Climate Change and Renewable Energy News and Discussion

envision and BASF signed an agreement for cooperation on green methanol


very interesting here, improving efficiency of this process is important

major investment by China into Serbia in renewable sector. 2GW renewable power + 30k ton/year of green hydrogen

China has now developed its own hydrogen liquefaction equipment capable of 1 ton/day. Whether this turns out to be economical is another issue

Wind and solar power may overtake coal power this year.

Wind and photovoltaic power will likely account for around 40 percent of China’s total installed power generation capacity by the end of this year, compared with coal’s 37 percent, according to the CEC.

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According to this

过去几年，燃料电池诸多技术难题得以破解，功率不断提升。亿华通新一代大功率燃料电池发动机的额定功率达到240千瓦，已经能满足49吨载重的重卡持续运行。每千瓦燃料电池的成本也从两万元降到了三五千元，更有助于氢燃料车推广。

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Sinohytec's 240KW fuel cell engine can power 49t heavy duty trucks, which I find a little surprising. I'd think you need more than that. It's costs are out of date I think. Latest Sinohytec Q&A with investors say cost has been lowered to 2000-3000RMB/KW. Still expensive if you multply 2500 * 240 = 600k RMB
although I guess for heavy truck, spending 600k on a motor isn't as terrible
if you get like a 700kWh battery pack, and spend 500RMB/Kwh = that's still going to be 350k RMB.
you might get similar ranges with that

I took a look at distributed power generation from fuel cells

3）含氢废气耦合燃料电池发电的能量转化率高，发电效率约 56%。发电系统灵活，中压合成气可实现低成本储存，通过储存气体用于调峰，电堆可根据来气量增减负荷以实现调峰运行。 （4）氢燃料电池发电后可直接进入企业、饭店、宾馆或家庭，实现热电联产联用，过程中几乎没有输电输热损失，对能源的综合利用率可达 80%。

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says here that you can get electricity generation efficiency to 56%, which is still not great vs combined cycle gas turbine, but it's not terrible. The problem is that we loose a lot from green electricity -> hydrogen -> electricity
But keep in mind that fuel cell also generates heat which could provide heating and that brings energy efficiency to 80%. but they'd have to do something in the future to convert that heat energy into power if they want to make fuel cell a legitimate peak shaver in the grid.

if you look at sinohytec's website, it has 3 heat/electricity project
P200 (200kw) - 52% efficiency from power generation
P500 (500kw) - 49% efficiency
2.5MW system - efficiency at 46% and provides 70-85 deg heated water

Not great, but I guess this can and will be improved

at the present time, demand for fuel cell in cars is not great, so sinohytec will surely want to find additional customers

Jiangsu University of Science and Technology has developed 55~130 micron crystalline silicon solar cells​

Jiangsu University of Science and Technology, Longi Green Energy Technology Co., Ltd., and Australia's Curtin University collaborated to create a highly flexible, high power-to-weight ratio crystalline silicon heterojunction solar cell for the first time in the world. . The researchers said that the crystalline silicon battery they developed is thinner than A4 paper and can be bent into a roll. It is also thinner than thin-film batteries and more efficient than traditional crystalline silicon batteries.

The relevant research results were published in the top international journal "Nature" on January 31 under the title "Flexible Silicon Solar Cells with High Power-to-Weight Ratios"..

currently solar cells are mainly divided into crystalline silicon cells and thin film cells, among which crystalline silicon solar cells are the pillar industry of the current photovoltaic industry. Crystalline silicon solar cells use silicon as the main material and are currently the most mature and widely used photovoltaic power generation technology. The global market share of crystalline silicon cells reaches more than 90%.

According to reports, traditional crystalline silicon cells face two major bottlenecks: First, the power conversion efficiency of industrialized large-area crystalline silicon cells has always been difficult to break through the 26% mark; second, the thickness of currently more advanced crystalline silicon cells is generally 150~ Within 180 μm. Therefore, it has always been the dream of researchers to develop crystalline silicon solar cells with high conversion efficiency, large area, light weight, good flexibility, and low cost.

In this work, the team developed wafers that were thinned to a thickness of 55 to 130 μm, with the thinnest being only 50 microns. They also developed new technologies and processes such as surface interface passivation and doping contact growth, making the wafers 57 to 125 μm thicker. The conversion efficiency of the thick SHJ battery reached a record-breaking 26.81%, with the power-to-weight ratio of the 57 μm thick battery reaching an astonishing 1.9 W/g and a curvature radius of 19 mm.

Officials pointed out that this research result is the first in the world to realize a crystalline silicon heterojunction solar cell with high flexibility and high power-to-weight ratio, which fundamentally changes people's traditional impression of crystalline silicon solar cells being heavy and fragile. This greatly expands the application scope of crystalline silicon cells. The technological innovations in related fields brought about by this work have significant industrial value and development prospects.


@tphuang ..

Posted about Daqing oil fields building wind power and what this represents


There is no waste in renewable power that gets generated


Nice thread here from Dave on China forcing industrial usage of renewables

More on fuel cell development

first we have a new backup power supply fuel cell battery that can be expanded to distributed power station

Huge investment here in fuel cell for commercial vehicles, 300kw for mining trucks? That would be good

linglong-1 structure is now fully ready. Big step before chinese new year

Mingyang is building new plant for electrolysis that will produce 2 GW of electrolysis per year