I'm not sure the assumption of stagnant electric demand is a good one. Despite the RE bust, demand continues to grow at over 3% (through Aug) this year. Moreover, don't we have to assume the Chinese population's standard of living continues to approach Western levels? This would imply continued increases in urbanization, as well as associated increases in per capita energy usage, including electricity. We're talking more air conditioning, washing machines, dryers, misc. appliances, etc. etc.
The real conundrum with your premise is the planned growth in coal power generation in China. There is 243 GW under construction/permitted, potentially reaching 392 GW when including planned but unpermitted projects. This suggests a potential 23% to 33% increase in coal capacity from 2022 levels.
Total power gen demand CAGR's of 3% at China's scale requires an all in on every generation source type of approach. The massive solar buildout, in tandem with the increased coal gen construction, aligns more with the continued growth outlook from policy makers.
The big unknown is how the grid actuary works - of course this is not 1 grid is mode like 9 - I have looked at this in the past and know some people who have modeled it - I'll connect you
Super interesting - but whats the read-through here? Much lower commodity demand from China going forward? You say the NBS/China Electricity Council data is non-sensical - but does this suggest they are ahead of where we would expect them to be in terms of renewables rollout, or are they massaging the data (eg are only producing a small amount of the electricity they should be able to - 3.8% seems low in terms of capacity?)
- Could low capacity factors from solar be due to using that energy for PSH? China counts PSH output as hydropower, which may mean that energy generated by solar directed towards PSH is not counted as solar generation and is instead lumped in with conventional hydropower output. I'm far from being an expert but that's one possible explanation for solar's strangely low capacity factor. Or it could just be yet another example of spotty official data.
Have you tried JAX? It absolutely rips, and comes with auto-diff to make your optimisations easier. That said, it's more like playing with bare linear algebra, and I don't know these packages you mentioned.
I'm not sure the assumption of stagnant electric demand is a good one. Despite the RE bust, demand continues to grow at over 3% (through Aug) this year. Moreover, don't we have to assume the Chinese population's standard of living continues to approach Western levels? This would imply continued increases in urbanization, as well as associated increases in per capita energy usage, including electricity. We're talking more air conditioning, washing machines, dryers, misc. appliances, etc. etc.
The real conundrum with your premise is the planned growth in coal power generation in China. There is 243 GW under construction/permitted, potentially reaching 392 GW when including planned but unpermitted projects. This suggests a potential 23% to 33% increase in coal capacity from 2022 levels.
Total power gen demand CAGR's of 3% at China's scale requires an all in on every generation source type of approach. The massive solar buildout, in tandem with the increased coal gen construction, aligns more with the continued growth outlook from policy makers.
The big unknown is how the grid actuary works - of course this is not 1 grid is mode like 9 - I have looked at this in the past and know some people who have modeled it - I'll connect you
Super interesting - but whats the read-through here? Much lower commodity demand from China going forward? You say the NBS/China Electricity Council data is non-sensical - but does this suggest they are ahead of where we would expect them to be in terms of renewables rollout, or are they massaging the data (eg are only producing a small amount of the electricity they should be able to - 3.8% seems low in terms of capacity?)
Great read! David Fishman may be worth reaching out to regarding getting higher frequency provincial power output data: https://twitter.com/pretentiouswhat?lang=en
Other thoughts:
- Could low capacity factors from solar be due to using that energy for PSH? China counts PSH output as hydropower, which may mean that energy generated by solar directed towards PSH is not counted as solar generation and is instead lumped in with conventional hydropower output. I'm far from being an expert but that's one possible explanation for solar's strangely low capacity factor. Or it could just be yet another example of spotty official data.
- I wrote an overview of PSH that may be of interest: https://chinapologist.substack.com/p/the-solution-to-the-green-transition
Gasoline peaked last month, thanks to EVs.
Have you tried JAX? It absolutely rips, and comes with auto-diff to make your optimisations easier. That said, it's more like playing with bare linear algebra, and I don't know these packages you mentioned.