That’s great news. But I read in the past that the majority of these clean energy installations are in the middle of the country where the land is dirt cheap and almost no one is living. Meaning that a lot of this energy is simply lost at the energy grid until it reaches actual users. Nevertheless this is still a big win, because of all the innovation it brought to the PV manufacturing process.
It will be less efficient, yes. But it is still a net positive. If it is cheaper to build it there, you can just add more power to compensate for that loss in efficiency.
It will not be a 100% loss. For reference: the power loss of the transmission in the US is on average 5%. Let’s say it is double that, it is still very little in the grand scheme.
Gansu, the poorest province in China, a province where “almost no one is living.” Qinghai, Xinjiang… Same story. Together, they have almost 60 million people. Many of them are minorities with historically poor job prospects due to their distance from economic centers.
By building energy installations in the middle of the country, they’re providing jobs to a group that’s been left behind by the rapid industrialization of the country’s East. Providing them with a surplus of electricity. Driving investment in the region. Moreover, this group of people is more than the population of New York and Texas… Combined.
How about you take your racism and your classism and shove it up your ass?
Truly the words ‘racism’ and ‘classism’ have lost all of their meaning nowadays. Well alright classism I might be to see in there if I squinted at it, but racism?
Dude thinks Chinese people aren’t people. Provinces with a population that exceed some of the most populous states in America… “barely have any people”
Hold off with your accusations and insults, I have never said anything like this, so don’t put words in my mouth.
This is actually a problem for big countries with irregular population density, where it is the cheapest to build them, and as I said in my original post, I believe it is a big achievement.
Geez it’s like you people want poor people to stay poor. There’s more than enough capacity for solar deployments in the nations East - it’s explicit policy that’s put deployments further West. Beijing is happy to build some UHV lines if it means that prosperity can be driven into the West - it’s the same argument as for the HSR line to Lanzhou and then to Urumqi. It’s the same argument as for the HSR line to Hohhot and the HrSR from Chengdu to Lhasa. Beijing knows that these infrastructure projects are inefficient, but Beijing is more concerned with equity of growth than the growth itself - they’d rather see 10% growth in the West and 3% growth in the East for 5% growth nationally than 6% growth nationally, but coming entirely from already established tier 1 population centers.
It’s not only mutual prosperity, but also an effort to reduce internal migration towards tier 1 cities.
China also has a more efficient energy transfer system than elsewhere in the world, so the loss is a lot less than you would expect, lower than, for example, it would be in US.
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