China's Solar Power Has Reached Price Parity With Coal (arstechnica.com) 102
Like everywhere else, China has seen the cost of solar power dive over the last decade, with a 63 percent drop between 2011 and 2018 alone. In line with that, the installation of solar has risen dramatically. From a report: Currently, a third of the entire planet's new solar capacity is being commissioned in China; the country passed the installed capacity of the US in 2013 and Germany in 2015, and it now has over 250 GW active -- well more than double what its economic plan had specified by this point. Given that China plans to hit net zero emissions by 2060, it is likely to continue this building spree. But the forecast is not all rosy. Most of China's population is located in the country's southeast. The best solar resources (in terms of cloudless days and available land) are in the northwest, which also happens to be sparsely populated.
This mismatch has left solar facing constraints due to limits in the ability of China's grids to shift power across its vast distances. The output of solar plants in the northwest has frequently ended up curtailed, as there's no capacity to send it where it's needed. As a result, it's been somewhat difficult to fully understand the economics of solar power in China. To get a clearer picture, the researchers built a model that takes into account most of the factors influencing solar's performance. The model tracks changes in technology, economics, solar resources, and the Chinese grid for the period from 2020 to 2060. It used six years of satellite weather data to estimate typical productivity in different areas of the country, and it included information on existing land use that would interfere with solar-farm siting.
This mismatch has left solar facing constraints due to limits in the ability of China's grids to shift power across its vast distances. The output of solar plants in the northwest has frequently ended up curtailed, as there's no capacity to send it where it's needed. As a result, it's been somewhat difficult to fully understand the economics of solar power in China. To get a clearer picture, the researchers built a model that takes into account most of the factors influencing solar's performance. The model tracks changes in technology, economics, solar resources, and the Chinese grid for the period from 2020 to 2060. It used six years of satellite weather data to estimate typical productivity in different areas of the country, and it included information on existing land use that would interfere with solar-farm siting.
Did we mention (Score:2)
Coal prices are through the roof right now?
Come on...
As Pravda reported, "Great news, comrades! Last night the Chernobyl nuclear power station fulfilled the 5 year plan for thermal energy generation in 34 microseconds!"
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Coal prices are through the roof right now?
"It's still good, it's still good!"
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Blackouts [dailymail.co.uk] are a strong motivator.
Re: Did we mention (Score:2)
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Re: Did we mention (Score:1)
Anything can cost next to zero if it's made with slave labor.
And slave labor isn't really immoral if the slaves aren't black and toiling away on the other side of the world.
Just so long as there's cheap shit on the shelves at Walmart it's all good.
As long as coal prices are high. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:As long as coal prices are high. (Score:5, Interesting)
No. Solar is already cheaper than coal in the United States. In part because of pollution taxes, but mainly because we have a better transmission grid and have a better mix of power for the cloudy days and nights.
China was an out-layer, because they had no pollution regulations, a crappy grid, and often only a single power plant supplying large areas.
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What a WindBourne thing to say. China has stricter coal emission regulations than the US does.
So what? We don't enforce them here, why would I believe they enforce them there?
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You (along with most people here) clearly believe what you want to believe facts be damned.
The fact is I know a guy who the EPA used to pay to climb stacks and he said that they could find offenders as quickly as they could do the job. Why would it be any different there? We know there's massive corruption there, as there is here.
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In 2014, China BEGAN to implement coal regulations. But existing factories 'have not fully complied.' While the US has poor enforcement, we have basically stopped building new coal plants and forcing coal plants to buy offsets.
China began to reduce coal useage from 20-15 to 16. But in 2017 it started rising again. Covid dropped it again, but it is back up now.
The clear increase in Coal use by China while most of the rest of the world (including the US) has significantly reduced coal use shows exactly h
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I read some time ago that China distorted the market for solar panels, by heavy investment in the factories to produce them, to the extent that product was dumped at less than manufacturing costs. I apologise for not providing a reference for this.
The free market aspects of the Chinese economy are a bit odd. There is little doubt that the Chinese economy has benefited from nurturing free enterprise, rather than sticking to the failed communist policy of national ownership of all key industries. However, the
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rather than sticking to the failed communist policy of national ownership of all key industries.
Russia did not fail because it has "national ownership of all key industries" but because they tried to have a "master plan" for the market and production of such industries.
It does bottom line not count who owns the industry, it counts who and how they are running it.
