World's largest pumped storage power plant fully operational in China
71 comments
·January 9, 2025ortusdux
s1artibartfast
Seems like storage potential would suffer from a lack of height and long dam length.
ChuckMcM
36GW hours of water storage is pretty amazing. Looking at how much Solar/Wind over capacity you would need to take advantage of that is an interesting exercise in itself.
That said, from a "we're doing things to be 100% renewable and/or zero ghg" China has been making some strides that the rest of the world would do well to emulate or match.
ttkari
China still generates approximately two thirds of it's electricity by burning fossil fuels so it still has a plenty of catching up to do. For example in my country power generation is already 94% carbon free.
toomuchtodo
China backing off coal power plant approvals after 2022-23 surge - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41303635 - Aug 2024
China's total wind and solar capacity outstrips coal - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41220098 - Aug 2024
China is on track to reach its 2030 clean energy targets already - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41026542 - July 2024
China installing the wind / solar equivalent of 5 nuclear power stations a week - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40982276 - July 2024
China building two-thirds of world's wind and solar projects - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40940950 - July 2024
China's clean energy pushes coal to record-low 53% share of power in May 2024 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40935688 - July 2024
China's Batteries Are Now Cheap Enough to Power Huge Shifts - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40919052 - July 2024
China is building more coal plants but might burn less coal - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39440374 - Feb 2024
Look at trajectories, think in systems. They are rapidly building a nation state clean energy electrical system, and when they're done domestically, these products will be exported globally.
The graphs on the below page might be helpful.
https://globalenergymonitor.org/report/china-continues-to-le...
Aloisius
I'm not sure the trajectory of PR matters much.
The actual generation trajectory seems more useful: https://www.eia.gov/international/analysis/country/CHN
cbmuser
I’m so tired explaining people what the capacity factor and baseload are and why wind and solar do not replace conventional power plants.
Germany has an installed solar capacity of 100 GW, 72 GW wind and some hydro and bio mass.
Yet there are 109 coal plants and 267 natural gas plants in Germany.
Comparing wind and solar with conventional power plants is completely pointless.
ttkari
Sure - all I'm saying is that they still have a whole lot of building to do, that's all. Reading the headlines it's sometimes easy to think that they're pretty much already there while the current production mix is not all that great yet.
christina97
Finland is unfortunately a bit of an outlier. I wish the rest of the world would also double down on nuclear.
schmichael
Nuclear requires an extremely mature bureaucracy to handle the serious longterm risks efficiently. Here in the USA I'm just not sure our government is mature enough for the task. Every 4 years we may have someone come in to slash safety regulations or erect impossible regulatory barriers, not to mention all of our defense treaty obligations and their churn. Every year (or less!) our congress may decide to let the government shutdown and stop paying critical contractors. Trains carrying spent or unspent fuel may derail thanks to inefficient regulation. etc etc.
One of the massive benefits of wind and solar is that it can be scaled down to a size even a consumer can deploy. This makes it relatively resilient to regulatory whims compared to massive undertakings like nuclear. I'm not a nuclear engineer, but I suspect the recent emphasis on smaller nuclear plants has more to do with navigating regulatory hurdles and uncertainty than efficiency.
All that to say I am quite jealous of countries with mature bureaucratic regimes that can efficiently manage nuclear!
notShabu
There are two caveats to this. One is that a lot of it is due to work being outsourced to China (which allows for metrics like 94% carbon free) The other is it has a huge population so it's going to have high absolute numbers of everything good and bad.
ttkari
Actually, what allows for "94% carbon free" is the production mix. In our case that would be nuclear at 42% share, hydro 19%, wind 18%, bio 13% - leaving only single digit percentage to coal, gas and oil.
SoftTalker
China is of course doing this with zero need for environmental impact studies, which would be impossible in the west, even with the ostensible goal of reducing carbon emissions.
markus_zhang
They do. Here is a summary of the environmental impaction evaluation of stage 2. Whether it is scientific enough, I cannot say because I haven't read the report (judging from the summary, readers need to contact them to get the report, which is pretty annoying).
https://www.fengning.gov.cn/art/2014/6/23/art_3204_165228.ht...
manquer
You have to give clear evidence that china’s environment impact process is weaker than those followed in global north. Even if what you presume without data is 100% true ..
That is hardly the only or a key reason for slow adoption of green technologies in Europe or US.
There has to political will to do large changes that is weak everywhere else outside China.
Even if any project has heavy ecological impact locally, that doesn’t compare with far bigger problem of climate change.
Rich countries lack of action is basically a slap in the face of the global south, saying that they care more about few fish and birds, over the all poor people in the world who will suffer from the greenhouse gases bulk of which they emitted .
I would characterize that as just modern colonial wealth extraction with class and racial overtones.
