Comment by smallerize
11 hours ago
Denmark's power generation from wind is around 20TWh/year, Norway hydro 140 TWh/year, and Swedish nuclear 50 TWh/year.
China's wind power is at 1,000TWh/year, hydro 1,500 TWh/year, nuclear 326 TWh/year.
(Stats mostly from statbase.org which is a couple years out of date.)
So on the one hand, it's less likely that all of the wind power in China will lull at the same time. Then on the other hand, their hydro and nuclear can't absorb nearly as much % fluctuation. Maybe they could make up the difference with batteries though.
The Chinese strategy right now is to just massively overbuild renewables so that even fallow periods generate a substantial amount of energy.
China's power generation is still >50% coal, so I don't know if I would call renewables "overbuilt" yet.
Is that >50% number production capacity or actual GWh produced?
If the former, we may see China's coal consumption fall off a cliff, since the marginal cost of renewables is approximately zero. If so, it'll appear that the coal plants were overbuilt.
Yet. Wouldn't be against it.
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