Miscellaneous News

tamsen_ikard said:

I am personally against dams like this. Especially this one is so complex. Taking all the material there will be difficult and costly. Not worth it for hydropower. This will never payoff the investment.

But I think China is doing this dam to have leverage over India.

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You sound like BBC.

First of all, it is NOT a dam like other hydropower plant. A dam brings up water level and volume to generate electricity. This one has natural height drop of water 2700 meters in just 50km. It does NOT need a big dam.

Second of all, the west always say that China's infrastructure work never payoff, road, bridge, HSR, and now hydro power. You can not do anything so you wish China to waste and fail. Just sour grape.

Lastly, this is your true interest. China does everything evil to everyone else. Frankly, if China want someone dead, that someone is already dead by now.

zyklon said:

Deities, cults of personality, political doctrines, religious canon, and the bureaucracies of the party, state and church all got one thing in common: they're all manmade.

You're clearly aware that religious organizations and political parties — as well as the beliefs and the ideologies sitting upstream — share significant overlap in form and function, but I get why you might prefer one over the other.

In fact, there was a time when I would've agreed with you that certain political ideologies (e.g. "scientific communism") were more objective, "real" and pragmatic than; and therefore, superior to their "imaginary" religious counterparts.

For better or worse, the "software" is only going to be as good as the people running them, and while the "architecture" is nominally different between these two competing form factors, the user base are generally speaking equally fallible and flawed.

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Religion is fundamentally static. God is perfect and absolute, therefore static. A political ideology is open to change.

Religion will continue fall behind time. Some pope try to change that, but ultimately he is a man going against quote of god in scripture. Fundamentalists will reject it, and they would have a point. For god's word to change at all is to admit he is fallible and not worth our faith.

Party is like a parent. He is wise and is looking out for you to best of his ability, and your faith in your parent is true but know they are flawed and adapt as they can. You are right god and party both involve some kind of faith, but it is entirely different kind. You are not expect to worship your parents like a god. And you trust your parents not in same way as god.

I can see where you are coming from. People used to quote Mao like god. People dogmatically worship democracy, communism. Ultimately those and religion are abnormality in history, and primarily western.

Mao's cult of personality never lasted. Most of Chinese history is mandate of heaven requires good outcomes not just some idea is absolute truth. Most of history involves secular regimes like that. Or just simple might makes right. The phenomenon as you described it is but a blip in human history, and entirely western centric. Even western history is not mostly like that.

tamsen_ikard said:

I am personally against dams like this. Especially this one is so complex. Taking all the material there will be difficult and costly. Not worth it for hydropower. This will never payoff the investment.

But I think China is doing this dam to have leverage over India.

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Run the numbers.

With a 30 year bond at a cost of 5% per year, you end up with an annual infrastructure cost of $10 Billion.
Given 300 billion Kwh of annual electricity production, that ends up as 3.5 US cents per kWh.

Add in some operating costs, and it should still be competitive against coal.

AndrewS said:

Run the numbers.

With a 30 year bond at a cost of 5% per year, you end up with an annual infrastructure cost of $10 Billion.
Given 300 billion Kwh of annual electricity production, that ends up as 3.5 US cents per kWh.

Add in some operating costs, and it should still be competitive against coal.

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You might need to explain what LCOE is to our friend there, if not send him an Excel model to play with, if you want him to "really get it." Besides, most people have no idea how cheap $35/mWh is, even for transmission level customers.

Other thing is while hydro is more predictable than wind and solar, generating capacity can still shift wildly on a seasonal basis compared to nuclear. As such, the construction of these five new hydropower stations in 西藏, especially given the CAPEX per MW suggest that there might be more to it than just cheap energy.

Hopefully someone more informed can chime in, but it might got less to do with choking off India, and more to do with maximizing control of critical water resources to the benefit of domestic constituents in an era of visible climate change.

A salutary reminder that the Taiwanese separatists are thoroughly reactionary and that any "independent" Taiwan would not be a bastion of democracy; it would be a supporter of genocide, a friend to imperialism, and an enemy of the forces of liberation and progress worldwide.

