Climate Change and Renewable Energy News and Discussion

tphuang said:

Coal plants are basically to address the issue where solar/wind power supply is not consistent and summer AC demand is high. New coal plant will hopefully allow them to retire the older coal plants

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That just leaves tons of unused coal plants just sitting around for months, especially when a ton of new renewables and storage come online in the next few years. That's billions wasted. Billions that could have been used for more energy storage or renewables or more nuclear. The best solution is more nuclear. Lots and lots more nuclear. Luckily there's going to be >4 gigawatts coming online every year after 2024, from all the hualong-1 constructions that started after 2020

tacoburger said:

That just leaves tons of unused coal plants just sitting around for months, especially when a ton of new renewables and storage come online in the next few years. That's billions wasted. Billions that could have been used for more energy storage or renewables or more nuclear. The best solution is more nuclear. Lots and lots more nuclear. Luckily there's going to be >4 gigawatts coming online every year after 2024, from all the hualong-1 constructions that started after 2020

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China builds nuclear faster than anyone else and it still takes 7 years from construction to grid connection and probably a decade from planning to grid connection. There was unfortunately a pause after Fukushima, so very few plants got brought online over the past 5 years, but things should pick up start from 2024 as you said. But you know there is always going to be a need for some thermal plants while this buildup is happening. I would much rather they use natural gas, but unfortunately China is going with coal. With supercritical coal plants, hopefully, it will emit a lot less than older coal plants.

more on the big Sinopec hydrogen project in Inner Mongolia

中石化新星内蒙古

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新能源有限公司依托乌兰察布市丰富的太阳能和风能资源，计划建设风光制氢项目，所制绿氢通过氢气长输管线，送至燕山石化等京津冀地区用氢单位，项目一期规划制氢产能10万吨/年，二期规划新增制氢产能40万吨/年，包括风力及光伏发电、输变电、制氢站和长输管道4部分。

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so the key here is not that they are building the hydrogen pipeline, but they have plans to produce 100kt of hydrogen a year in phase 1 and another 400kt a year in phase 2. That's a huge half million t production base.

中石化有个 10 万吨 / 年绿电制氢项目，投资 47 亿；而中石油在乌兰察布市兴和县有个 " 风光制绿氢绿氨 " 示范项目，投资金额估计两家心有灵犀，41 亿。

此外，中石化还有个加氢站项目，里边透露：一个加氢站的造价是：1500 万。

中石化还有个特殊身份：4 月 1 日，中石化董事长马永生在一个论坛上表示，" 我们锚定中国第一氢能公司的目标……我们是国资委指定的氢产业链的链长。"

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4.7B RMB investment in the 100kt project. Now, Petrochina have their own huge wind/solar/hydrogen project with 4.1B RMB investment. So, let's wait and see

Sinopec reveals that each hydrogen fuel station cost 15m RMB. That seems like quite a high total

But you know it's a great thing to have private industry driving these project and providing funding. Also with local gov't doing the same. You don't want federal gov't to provide all the funding like with IRA and lose a bunch of money that way. The key here is that Sinopec has everything it needs to be a green hydrogen/ammonia superpower.

Why not use nuclear to replace hydrogen? Not long ago China achieved a much cleaner nuclear solution. Hydrogen I am skeptical of domestic use except to sell to European hipsters.

If the answer is short term lack of next gen nuclear output then coal do the short term fix.

Artech inks huge 1.5GW solar tracker deal with Saudi Arabian ASB project owner ACWA Power and CEEC. Makes sense when CEEC builds out these projects, it also brings Chinese companies along for solar panels and solar trackers (solar tracker basically directs panels to face where the sun is)

TK3600 said:

Why not use nuclear to replace hydrogen? Not long ago China achieved a much cleaner nuclear solution. Hydrogen I am skeptical of domestic use except to sell to European hipsters.

If the answer is short term lack of next gen nuclear output then coal do the short term fix.

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Why China successes but other countries fail to compete in many new industries? It is because the Chinese government have the foresight to invest and nurture many new industries with supportive policies.

Hydrogen fuel cell might have become less competitive and its future is uncertain. However, China can afford to invest in this new industry. If hydrogen fuel cell failed and rendered irrelevant, then China lost tens of billions. But if hydrogen fuel cell has emerged to become useful in some applications then China is in the front row seat.

