hope even if nuclear were a sensible commercial option (it's a political wedge issue).

In the late 1960s our then conservative federal govt abandoned construction of what would have been our first nuclear power plant at Jervis Bay. The concrete footings are still there. In the late 1990s another conservative govt introduced the prohibition on nuclear power. Currently they are in opposition and bleating about nuclear while the government have a no nuclear policy stance.

 

[wattmatters]

Could be, I read it in This article. I guess they meant just for that year?

I think we were both wrong.

My apologies, I was quoting generation capacity, not generation.

The actual generation mix for 2022 shows 14% wind and solar PV, and that would have grown somewhat last year - just the annual data not published yet.

That contradicts the numbers that I’ve read.

See my correction above.

 

[fatjay]

I would wager there's a chance the panels are never hooked up. Government contracts, millions made, then throw them in the trash. It happens in every industry over there, they're beyond corrupt. Buildings are built and never used, just because a government put a bid out and someone won. Electric cars are built and get kickbacks from the government, and are never sold. The country is a massive house of cards and they're wasting an untold amount of money and resources and funneling it into the pockets of the few.

They compete on the world market because the western world wants to use their slave labor without feeling bad that it's slave labor because it's "over there" so they don't have to think about it. Manufactured in USA/EU your iphone would cost $6000, computers and tv's wouldn't be so cheap we have piles of them that we can't even throw away. They are the producers because they can do it for nearly free without any consideration for human rights, and we just consume. Sure, use their cheap goods, but don't trust anything they tell you.

 

[wattmatters]

China's Solar and Wind power production part way through 2023 (to end May) were sharply up, about 25% higher than same YTD 2022. I just haven't seen full year 2023 data yet. Coal power was also up (not by nearly the same degree) mainly due to the big drop in hydropower output.

They have a long way to go, hence the rapid uptake of solar PV. Climate may have been impacting hydropower production.

 

[wattmatters]

I would wager there's a chance the panels are never hooked up.

The most recent chart I posted was actual production share.

 

[Hedges]

China is building coal generation plants at several times the rate of PV, about 5x the kW capacity as I recall.
If that is 5x the kW, would be 25x the kWh. Or maybe it was 5x the kWh?

At any rate, they may be the world's largest implementer of solar power, but also the world's largest polluter. And I'm not just talking about so-called carbon pollution.

But I can't find anything except CO2 in a search; that is what's in vogue. Uses half the world's coal consumption - that means mercury, right?

 

[fatjay]

The most recent chart I posted was actual production share.

If it's accurate, then that's good. But I have a hard time believing their claims considering all the propaganda that comes out. They also claim to be the leader of ev production, while hundreds of thousands of EV's rot in an EV graveyard. Out of every 1000 vehicle registrations submitted, only 3 are approved. But a government credit of 10k per ev persists, if you can build an ev for less than $10k, you can pocket the difference. The same is true for countless other resources, search for china's ghost cities and you'll find a lot of information about entire cities that were build only to remain vacant.

 

[G00SE]

We have the largest facility by energy production in the US. It happens to be Nuclear, and it still isn’t the leading source of energy here.
I’m pro nuclear energy but it is seemingly cost prohibitive.


Palo Verde (3900MW) cost $6 billion to build 37 years ago (12 billion in 2021 money) and produces 37,000 gwh annually
It currently employs 2000 full time people and produces energy at 4.3c/kWh
It requires a constant 60,000 gallons of water per minute and is a zero discharge facility, meaning the water never leaves. Most of the water is wastewater from Phoenix, but 3% is ground water. In our desert state….that sells the rest to Saudi (sorry different problem) and 3% of 60,000gpm in 24hrs is 2.5 million gallons of ground water per day
These units are scheduled to operate until 2047 at minimum. So they will reach 60+ years of service.

Springerville generating station (1750MW) burned 5 million tons of coal in 2019. This facility cost $4 billion to build
NASA graph of sulfer dioxide values around the plant:

It used 8.8 million gallons of water per day in 2020 (I didn’t check what this source ie waste or ground and it wasn’t mentioned in the articles I read)
This was set to be in operation until 2066 and will now be shut down by 2032.
It has 375 full time employees
This facility is majority owned by Tucson Electric which has a capacity of 3230MW.

They claim by 2035 70% of that will be all renewable energy
They also have 2,457 megawatts of new wind and solar power systems, including 457 MW that will be coming online over the next year and 1,400 MW of new energy storage systems. They announced 900MW of solar farms by 2025.

The Mesquite Solar Project (400MW) uses 2.1 million panels. It has a 20 year power production contract and cost $1.5 billion.
Canadian solar is opening a plant at this location and will be turning out 20,000 panels/day. (Sounds a bit like what is being discussed about the Chinese economy)
In 2021 according to the EIA private solar export to grid in AZ was 50% as much as utility solar to grid. Not too shabby
Idk what any of this means, but it sure sounds like coal and nuclear cost a lot residually as well as up front. And both take absolute tons of water. Forget the carbon/climate argument…water is kind of a big deal.
Solar sure seems to need far less of at least 2 of those items.
We should install as many panels as China lol

 

[wattmatters]

This is the expected generation capacity change for Australia's national electricity market through the 2050:

 

[dougbert]

For 30+ years the Intermountain Power Project (IPP) has been producing coal fired electricity in Delta Utah, for use in Utah (including my city) and southern California (78%). Capable of 1,800 MW

It is now scheduled to be end-of-lifed in the next year or two and shut down.

Yet there have been plans to re-purpose the plant into a Nat Gas consuming plant in the short term, and "Green Hydrogen" consuming in the the long termed

Called "IPP Renewed"

 

[wattmatters]

On several of the coal power plant sites here which are have been or are soon to be shut down, large scale grid forming battery inverter storage systems are being built. While not generators of energy, it makes perfect sense given the transmission infrastructure already in place and they are capable of supporting the grid.

In total, under construction are batteries capable of generating 7.1 GW and with 15.2 GWh of storage capacity. That's 10 times the capacity installed in 2023. The ramp up is now moving into overdrive (and it needs to).

The 2-4 hour supply market is the key one for transitioning to the next phase of a high rate of renewables in the supply mix. This, along with the few larger longer term pumped hydro storage projects can get us to >90% renewables.

The cost of these large battery projects has halved in a few years and it keeps falling. They are going in everywhere:



Having said that, our biggest energy storage project, Snowy 2.0, a 2.2 GW / 350 GWh pumped hydro project is rapidly becoming our Hinkley Pt / Vogtle, i.e. have a massively overblown budget and timeline.

It will come online 2027-2028, was originally supposed to start operation this year. It will be an interesting few years ahead with all the coal power plant closures.

 

[SparkyJJO]

Closing coal plants without their replacements online and running is darn good idea /s