In Russia and eastern Germany the government, aka a special ministry, tried to make a master plan down to which factory is producing how much - e
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Your analysis looks right. The reason I stressed ownership of key industries is that it is a key part of Marxism-Leninism -- ownership of the means of production by the workers, rather than by capitalists. In practice, what this implied is the workers running the key industries, and that was done via central government planning. As you say, this was pretty much impossible to implement effectively.
Government owned industries can work quite well. It is common for countries to have various parts of their infra
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France's nuclear plants and power grid are mostly government owned.
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France's nuclear plants and power grid are mostly government owned.
Yes, I know. I think France may be better off than the UK as a result. For some reason, UK governments are terrible at running infrastructure, which is presumably why there is so much privatisation, in the hope that free enterprise will do a better job. Actually, some free enterprise in the UK is totally crap too, but at least it not the government's fault when they screw up.
I know I should not talk my country down, but I think there is some systemic malaise that needs fixing. My revolutionary tendencies le
Dear Santa (Score:2)
This Christmas, I would like a lump of coal.
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But you need two for your snow man.
Which you probably can not build due to global warming anyway.
Bitcoin (Score:5, Insightful)
China did more to reduce its energy price by forbidding cryptocurrency than any solar panels can do.
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The problem in the paper isn't power costs so much as it is getting from source to destination.
In the news. (Score:5, Informative)
Well the pay-wall free paper. [pnas.org]
Solar boosters should pay attention. (Score:5, Insightful)
The constraint in China right now isn't generation capacity.
It's transmission capacity and distance limitations that are the problem.
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That doesn't align with all of the news coming out of China. Five days ago this headline appeared on CNN: China orders coal mines to increase production as power shortages bite. [cnn.com]
If you don't have the transmission capacity and you are suffering "distance limitations," increasing supply won't help. Yet China is increasing supply, just as though they do have transmission capacity.
From the same story:
Earlier this year, China has shut down hundreds of coal mines — or reduced production in the functioning ones — amid a national push to reduce carbon emissions.
So the 'shortages' are self inflicted and now they've had enough of playing greenwashing games with their l
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https://www.statista.com/stati... [statista.com]
Given that, it's truly remarkable they shut down the coal mines earlier this year. Having to bring some back online for a while is unfortunate, but I'm glad it's the older, more dirty sources they are modulating to match demand (which with coal, is not trivial to do).
I don't know why you would call solar "greenwashing," doesn't that imply something that's supposed
Re:Solar boosters should pay attention. (Score:4, Informative)
If you don't have the transmission capacity and you are suffering "distance limitations," increasing supply won't help.
The distance limitations are for their solar resources. Clear and sunny in the West, far away from their population centers. But little transmission capacity to move it there. Increasing coal supplies is a different issue. The 'supply' (generating capacity) already exists in the East, close to the loads.
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Re:Solar boosters should pay attention. (Score:4, Informative)
The constraint in China right now isn't generation capacity.
It's transmission capacity and distance limitations that are the problem.
Guess what? China has also been building ultra high voltage transmission lines throughout the country since 2009, and is continuing to do so.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
The thing is, China looks ahead 20, 30, even 50 years ahead, then plans and build towards the goal. While there often would be hiccups along the way, the past 40 years have shown that they usually can fix the problems and keep going.
You can bet that no only did they had wind and solar in their plans, nuclear fusion would also be in there. They were already impatient with ITER and is starting up their own plans. Just like their space station and GPS (Beidou), it may take decades, but they eventually get there.
China coal consumption still increasing (Score:1)
How many lies can one fit in one article? (Score:3, Informative)
The answer is, quite a few.
China does have quite a bit of solar installed, but a lot of it is already aged out. Counting everything at maximum potential capacity since installation was started is stupid. And old PRC tradition of tofu-dreg construction and chabuduo maintenance (google these two if you don't know what they mean) in everything means they, just like everything else communal degrades far faster that what we're used to in the West.
China plans to stop using coal in 2060, not hit net zero emissions. That specific date is "planned" only because it's currently estimated that by 2060, China will run out of domestic coal reserves at currently projected rate of increasing usage.
Current situation is because China made a political choice to ban imports of coal from Australia to punish them for daring to openly oppose some of CCP's political actions a few months ago. This drove coal prices in China temporarily through the roof, and even with those prices, there's an extreme shortage of coal in China causing large scale industrial shut downs due to lack of electric power. The premise of "cost parity" is therefore a lie of omission.
Re:How many lies can one fit in one article? (Score:4, Informative)
That's not true at all. Just google China 2060 and read any or all of the first 10 hits.