We need to remember how and why Japan falling behind in tech. One of the biggest problems is its tendency to embrace a single platform and fail to diversify and invest in various standards and applications. China is much bigger market, has more resources and can afford to diversify its investment to minimize the risk of missing out a new tech revolution.

tphuang said:

China builds nuclear faster than anyone else and it still takes 7 years from construction to grid connection and probably a decade from planning to grid connection. There was unfortunately a pause after Fukushima, so very few plants got brought online over the past 5 years, but things should pick up start from 2024 as you said. But you know there is always going to be a need for some thermal plants while this buildup is happening. I would much rather they use natural gas, but unfortunately China is going with coal. With supercritical coal plants, hopefully, it will emit a lot less than older coal plants.

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It depends really. On location and reactor design. It can take only 5 years to build a nuclear power plant if you have it close to the ocean and do not need to build cooling towers for it. If you have to build the cooling towers then yes it can take 7 or 8 years to build a power plant.

For example Tianwan 5-6 ACPR-1000 reactors took 5 years to build. Tianwan 4 VVER-1000 also took 5 years to build. These designs are reasonably simple to build, there was lots of experience in building those families of reactors, and they are right next to the ocean.

The reverse of this is the construction of the EPR reactors at Taishan which took 9 years to build because of being the first in the series and highly complex four-loop designs. Still that is about 2x as fast as it is taking to build them in Europe.

gelgoog said:

It depends really. On location and reactor design. It can take only 5 years to build a nuclear power plant if you have it close to the ocean and do not need to build cooling towers for it. If you have to build the cooling towers then yes it can take 7 or 8 years to build a power plant.

For example Tianwan 5-6 ACPR-1000 reactors took 5 years to build. Tianwan 4 VVER-1000 also took 5 years to build. These designs are reasonably simple to build, there was lots of experience in building those families of reactors, and they are right next to the ocean.

The reverse of this is the construction of the EPR reactors at Taishan which took 9 years to build because of being the first in the series and highly complex four-loop designs. Still that is about 2x as fast as it is taking to build them in Europe.

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That's fair. I think in the cases you mentioned, they were more mature designs by then, so doesn't take as long to build. 7 years might have been a stretch. I think you are right in saying that 5 years is probably the fastest they can build a new plant once they figure out the supply chain and sort out the problems. But even with that 5 years, there is still a lot of planning that need to happen before the construction starts. so the lead time and investment remain problems for larger nuclear deployments.

Sany delivers first wind turbine to Kazakhstan. It will deliver 10 4.8 MW turbines in total. This was only signed 2 weeks and delivery has already started. This is Sany's first project in central asia

CEEC & Gaia Energy signed MOU for huge 1.4 million t of green ammonia (equivalent to 320k t of green hydrogen -> NH3 about 4.5x H2 when converted).
This also involves 2 GW of Solar and 4 GW of wind power. Here is why people need to focus on green hydrogen. Everytime this kind of project gets signed with a Chinese energy developer, that developer will buy factory equipment, electrolysis, solar & wind power. That's a lot of orders for Chinese industries. On top of that, they use Chinese banks for financing and possibly pay in RMB. They will in the future also use Chinese technology to transport hydrogen/ammonia to other countries via Chinese built ships. Since a lot of these projects aim to deliver H2/ammonia to Europe.

For electrolysis, Longi, Sungrow, Sany & Peric (CSIC) won a total of 39 electrolysis contract from Jilin Power
Looks like Longi had the biggest share with 15 electrolysis.
This is interesting that Sany is getting involved in electrolysis. This is why Chinese companies will eventually dominate Hydrogen industry. You have the biggest and most dynamic renewable players getting involved, because they want to sell more of their renewable technology also. It seems to me Sany and Mingyang are the most dynamic wind turbine makers. That's why they are the first ones to move in here.

Longi has the cheap electrolysis machines. At this rate, they are going to just take over the world and western companies are going to start complaining again. The thing is, western politicians may be able to block chinese players from exporting to their country, but most of the green h2 production will happen in places with a lot of sun and offshore wind potential. Those are all in global south and definitely not in northern europe, where many of the electrolysis startups are at.

And there will be a period of just cut throat competition like we are seeing with solar and wind.

Iron-chromium flow batteries are very very niche. This is probably the only commercial iron-chromium battery in operation and the largest by 2 orders of magnitude. I wonder how they compare to other flow batteries or the other more tradition types of battery energy storage. I wonder if this will catch on vs the dozens of different energy storage chemistries and solutions fighting for market share right now