Comment by pfdietz
11 hours ago
> Solar is a tiny portion of new energy capacity in China compared to coal, oil, and gas.
That graph shows production, not capacity, nor installed capacity in each year.
11 hours ago
> Solar is a tiny portion of new energy capacity in China compared to coal, oil, and gas.
That graph shows production, not capacity, nor installed capacity in each year.
Well good, those are the correct numbers focus on because:
Solar capacity and say nuclear / coal / gas / hydro / fuel oil capacity
Are different beasts.
When solar advocates bang on about adding X gigawatts of capacity, they’re being dishonest. What they really mean is they added X/4, because, obviously, it’s sunny only about 25% of the time throughout a year.
Adding batteries doesn’t change that. Still have to over build.
So let’s focus on the numbers that reflect actual production, so we can have an honest conversation.
Nuclear / coal / gas / hydro / fuel oil, even biomass have capacity factors typically about 80%, often about 90%.
Wind and solar are never going up ro those capacity factors, even with batteries (including pumped hydro).