Remember climate change impacts poor communities far more than the rich, that is true even in rich countries. It shouldn’t be so easy a moral decision to say environmental impact mitigation is more important than people .
Bureaucracy and red tape in the name of safeguards are weak excuses, when tens of if not hundreds of millions will die as direct or indirect consequence of climate change this century .
LAC-Tech
I agree with this. We need some nuance. We cannot just look at chinas human rights record and decide that justifies slow western bureaucracy when it comes to infrastructure. We can't hold them up as a bogeyman to justify our own inefficiencies.
LAC-Tech
It can also just force millions of people to move away, ie the Three Gorges Dam.
christina97
It’s 12 units, 300 MW each so 3.6 GW, not 36 GW.
masklinn
> When fully charged, the upper reservoir can store enough energy to power the plant at full capacity for 10.8 hours
That's actually 38.8GWh so close enough.
applied_heat
Both the GW and GWh are important and independent characteristics
ggm
Gwh/Mwh and GW/MW are not the same units. One is a time based unit, scales to duration and the other is peak intensity. You can deliver 1 GW for an hour is 1 Gwh and the same Gwh can deliver 500 MW for 2 hours or 250 MW for 4 hours.
christina97
Ah yes I misread because it was written separately. Not sure where 36 GWh came from though.
nforgerit
I'd suggest browsing through ourworldindata.org's energy section. It is an absolutely astonishing accomplishment what China has built with slashing PV and battery prices as well as production capacities in recent years. Dynamics are such that there's hope they'll reach peak CO2 emissions in the upcoming few years, way ahead of their own plans. I'm saying that as a German whose 20y old idea (be a global supplier for renewable tech) they copied and executed like 10x better.
bgnn
China had 3 big goals for last 20+ years or so in their 5 year economic plans: getting rod of fossil fuel dependency, becoming a knowledge economy, increasing the share of service economy. Every government organization is working on to realize these. All the subsidies for EVs are there because they don't want to rely on gas and coal since it's not sustainable. Germany was lobbying to EU on the benefits of "clean diesel" till recently.
JumpCrisscross
> the subsidies for EVs are there because they don't want to rely on gas and coal since it's not sustainable
China doesn't want to rely on gas because they have to import it. They're fine relying on coal, which they can produce reliably, which is why they keep building coal-fired plants.
bgnn
So does Germany. They are facing a recession due to over reliance of Russian gas not playing out well.
cbmuser
Most EVs sold in China are actually hybrids which is why the category is called NEV, i.e. new energy vehicles.
lvturner
I can't find any data to support this, just the figure that NEVs account for ~40% of new sales, no further breakdown. Do you have a reference, I'd be very curious to see the breakdown -- my view is biased by the high pure EV penetration in cities like Shenzhen.
PicassoCTs
And they missed all of them. And their PR pieces got peddled in the west by journalists, to keep the remainders of the "green" revolution going in the west in increments, by generating virtual progress of a imaginary opposition. Goto keep up with the Johnsons halfway around the world, whos house may or may not be cardboard. Well meaning, but in the end, even well meaning lies destroy your megaphone.
bgnn
I don't know what journalista say, I don't read newspapers.
My source on thus is international institutions like IEA and World Bank. The energy transition is going good according to the World Bank https://documents.worldbank.org/en/publication/documents-rep...
cbmuser
China is currently building 29 nuclear power plants in parallel and plans to issue construction permits for 10 reactors each year.
The country is expected to reach an installed nuclear capacity of 400 GW in 2060.
And, unlike wind and solar, nuclear power plants provide baseload and can actually drive an electricity grid.
toomuchtodo
> The country is expected to reach an installed nuclear capacity of 400 GW in 2060.
Within the next ~14 months, the world will be deploying ~1TW/solar every year, ~200GW assuming 20% capacity factor for "apples to apples" comparison to thermal generation with a higher capacity factor. Compare to the rate of nuclear deployment and your 2060 figure, 35 years away.
> And, unlike wind and solar, nuclear power plants provide baseload and can actually drive an electricity grid.
There are numerous electrical grids in the world that operate without nuclear. There is minimum demand that needs to be met, but clearly nuclear isn't needed to do that (as evidenced by low carbon grids that operate without it).
https://e360.yale.edu/features/three-myths-about-renewable-e...
https://www.minister.industry.gov.au/ministers/husic/media-r...
https://web.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/Articles/I/NYNu...
applied_heat
What is extremely novel about this facility is the variable speed pump turbines and dc grid connection for the plant. Hydro plants usually (exclusively other than this one?) use synchronous machines that operate at a fixed speed.
Variable speed hydro turbines is quite cutting edge for an old field where change occurs very slowly and carefully
divbzero
> Fengning’s advanced design includes an upper reservoir with a capacity of 45.04 million cubic meters and a lower reservoir holding 71.56 million cubic meters.
