[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.