Children are shivering in China

[bwilson4web]

Source: https://www.reuters.com/world/china/china-energy-crunch-triggers-alarm-pleas-more-coal-2021-09-28/

. . .
Lauri Myllyvirta, lead analyst with the Helsinki-based Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air, said northeast China currently had 100 gigawatts of coal-fired capacity, which would be more than enough to meet demand if plants had the incentive to buy more coal.

"Not a single grid region has reported peak loads that would be even close to exhausting available generating capacity," he said.​

Economics answers the coal problem. It takes time to build out a renewable and nuclear energy grid but coal is becoming too expensive to do business as usual. As for nuclear, use standard, small, liquid salt reactors and a lot of problems are solved. The waste heat can warm (and cool) living and working quarters.

Bob Wilson

 

[R P]

I already addressed that in my earlier post in this thread.
https://www.insideevsforum.com/comm...ependent-on-solar-and-wind.12059/#post-147032
China getting hit similar to the UK and EU because of too much early dependence on solar and wind.

 

[bwilson4web]

My referenced article is about the cost of coal. Renewable energy was not cited as coal cost was front and center. So I remain in the Elon Musk camp of going renewable instead of expensive fossil fuels. Musk also said nice things about nuclear.

Bob Wilson

 

[SouthernDude]

I already addressed that in my earlier post in this thread.
https://www.insideevsforum.com/comm...ependent-on-solar-and-wind.12059/#post-147032
China getting hit similar to the UK and EU because of too much early dependence on solar and wind.

Most of the supply chain issues - for anything really - is due to all the covid lockdown nonsense. The markets will probably stabilize more sometime next year. I would argue that any constraints in electrical supply in Europe, UK, USA, or Canada are more related to regulations than they are on any technical issues with integrating renewables at this point.

 

[ericy]

China is kind of an odd case - it seems that they decided to ban imports of Australian coal - the reports I see are that they are just ticked that Australia called for an investigation into the origins of Covid, but there has to be way more to it than that. Otherwise they could just reverse the ban, which seems like it might set things back to normal. But China has also banned the import of Australian wine and timber and other commodities - it isn't just coal. In the meantime Australia has gone out to find other customers for the commodities.

So without the Australian coal, the prices of coal have soared, increasing costs. And yet generating plants are state owned have fixed prices at which they sell the electricity, which places them in the position that they lose money by burning the coal that they do have, and the more power the generate, the more money the lose.

I am still trying to wrap my head around how they got themselves into this mess. The news reports I have read say that this problem may be with them for some time.

 

[SouthernDude]

I am still trying to wrap my head around how they got themselves into this mess.

Central economic planning doesn't work. That's why they are in this mess. China also has huge amounts of installed wind capacity that isn't tied to the national grid - at least the last time I checked.