A cubic meter of water weighs a tonne. So that’s literally tonnes and tonnes of water.
idiotsecant
China is absolutely eating the wests lunch when it comes to infrastructure. We need to wake up or we'll find ourselves at a disadvantage that would take generations to come back from.
bgnn
I recently discovered that their energy transition policy goes back to 10th 5 year plan (2001-2005). I think though a lit of focus was then transitioning from coal to natural gas and nuclear, which isn't surprising. What is interesting is they odentified PV and wind energy as key technologies for future to de-caebonize. 5 years later, with 11th 5 year plan they have made reducing energy intensity and emissions by 20% a binding target, which was binding for everyone including the higher ups and lowest level of government employees. This made a lot of funds availabile for these projects and R&D. They went beyond the target. Currently they have a massive edge to the West, because contemporary capitalism focuses heavily on quarterly earnings rather than lobger term goals. So there are two systems competing and optimizing for different metrics.
hagbard_c
> Currently they have a massive edge to the West, because contemporary capitalism focuses heavily on quarterly earnings rather than lobger term goals
You're forgetting about the environmental impact studies and the resulting bans to build anything in areas which are deemed to be important habitats. About the miles of red tape and stacks of regulations which need to be followed to build anything in 'the west'. Having an autocratic government which can just dictate whatever they want does help to get things going but in the west such a government style is only ever seen in times of war and even then they do not have as much authority as the CCP has in China. This is unrelated to the economic system - a capitalist dictatorship could achieve the same by pushing through its demands - so it does not make sense to blame it on 'capitalism'. It is the autocracy which makes it possible.
fvdessen
Those are incredible but unfortunately you need the right topology to build them. I don't know about the US but I doubt there's much more of those to be built in Europe.
bryanlarsen
The correct topology is very common. All you need is water and a hill.
We've already tapped most of the suitable places for hydro dams because those need flowing water. Pumped storage does not need flowing water so the number of potential sites is massively larger.
ANU identified 616,000 potential sites: https://re100.eng.anu.edu.au/global/
__alexs
Maybe if we bulldozed some ski resorts.
chris_va
https://maps.nrel.gov/psh (us)
Europe has Norway for storage, but limited renewable potential compared to the US or China (not nothing, offshore wind is a thing, but the available land area for solar is very limited).
manquer
Many normal hydroelectric dams can be converted, they already have half the setup .
As long as there is a lower reservoir or space for one , any hydroelectric dam could converted to pumped storage without additional ecological impact .
bgnn
Sweden snd Norway, maybe? Turkey has a lot of potential sites.
imp0cat
There are some viable places in Europe, but the biggest problem seems to be actually getting all the permits required to build them. One can't just chop the top of a mountain nowadays.
China does not seem to have this problem.
masklinn
I don't think the US has any either, there's a reason they built Tom Sauk (not sure there's any other pretty much entirely artificial PHS).
There might be a few locations in the Alps e.g. existing barrages which could be retrofitted into PHS in Switzerland and Austria (KOPS II was commissioned in 2008).
louwrentius
These are huge investments but I believe countries that heavily invest in renewables are going to get ahead of those who don’t due to lower energy costs.
And if countries refuse to reduce their carbon footprint, we may start to put some tariffs on your goods and services.
jeffbee
What was the old record holder? Bath County in the U.S. is nearly this large.
philipkglass
There's a pretty good list here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_pumped-storage_hydroel...
This looks like the previous record holder (by stored energy, not power):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raccoon_Mountain_Pumped-Storag...
thelastgallon
Thanks for the link! Under construction is far more interesting. Out of the 118 under construction (>1000MW), 112 are in China, with 6 from the rest of the world. China is adding 157 GW of storage just from pumped storage.
ChuckMcM
This from the Bath County website : "Net generating capacity is 3,003-megawatts (6 units)." That is 1/1000th the capacity of the 3.6 Gigawatts that this Chinese facility can produce.
rhplus
From Wikipedia link above:
Bath County: 3.0GW output, 24GWh capacity
Fengning: 3.6GW output, 40GWh capacity
wewtyflakes
3000MW == 3GW
daedrdev
Check your unit conversion
null
Aloisius
Did they really install mood lighting above their generators?
It seems like it from the picture of their turbine hall.
One of my favorite theoretical energy storage methods is manmade island dams. The idea is to build a circular dyke in the ocean, and then use the encapsulated sea as pumped hydro storage. It would be paired with a windfarm, floating solar, and whatever other power generating methods would easily co-locate.
Unsurprisingly, the Dutch seem to have put a lot of thought into it: https://deingenieur.nl/artikelen/lievense-de-man-van-het-ops...