Wednesday, July 3, 2024

"China Stops Releasing Data Showing Lower Solar Power Utilisation"

The unbalanced oversupply of electricity from solar rather makes the case that China is producing a lot more silicon, cells, and panels than they can ever use and are indeed dumping the excess production in Europe and to a lesser extent the U.S.

From Asia Financial, July 1:

Break-neck expansion in China’s renewable energy capacity has led to more power generation than the country’s grids can handle — something recent data affirmed

Amid increasing scrutiny of excess capacity in its renewable energy grids, China has chosen to not release data on power usage rates by generation source in its latest monthly report.

In the report released on Friday, China’s energy administration published only the average operating hours of all types of power plants for January to May.

Previous data releases had broken down the statistics by generation source, including hydro, thermal, nuclear, wind, and solar generation.

The report did not give a reason for the change and China’s energy administration did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

But the omission is significant given recent data pointed to declining utilisation at solar and wind power plants, a trend that was expected to continue.

Billions in state subsidies have allowed China’s renewable energy generation to expand at break-neck speed, but that has also led to more power generation than the country’s grids can handle.

Grid managers in the country are, as a result, curtailing renewable power generation, especially in the case of solar. Curtailment is when grid managers stop a certain amount of supply coming onto the grid to maintain balances with demand....

....MUCH MORE

 Related, a story in four chapters:

May 2012  "Watch What They Do, Not What They Say: China Building Electrical Grid Better Suited to Coal (BTU; ACI)"

July 2021 Wood Mackenzie: "Could China lead the global energy storage market by 2030?"
On the battery front the Chinese seem to have done a dandy job of locking up a bunch of the precursor metals.*

August 2023  "China Has Approved More Than 50 Gigawatts Of New Coal Power"

January 2024  RAND: "The U.S. Must Close the Long-Distance Power Transmission Gap with China"

And a quick reality check:
When you see infrastructure like this being built you know the nice words from the Chinese are aimed at the stupid and credulous: 

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