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Could Taiwan’s donation pledge for Israeli settlement project backfire?​

‘I don’t think Palestinians will be going there for medical services. I’m not buying it,’ NGO monitor says

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Talking about Taiwan, the tweet below is a very common misconception. Since territorial integrity and national sovereignty are priceless, when push comes to shove, China will start armed unification with Taiwan without hesitation, regardless how much US debt it holds.

AndrewS said:

Run the numbers.

With a 30 year bond at a cost of 5% per year, you end up with an annual infrastructure cost of $10 Billion.
Given 300 billion Kwh of annual electricity production, that ends up as 3.5 US cents per kWh.

Add in some operating costs, and it should still be competitive against coal.

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3.5 US cents per kWh is comparable to coal and cheaper than natural gas.

zyklon said:

You might need to explain what LCOE is to our friend there, if not send him an Excel model to play with, if you want him to "really get it." Besides, most people have no idea how cheap $35/mWh is, even for transmission level customers.

Other thing is while hydro is more predictable than wind and solar, generating capacity can still shift wildly on a seasonal basis compared to nuclear. As such, the construction of these five new hydropower stations in 西藏, especially given the CAPEX per MW suggest that there might be more to it than just cheap energy.

Hopefully someone more informed can chime in, but it might got less to do with choking off India, and more to do with maximizing control of critical water resources to the benefit of domestic constituents in an era of visible climate change.

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Bear in mind that China is building out new coal plants, with the explicit understanding that they will provide the backup generation for when renewables are not available.

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And that 60 GW of capacity will require multiple UHVDC transmission lines to the load centres in the East.

supercat said:

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1946990319653867721

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Talking about Taiwan, the tweet below is a very common misconception. Since territorial integrity and national sovereignty are priceless, when push comes to shove, China will start armed unification with Taiwan without hesitation, regardless how much US debt it holds.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1947354742415376678

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Yeah, do nothing and win. Seriously if Taiwan keeps doing this, by the time China is ready and decides to simply take Taiwan back for real, the world at large will cheer and Taiwan, for supporting this evil, will have no one there to care about what is going to happen to them as a result

AndrewS said:

Bear in mind that China is building out new coal plants, with the explicit understanding that they will provide the backup generation for when renewables are not available.

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There aren't many coal plants where I've been, and they're all very dated in complete contrast to what I assume are being built in China at the moment.

How do these new Chinese coal plants stack up against natgas peakers?

The other thing I'll note is that coal plants are probably much more suitable for China than the US and most other countries in general due to China's world leading railway systems.

AndrewS said:

And that 60 GW of capacity will require multiple UHVDC transmission lines to the load centres in the East.

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I assumed as much.

Here's a curiosity if you'll entertain me: in a decade or so, domestically speaking and on an annual basis, will the Tibetan Autonomous Region be a net importer or net exporter of electricity?

zyklon said:

There aren't many coal plants where I've been, and they're all very dated in complete contrast to what I assume are being built in China at the moment.

How do these new Chinese coal plants stack up against natgas peakers?

The other thing I'll note is that coal plants are probably much more suitable for China than the US and most other countries in general due to China's world leading railway systems.

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Natural gas has always been expensive in China, so I don't think China ever built many natgas peakers, if any.

Going forward, we can see that batteries are driving American natgas peakers out of business.
That price dynamic is even more pronounced in China, given higher natgas prices and lower battery costs in China. So I don't expect to see any natgas peakers built in the future.

zyklon said:

I assumed as much.

Here's a curiosity if you'll entertain me: in a decade or so, domestically speaking and on an annual basis, will the Tibetan Autonomous Region be a net importer or net exporter of electricity?

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The TAR has less than 4 million people. 300 TWh of electricity would be enough for Taiwan (24 Mn) or the UK (68 Mn) for example.

So I would expect the TAR to be a huge net exporter of electricity, once the hydro plants are ready.