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You mean like I should google "Made in China 2025"?
Hint: official declarations and what they actually mean are two completely different things in China. Just like Made in China 2025 was supposed to be the target date for strategic independence from foreign technology and inputs, if you actually read the fine print and talk to relevant bureaucrats behind closed doors, they will openly admit that real target is in the 2070s at the earliest.
Same thing here. The spin is that 2060 is the date for carbon neutrali
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China plans to stop using coal in 2060, not hit net zero emissions.
Whichever news source you used were lying to you.
China planned to achieve carbon neutrality by 2060, and planned to hit peak carbon emission by 2030. Straight from the horses mouth http://www.xinhuanet.com/engli... [xinhuanet.com]
And unlike most other countries, which change leaders every few years and then all plans change, China usually hit their planned targets. If you still did not see this over all the 5-year plans they have achieved throughout the past 30 years, you simply weren't paying attention.
How many lies can Luckyo tell? (Score:1)
If we knew they are just the latest CIA talking points, we'd be even less likely to believe him. (If that is even possible)
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Have you looked at what Xinhua said about "Made in China 2025" yet?
Hint: official declarations and what they actually mean are two completely different things in China. Just like Made in China 2025 was supposed to be the target date for strategic independence from foreign technology and inputs, if you actually read the fine print and talk to relevant bureaucrats behind closed doors, they will openly admit that real target is in the 2070s at the earliest.
Same thing here. The spin is that 2060 is the date for
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And unlike most other countries, which change leaders every few years and then all plans change, China usually hit their planned targets.
I hope you are not suggesting that the Chinese way of running their country is superior to a properly functioning democracy. The continuity of management comes at a considerable costs, including the suppression of dissent and non-conformance by brutal force. I am fairly happy with some inefficient political bickering, in return for the freedom to live my life as I choose, and to say what I think is true.
I should add here that I don't consider the USA to be a properly functioning democracy, when compared oth
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Being a superpower and being led by people who understand reality are not synonymous. Remember how rapidly Soviet Union fell apart from within because of problems similar to ones China is having, such as internal culture of silence and fear of bringing bad news to leadership, even when they really need this information input to make correct choices on top?
Australia coal import ban appears to be a clear cut case of making decisions based on propaganda and utter lack of actual feedback from ranks below.
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Remember how rapidly Soviet Union fell apart from within because of problems similar to ones China is having
The USSR fell apart because of the Chernobyl disaster.
How stupid are you actually?
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I'll add that one to the list of stupid shit you are saying, next to Germany controlling wind and Northern Europe not having winters below -20C because of global warming any more.
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Northern Europe not having winters below -20C because of global warming any more.
Prove the opposite, dumbass? I doubt north Germany had a -20C last 30 years. But you might find a cherry picked spot where it happened.
next to Germany controlling wind
AGAIN: no idea to what you are referring with this stupid comment/claim.
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I much prefer your latest statements of "Ice Age ending instantly rather than gradually warming up until it ended" and "planet is most certainly not greener than before" on the level of extremes of your anti-reality rhetoric.
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You could read something how the ice age ended: it is estimated it might be less than 500 years. And it is common accepted: it was certainly less than 2k years.
Hint: books are a treasure. But it useless if you do not take them into the hand and open them.
There are also ideas that it was significantly less than 500 years. The events are minimum 2 super vulcano explosions under the north american ice shield (that is what now are the great lakes - oops, easy to google) And like 2 meteorite impacts on the Green
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I find it funny how you just keep doubling down on your "it's so fast to shift climate" narrative, based on... the ending stage.
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This drove coal prices in China temporarily through the roof, and even with those prices, there's an extreme shortage of coal in China causing large scale industrial shut downs due to lack of electric power. The premise of "cost parity" is therefore a lie of omission.
False. China's ban on Australian coal imports if anything would have produced a glut in the global coal market as they relied on purely domestic sources which should have driven the price down. In reality coal isn't more expensive in China, it's more expensive EVERYWHER currently trading a $242/t as opposed to the $60/t it was a year ago. Even the Australian trading price while currently lower than global spot price is still up 300% y-y
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Coal does not magically teleport to different locations. You still need port infrastructure to load and offload superhaulers. That takes time to build. And Australia's supply chains were so used to Chinese market, they were decades old.
As a result, when CCP announced the decision to ban coal, it came as a surprise to everything as it was a political decision made based on propaganda, and in typical communist fashion it was made without looking at objective reality, or talking to people involved in this part
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Coal does not magically teleport to different locations.
