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Photos capture the breathtaking scale of China's wind and solar buildout

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Re: Photos capture the breathtaking scale of China's wind and solar buildout

#551

Post by gehsty »

youngtaff wrote: post #520
gehsty wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess we are. But who are the plants owned by, who built the and where did the components come from, are we also switching them off because our grid cannot handle transmit huge volumes of renewable energy from Scotland to London, and turning on gas power plants to make up for it. You also have situations, like today, where a German developer has handed back a seabed lease for 3GW of offshore power because they didn…

The interconnection problem is being solved by several large cables down the east coast Leasing the seabed before you win a CfD auction is a commercial risk but they probably didn't win because their bid price was too high

Their price was too high because it had to include paying back £1B of lease fees that were made as part of another government policy. Comes back to priorities being confusing, if the intention is lower bills why the lease fees, if the purpose is good jobs and independence, why compete on price? If their purpose is national wealth why not partial state funding / ownership?

Re: Photos capture the breathtaking scale of China's wind and solar buildout

#552

Post by fakedang »

ta20240528 wrote: post #489
fakedang wrote: post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China's betting on renewables while Republicans are betting on nuclear fusion and gutting the NRC.

Hardly. China is also betting on nuclear fission and nuclear fusion: 1. Fission: TMSR-LF1 (a thorium breeder, molten salt research reactor) Based on US work in 1960s and independent Chinese Sinap work in 1970s. They recently published that they had detected Protactiunium in the salt - a new milestone. 2. Fusion: EAST tokomak https://www.livescience.com/planet-earth/nuclear-energy/chin... We would all be better off if…

I know that China's actively researching Nuclear fission, fusion and even have the world's first thorium reactor pilot - in fact, they might even be having a lot more effort and investment being put into nuclear than the rest of the world combined. But they aren't putting all of their chips and actively betting with a Hallelujah on fusion to provide energy. They're ramping up renewables production side by side while still funding fusion research.

Republicans on the other hand are hoping somehow that a gutted NRC will pave the way for looser regulations that will help ramp up conventional nuclear fission and nuclear fusion timelines (all efforts invested into by the current president's family and his fellow cronies of course), while abjectly gutting down any progress in renewable energy in the present moment.

Re: Photos capture the breathtaking scale of China's wind and solar buildout

#553

Post by fakedang »

justinclift wrote: post #423
fakedang wrote: post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China's betting on renewables while Republicans are betting on nuclear fusion and gutting the NRC.

Has Nuclear Fusion received massive funding improvements in the last ~12 months?

Well the Trumps, Thiel, etc are all invested heavily in a bunch of publicly traded nuclear fusion and nuclear fission companies, so those presidentially-backed firms are seeing outsized funding gains.

Re: Photos capture the breathtaking scale of China's wind and solar buildout

#554

Post by fakedang »

Qwertious wrote: post #412
x0b4dc0d3 wrote: post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China knows better than to weaken their position in the global theater by having large dependence on other nations for energy. They are aiming for domination and they are well on their way.

China is fine with dependence on other nations, it just can't rely on sea-based imports when the US could easily block them by blockading the strait of Malacca. That's why China has invested so heavily into their Belt And Road initiative (which is notably a giant land-based shipping route).

Actually, it seems China has given up on the feasibility of BRI because they don't control all the variables in their partner countries. Which is why Xi has been super focused on creating an autarkic economy dependent on domestic demand and encouraging production for the native population, as a back up. Failures in helping industrialize countries such as Pakistan and those in Africa due to systemic and unavoidable issues have soured on the Chinese. That autarkic vision hinges strongly on a solid renewables energy production base.

Re: Photos capture the breathtaking scale of China's wind and solar buildout

#555

Post by mgaunard »

Kallikrates wrote: post #35
mgaunard wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

The mountaintop panels add shade to those regions and actually reverse desertification, increases water retention and create useful agricultural land.

Mountaintops are already cold and shaded places by definition.

And regardless of whether it's beneficial for humans, it's still changing the local ecosystem.

