Technology

58135 readers

4347 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.

Our Rules

Follow the lemmy.world rules.
Only tech related content.
Be excellent to each another!
Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
Politics threads may be removed.
No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

782

China Installed More Solar Panels Last Year Than the U.S. Has in Total (www.ecowatch.com)

submitted 7 months ago by L4s@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world

225 comments fedilink hide all child comments

China Installed More Solar Panels Last Year Than the U.S. Has in Total::China installed more new solar capacity last year than the total amount ever installed in any other country.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] ryathal@sh.itjust.works 1 points 7 months ago (2 children)

It's less about balance and more about raw needs. Providing power to a billion people is hard and they are building everything to meet the growing demand.

[–] banneryear1868@lemmy.world 3 points 7 months ago

Balance is what determines the supply mix else everyone would just run nukes. Previous commenter is right about why fossil fuels are still used, we don't have tech to replace their capabilities, which are necessary for reliability of the transmission grid. Energy storage is an area of huge investment right now because of this, with batteries and flywheel storage pilot projects to try and mature this technology. SMRs are another area of research. Programs like demand response to incentivize heavy consumers to change their usage patterns.

Without the ramp rate of fossils to respond quickly to grid conditions, there would be constant frequency drops and spikes across the transmission grid. Turbines would become out of sync from the frequency on the lines and things would start tripping and we would have a blackout. This is even more complex with unpredictable renewal integration where fossil becomes even more critical for its capabilities, while slightly less for its capacity.

[–] rottingleaf@lemmy.zip 2 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I thought China's population has stopped growing and is actually on a track to start shrinking rapidly?

[–] redcalcium@lemmy.institute 6 points 7 months ago (1 children)

But at the same time, quality of life is rapidly improving which means energy usage per capita will eventually ramp up to similar level with average western citizen's energy usage.

[–] rottingleaf@lemmy.zip 1 points 7 months ago (1 children)

That depends on whether it'll keep its position as world's cheap factory. Quality of life improving tends to affect that too. What energy China now consumes for production may not be required in 20 years.

[–] ryathal@sh.itjust.works 2 points 7 months ago

China already is losing cheap factories to India and other neighboring countries.