[cyberax]

> China installed 277GW of solar in 2024, capacity factor corrected that's 55.4 GW of solar power.

The problem is not just the mean capacity factor, but the capacity factor in _winter_. It's terrible for China, less than 15%. And more importantly, you can have _weeks_ with essentially zero solar power when you need it most.

[noosphr]

This is not an issue in China as they overprovision demand by 50 percent. Their grid can run off baseload generation alone in their 2060 plan.

Trying to explain that a grid build by electrical engineers, rather than financial engineers, has resilience build in to people whose whole idea about electricity generation is greenwashed bullshit from McKinsey and Co is at best a waste of time and at worst an excellent way to raise one's blood pressure.

[ben_w]

> It's terrible for China, less than 15%.

55.4 GW per 277 GW is an (annual) capacity factor of 20%, so the response here is "yes, and?"

> And more importantly, you can have _weeks_ with essentially zero solar power when you need it most.

Half the country is a mid-latitude desert. What makes you think the whole country has "weeks" with zero solar? And it does have to be the whole country in this case, because one thing a centrally planned economy can do well is joining up the infrastructure, which in this case means "actually make the power grid the USA and the EU keep wringing their hands over".

[cyberax]

> Half the country is a mid-latitude desert. What makes you think the whole country has "weeks" with zero solar?

The "whole country" is irrelevant. You can't transmit arbitrary amounts of power across the large geographic areas, most of energy has to be generated in a reasonably close proximity.

> And it does have to be the whole country in this case, because one thing a centrally planned economy can do well is joining up the infrastructure

Transmission lines are expensive, regardless of your ideology.

[ben_w]

> The "whole country" is irrelevant. You can't transmit arbitrary amounts of power across the large geographic areas, most of energy has to be generated in a reasonably close proximity.

Only technically correct because you said "arbitrary": it's well within China's manufacturing capabilities to make a grid that can transmit 3 TW over 40,000 km, with a conductor cross section so thick it only has 1 Ω resistance.

As in: all the world's current electricity demand, the long way around the planet.

I have, in fact, done the maths on this.

> Transmission lines are expensive, regardless of your ideology.

"Expensive" but not "prohibitively expensive".

All infra is "expensive". Nations have a lot of money.

[cyberax]

> Only technically correct because you said "arbitrary": it's well within China's manufacturing capabilities to make a grid that can transmit 3 TW over 40,000 km, with a conductor cross section so thick it only has 1 Ω resistance.

And it'll turn out to cost more than building a nuke in each backyard.

> I have, in fact, done the maths on this.

No.