Last year, China generated 834 terawatt-hours of solar power.
Which is more than the G7 countries generated, and more than the US and EU combined. In fact the only country group that generates more solar power than China is the OECD, all 38 countries of it.
Data: @ember-energy.org
Source: https://bsky.app/profile/nathanielbullard.com/post/3lsbbsg6ohk2j
Yep, solar is awesome when you have coal and gas power plants, not so much when you have nuclear ones.
Solar and nuclear work just fine together. Nuclear is expensive (and most cost effective if kept running all the time, rather than switched on and off) but it reduces the cost of solar (lower proportion of solar means you don’t need as much storage) and hedges against bad weather.
You can’t just switch it off and on. It runs at more or less full power all the time. So tell me, at what power is that taking into consideration that sun doesn’t shine during night + mornings and evenings when days are short or cloudy?
I don’t understand what you’re asking, sorry.
The question is simple. If you have installed solar power of 40% your country peak use, how much nuclear power you need - assuming simplified you have only these two power sources.
In a market or effincient economy, where peak occurs mid hot summer day, 100% solar dominated renewables makes sense. In Spring and fall, EVs can absorb daily oversupply and profit from trading back at night. Winter is when solar can fail to meet heating and electricity needs, and so either backup energy sources or having much more than 100% peak demand in order to make green H2 that can be exported to where it gets cold is needed.
0 new nuclear is best amount of nuclear for any economy.
How idiotic.
Do explain, I’m all ears.
No. I type less.
I think they don’t get that your comment is fighting the same fight by being pro solar & anti coal/gas.
Unless you meant keeping the coal and gas plants, which really should be turned off and ended at this point. They’re just sources of lung cancer & emissions
No. We get exactly what his comment is about.
If he was in the renewables camp, there would be no point, in this discussion over solar, to bring up nuclear. It’s absolutely unrelated.
What he’s doing is pushing the thought into people’s heads that nuclear is a good solution, and that’s why I’m calling him out for. For being a shill.
I’m with you on solar. We literally have a fusion reactor at the core of our solar system, so there’s no point in having ones on earth. And the more we use solar, the more it’ll be improved through research.
There’s no argument for any carbon based fuels
Yes, of course I’ve meant it in a positive way - a way to replace coal and gas. But solar is not just positive, they are problematic when you couple them with nuclear for the simple reasons that solar is not reliable and you can’t throttle nuclear - they are like big ships, they require a lot of time to steer. Furthermore solar energy low price causes problems for nuclear higher prices. Which wouldn’t be a problem if solar was reliable and continuous (long winter nights much?). But it’s not, but you still need a reliable energy source. And so on. The pro solar panel crowd don’t understand many of these implications and go with simple “idiotic” and downvotes.
Why wouldn’t solar and other renewables combined with batteries be better?
It’s very early days, yet California recently had 98 days on renewables. That started in winter.
What is it about renewables with batteries that you believe will fail, despite the mass adoption that is under way?
Why will the projected, continued decline in battery prices and advances in battery tech not occur?
Why would adjacent solutions, like the massive storage ability of vehicle-to-grid, be worse compared to nuclear?
Why are so many “in the know” getting it so wrong?
What batteries are you referring to? Do you realize the amount of energy those batteries would have to store? Perhaps somewhen in the not so near future, but today? Go ahead and show me a western city able to store a couple of days worth of energy. More realistically a week.
OP sepcifically mentioned EVs. This sector is deflationary even in US, where better value/performance cars cost less every year. More dramatic deflation in less corrupt countries. Australia home solar costs under 1/3rd of US due to different politico-social corruption levels.
EVs and home solar are a great match that permits going offgrid at substantially lower cost if an EV is parked at home during day. That same dynamic allows a society/community to power itself through solar+batteries, and EVs parked at work. It’s not a question of look at our corrupt obstructionist oligarchical monopoly state of societies for examples of lack of economic success as proof that it will forever be impossible.
Huh? No