Re: Photos capture the breathtaking scale of China's wind and solar buildout

#556

Post by philipkglass »

gregbot wrote: post #547
dalyons wrote: post #540

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Such a tired point. It’s not the 1970s anymore, and the west can build any large projects cheap. Go look at the projected costs for France’s new fleet, and that’s before the inevitable cost overruns

Could you post a link to those projected costs?

"EDF estimates EPR2 programme cost at EUR72.8 billion"

France's EDF has said its preliminary cost estimate for the project to build six EPR2 reactors at Penly, Gravelines and Bugey totals EUR72.8 billion (USD85.3 billion).

https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/articles/edf-estimates-ep...

Each reactor outputs 1650 megawatts of electricity running at full power. Assuming they run at 92% capacity factor, that's $9.38 per real annualized watt.

Re: Photos capture the breathtaking scale of China's wind and solar buildout

#557

Post by mrguyorama »

esafak wrote: post #449
kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CO2 can be converted to methane. It just isn't profitable to do so yet. After the fossil fuels are depleted, it will be a viable niche for storable energy where renewables aren't practical.

Why is this conversion desirable?

Methane synthesized from excess renewable power can store that renewable power for years, handily fixing the whole "Sun don't shine every day" problem.

It's durable energy storage and can be easily moved around like liquid fuels.

It also would remove CO2 emissions from things like airplanes, which won't be able to be battery powered in the near future, and could renewably replace chemical feedstocks in lots of industrial processes.

But this requires immense industrial capability, probably some serious innovation in absorbing CO2 from the atmosphere because that's basically an unsolved problem right now, and a massive oversupply of solar power which cannot happen under market systems because nobody builds infrastructure to sell power at below market rates.

It might be a 50 year plan.

Re: Photos capture the breathtaking scale of China's wind and solar buildout

#558

Post by waffletower »

The photos demonstrating the scale of China's solar arrays are impressive. The wind farms are beautiful, but don't show a scale unfamiliar to me. Driving through the Columbia Gorge on the Oregon and Washington border, or through the Coachella Valley in Southern California, you will see wind farms of larger scale than depicted here.

Re: Photos capture the breathtaking scale of China's wind and solar buildout

#559

Post by mrguyorama »

danw1979 wrote: post #54
madeofpalk wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its crazy that in 1999 "home solar" was a fancy, new millennium idea, and now we're still barely any closer. Honestly, I think building regulations should mandate solar energy for homes.

Sorry to disagree, but we are not just closer, we’ve been there for a while. You can go out and buy solar panels to cover your roof for a few thousand dollars/pounds/euros. You could definitely not do that in 1999.

You can achieve near total energy independence for 20 years minimum for the price of a new Camry (or less in specific context).

That's insane. I cannot fathom how anyone with a home isn't doing it ASAP.

Even here in Maine, a smaller system will pay for itself rapidly and offset the high energy costs.

Re: Photos capture the breathtaking scale of China's wind and solar buildout

#560

Post by pfdietz »

gregbot wrote: post #549
pfdietz wrote: post #440

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These aren't nuclear power plants. They're designs of nuclear power plants. None have been constructed (well, aside from old plants like Superphenix, which was a failure, so much so that the French have mothballed their fast reactor program.) Moreover, they would be considerably more expensive than existing plants (especially if fuel is to be reprocessed), so they're nonstarters.

Ah yes. “Old” plants. This plant is “old” so we could never build more like it. What an argument. And no, they would not be “considerably more expensive” because we wouldnt build a fleet of them until uranium was expensive enough that they would be cheaper. Thats why most countries have put off breeder reactor development not because they were “failures” whatever that is supposed to mean.

"Old" as in "we built it and discovered it's not wanted". The French basically gave up on the idea of fast reactors (as did the Japanese, although their fast reactor program appears to have been an excuse to obtain a stockpile of separated plutonium in case they need to make bombs). There's no market for them. The Russians have continued to try, but they're selling LWRs.

The big problem with fission is that it's too expensive. Fast reactors make that main problem worse. There is no economic margin to do fancy (and expensive) things to try to address the lesser issue of nuclear waste.

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