Indeed it doesn't. So in Australia they should be basically giving it away right now given they lost their biggest customer. Instead the price jumped locally and it even Australia power plants are paying 300% more than they were a year ago.
Do you not understand basic supply and demand economics?
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So, have you ever looked at the map of Australia and logistical challenges that any internal trade in Australia faces? My guess, you haven't, because if you ever did, you wouldn't produce the argument as phenomenally stupid as you just did.
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How to do you reckon that? There are many potential sources showing China's installed solar capacity by year, here is just one [wikipedia.org]. About 65% of that total capacity - 165 GW worth - has been installed in just the last five years.
The typical lifespan for a solar panel (I'll define as "degraded down to 80% of original capacity") is over 20 years. What percentage of China's PV capacity is over 20 years old? Less than 1%.
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Because it's standard practice in China to separate things that go for foreign markets, where competition is still and domestic markets were shit quality is the norm and widely accepted.
If you don't believe me, use google translate and read on quality of Chinese cars vs Western cars both of which are made in PRC factories, and quality difference between the two.
Oh my God Luckyo ! (Score:1)
read on quality of Chinese cars vs Western cars both of which are made in PRC factories, and quality difference between the two.
Oh my God Luckyo !
You figured out that more expensive cars sold in rich countries, are better quality than cheaper cars sold in poor countries.
Well done !
How do we nominate you for the Nobel prize in economics?
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Your claim would have merit if there were also Chinese expensive cars that were popular in China. Especially keeping in mind all of the massive Chinese nationalism that is pushed by CCP.
Curious. It's almost like you, my personal China troll is trying to desperately spew shit in hope that some of it will stick.
Ignoring grid and storage cost (Score:3)
For solar to be an outright economic win it needs to be cheaper than fueling coal plants, including the amortised cost for interconnect and costs to cover spinup time for the backup.
Make solar cheap enough and emission rights costly enough and we will get there, doubt we are now though. Solar needs subsidy.
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doubt we are now though
You haven't been paying attention to the coal price.
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Looking at global market prices makes it look worse than it is, Chinese coal isn't sold internally at global market prices.
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Chinese coal has nothing to do with the international coal price. China was a net importer. Not only has the local Chinese coal price shot up 5x, but the international traded coal 3x this year alone. For the record Solar was at price parity with coal sans storage back in 2016. Imagine how much battery you can install when you triple the budget for your power plant.
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Chinese coal protects them from the full harm of the increasing global prices, there's an opportunity cost in not selling it, but there would be a far greater cost letting even more of the economy to grind to a halt. Central planning wise it's better to just subsidize the economy by forcing the Chinese coal producers to sell at lower prices. Corruption crackdowns have caused major disruptions in China's coal production, which are presumably temporary, so the prices will go down again.
From a seasonal/dunkelf
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Coal needs a lot more subsidy. Notably, it needs to be permitted to pollute. Everyone complains about the potential pollution from solar but compared to coal it's a non-issue.
Mandate (Score:2)
Put it in the building code that every house or residential unit must have at least 1KW of solar capacity. Apartment complexes can purchase offset credits.
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Apartment complexes can purchase offset credits.
With that one exception you just undid your entire plan. Unless you are intentionally trying to drive everyone to apartments.
Re: Mandate (Score:2)
Presumably he means that the apartments has to pay for an extra kw elsewhere. Anyway the cost of PV is hardly relevant for new construction.
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Because you can't put enough solar panels on a 10 story apartment complex to power the entire complex.
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Put it in the building code that every house or residential unit must have at least 1KW of solar capacity.
That is a dumb policy.
Many Chinese cities have terrible air quality and are in a perpetual haze that blocks sunlight.
90% of the population lives in the cloudy east, not the sunny west.
Rooftop solar is twice the price of utility-scale solar installations.
It is more sensible to build large-scale solar arrays in Gansu, Dongbei, and Inner Mongolia, with HVDC lines to carry the power to the cities.
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https://chinadialogue.net/en/e... [chinadialogue.net]
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parity with coal does not exist (Score:3, Insightful)
There's no such thing as parity with coal, because coal has minimal siting constraints. Whether you site a coal plant in Ecuador or Anchorage, the same physical plant generates the same power on the same schedule.
This isn't true for solar. The cost structure for solar depends intensely on siting factors. This determines how much power you get, and when you get it. Not all time is created equal, not unless you have a battery warehouse the size of Azathoth's nutsack, and that doesn't come for free.
