China's Energy Transition at Odds with Solar Glut, Cheap Power
33 comments
·March 24, 2025solid_fuel
seanmcdirmid
The problem is that you have solar in China where you don’t have so many people, industry, or water. So ya, Qinghai has a lot of solar, but using that surplus energy for data centers and such may still not be easy (air cooling maybe could work). You could try to build out your grid to send the energy east, but that has been slow going so far (compared to everything else China builds, it’s UHV lines east aren’t that many). Oh, you also need fiber capacity, etc…
I wonder how long until we actually see air cooled AI data centers in the middle of nowhere just because they have cheap power? China could invest in dry cooling tower technology next.
senectus1
energy CANT be too cheap.
just convert it to something and transport it where its not cheap.
Guthur
Exactly this is the most incoherent article. There is no transition, only growth. More energy always up up.
redserk
The article reads like a lot of finance articles from western outlets about China. It continues the multi-decade angle that — regardless of China’s successes — somehow they’re set for a full and total societal collapse any minute now.
So of course cheap energy is bad if you want to prop up a whole set of multinationals that rely on rent-seeking behavior. It puts those companies’ long-term growth at risk.
woleium
like hydrogen or bitcoin, or at a larger scale aluminum
more_corn
Don’t “just” me bro
energy123
> The deluge of solar power has thrust electricity prices into negative territory in regions with liberalized energy markets, which bodes ill for the economics of further expansion.
The market is sending California the same signal now, and they are responding accordingly.
There is no boding ill here. This is everything working as it should be.
PaulKeeble
A transition to solar involves 3 broad phases.
1) You can just install solar capacity and even on the best of days that power will be used and simply offset CO2 production.
2) Reach a point where the peak is a exceeding the transmission lines and the mid day power curve is showing Solar meeting all demand and maybe exceeding it a little. Prices now drop significant on these rare occasions.
3) There is now enough Solar that with the right balance of storage its enough even in winter when aggregated across a large area and have effectively decarbonised completely.
During phase 1 its easy you just install panels.
Phase 2 however is a painful phase involving upgrading of transmission lines as power now comes from different places and in peaks and also the addition of storage to move power across the day and smooth out delivery. There are moments of free or negative price power and these are signals to the market that more storage is required.
Phase 3 involves overprovision of solar capacity in the summer but enough in winter combined with the storage to aggregate across the day. Its also going to need efficient long range transmission upgrades as sunshine has tendency to appear in big blocks.
People expect that the storage needs and overprovision will be a lot bigger than they actually need to be. There is an experiment for this in Australia which shows that about 120% solar and 1 days worth of storage is all it would take, which as a combination is vastly cheaper than their current Coal plants. The mix is going to be different for different countries dependent on the weather and irradiance but there is always going to be an optimal mix based on the relative prices.
What I think is interesting is what do we do with that 20% of "free" energy through the summer? I tend to hope we put it towards CO2 capture but I suspect its a also a good time to training AI, electrolyse for hydrogen and filter salt water. This business opporrtunity is going to increasingly appear as a natural consequence of green energy solutions, wind and solar both produce the same energy market effect.
0cf8612b2e1e
Chinese spending on renewable energy dwarfs its rivals, with over $800 billion — or 4.5% of its GDP — invested last year, according to BloombergNEF.
PaulKeeble
At this point its what its going to take. All those warnings in the 1980s about the cost going up the later we leave it, well this is the moment of the suicide burn and if we miss it humanity is going to crash into a >2 C world and that isn't pretty.
ivewonyoung
Renewable energy cannot be blocked as easily as the Malacca Strait can be
freefrog334433
Indonesia and Malaysia are both BRICS+ members, and Singapore is pretty pro-China. Trump said he was talking to countries about inspecting Iranian ships passing through the Malacca Straits, and I'm guessing he meant Singapore, and probably got the thumbs down.
You are right about China keeping options open - the BRI initiative is about improving land transport options in Eurasia.
hollerith
India however is allied militarily with the US and can control what ships transit the strait from its bases in the Sentinel Islands.
Also, the US Navy can project a lot of power into the Indian Ocean and Western Pacific.
Beijing's being worried about an interruption of it supply of oil would explain why they continue to build coal generating plants at a fast rate in addition to solar plants. (China has plenty of coal.)
Barrin92
In practical terms, in the first six months of 2024 China added as much additional renewable capacity as the entire UK consumes in total in a year. When I was in Zhengzhou at the end of last year I got the chance to do a tour around the new BYD factory's construction site, entire complex is about as large as SF.
For people who get a chance to visit the country looking for tours by the large manufacturers if you're into engineering is a really cool thing.
ashoeafoot
Its also largely based upon reporting by the party.
Now let's hold reality too it:
https://globalenergymonitor.org/projects/global-coal-plant-t...
blue dots
snapcaster
This isn't contradicting what OP said though? it can be true that they're building tons of renewable energy AND building lots of coal plants
boringg
When you build a ton of solar without any of the surrounding generation its going to cause problems for grid stability. Also they built their solar industry to export which subsidizes domestic consumption. They have some challenges ahead of them.
That said - cheap electricity is a huge boon to any country - so while they may have some challenges it is far better than the alternative of too much power. Solar manufacturers are in for a rough couple years.
suraci
> Also they built their solar industry to export which subsidizes domestic consumption
We have served and will be of service
newyankee
Even with these numbers I think they are underestimating growth, Cheap energy will automatically unlock other opportunities that are blocked today
gotoeleven
Hmm they seem to be saying that generating energy from expensive sources only makes sense if energy is expensive..
stavros
I don't understand this article, the problem is that they have too much cheap energy?
Full_Clark
More that they don't have it in the right places, or they don't have the ability to shift it temporally to when it's not so abundant.
Per the article they are forecast to add 300 GW of renewables each year, which is admirable. But they also started construction on just under 100 GW of new coal power plants last year, and granted approvals for yet more in the future. [0]
You could quibble at the margins (some of it will be replacing EOL coal plants, some of it is intended as firming capacity only, etc.). But in the big picture, it indicates that where the Chinese economy needs more energy supplied, renewables aren't yet suitable to fill a large portion of that need.
[0] https://www.carbonbrief.org/chinas-construction-of-new-coal-...
stavros
But at three times more than fossil fuel construction, isn't it that they are indeed suitable to fill most of that need?
Full_Clark
yes. I don't think "most of" one thing and "a large portion of" another thing are mutually exclusive.
energy123
They do have the ability, though, via overbuilding and storage. It's not clear why you think they don't. Them not having fully done it yet is not evidence that they can't do it.
"Energy is too cheap" is only a problem when the people who own whatever equipment is generating energy are interested in a direct return on their investment. From the perspective of Kardashev, "Energy is too cheap" is a fantastic opportunity for a civilization.
While yes, too much surplus capacity would eventually indicate overinvestment, for now it seems like great news for the compute and software industry in China. If you reliably have times when energy is better-than-free, that's the ideal time to scale up and generate embeddings from your stored data, or train LLMs, or do all sorts of other batch-able but intensive tasks.