Plus solar is land hungry, requiring about 8–10 kilo-acres/GWac. (See Land-Use Requirements for Solar Power Plants in the United States 2013.)
Which has a bigger footprint, a coal plant or a solar farm? [grist.org]
Then it goes on to an entirely brain-damaged comparison of the size of the coal mine required to support the generation capacity of the coal plant. But coal mines are generally found in places not much use for anything else, often far away from urban centers, and once again, it produces a mostly consistent coal output 365 days of the year (and you don't need a battery, because coal has this amazing capacity to sit there in giant piles, as piles were understood long before Volta).
So yes, the environmental disruption might have a large footprint, but we're actually talking about direct economic cost structures, and it doesn't in any way close the overall siting gap. So what this amounts to is that there are now many places in the world that can purchase a solar plant rather than a coal plant, on direct economic cost comparisons, without the addition of any green fairy dust.
But this is not your father's technology curve, where once a price threshold is crossed, it stays crossed. No, it's the other kind of crossed—as in "crossed off"—as the best sites for solar are exploited, and you progress ever further down the list, to less desirable princes and princesses.
It might be the case that progress in solar technology is able to keep pace with the degradation of the situation list. But it's a stupid assumption to make without even noticing that you haven't zipped up your fly, and your chuff is showing.
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But coal mines are generally found in places not much use for anything else, often far away from urban centers
That depends very much on geography. For Australia and some of the US, that's probably true. In other places, entire villages have been demolished and rebuilt elsewhere to make room for strip mining. The entire Ruhr area in Germany consists of cities on top of coal mines.
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The entire Ruhr area in Germany consists of cities on top of coal mines.
But that weren't strip mines.
Energy storage is not just for solar (Score:4, Insightful)
Environmentalists demand more solar power and politicians and utilities complied to get votes and sell electricity. This drives the need for storage to manage the intermittent nature of solar power. What utilities found out is that storage capable of managing the intermittent nature of solar power can also manage the problem of large steam plants not able to follow load.
Once that storage is on the grid it is a sunk cost. While batteries for grid storage last about 30 years a pumped hydro station could last a century or more. Solar power, and wind power, last about 30 years. This tells me that the utilities will not be replacing old solar with new solar. Utilities will be replacing old solar with new nuclear fission.
We will spend about a decade building solar, storage, and learn to build nuclear power again. The decade after we will see storage and nuclear replace solar. Then the storage and nuclear will be integrated with things like molten salt thermal energy storage and Brayton cycle turbines that use air as the heat sink and working fluid.
Storage is going to kill the economics of solar power. Once storage is a sunk cost the economics change, as does the ability of the grid to handle large slow moving power plants. The loss of old reliable power sources like coal and nuclear will require adding new reliable power sources. If CO2 emitting remains an issue then that means nuclear power.
Solar may benefit now because of rising costs of coal and natural gas but those rising costs will get people to reconsider nuclear power as an option. I doubt another Fukushima style event would change people's mind much on nuclear power. There is a recognition that new nuclear is not like old nuclear. After there's a bunch of electricity storage on the grid the complaint of nuclear power being too big and slow go away. Complaints of costs go away with rising energy costs. The complaint of nuclear power taking too long to build goes away with people taking urgency to relieve the issues of rising costs and unreliable supply.
We will see more nuclear fission power plants built all over the world. What will make that easier to do is the storage added to the grid to accommodate solar.
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Hydro and New Fission are both to risky considering increasing droughts, reduced snowmelt, and water with higher average temperatures. Already, some fission plants in europe have had to run at decreased capacity due to water shortages and shortages of suitable temperature water.
Thorium reactors are really not ready yet. Advocates think they are ready- but they really are not.
We will continue to have and need some nuclear power but already in many areas, it's too expensive compared to wind and solar and i
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I doubt anyone is researching Thorium reactors at the moment.
The problem of storage is no problem. Most newly sold roof top solar in Germany comes with storage. Storage that can also be charged with surplus power from the grid and can discharge into the grid. Many people combine their solar and storage banks to a so called "Virtual Powerplant".
And against popular believe: no, you do not buy cheap power to charge your batteries! You get paid to charge them. As you are supposed to balance the grid when there
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The thing you need to keep in mind is that there is storage for a day or two which is really targeted at load smoothing and then there is storage for 4-6 days which is for natural disasters and long term outages due to calm or heavily overcast weather.
I don't know about germany, but most strorage is no where near 4-6 days yet.
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