China's Tongwei Group Plans World's Biggest Solar-Cell Plant (5GW/yr)
Bloomberg News
November 18, 2015 — 3:37 AM EST
Tongwei Group Co. is planning to build the world’s biggest plant to make solar cells in China’s southwestern province of Sichuan at a possible cost of about $1 billion.
The facility is expected to have capacity of 5 gigawatts of high-efficiency solar cells annually, according to an e-mailed statement. The company held a ceremony on Wednesday to mark the beginning of construction.
The plant in Shuangliu county will triple Tongwei’s total solar-cell capacity, which is estimated to reach 2.4 gigawatts by the end of this year. The plan underscores Chengdu-based Tongwei’s efforts to expand capacity after agreeing to buy a 10 percent stake in Taiwanese solar-cell producer Gintech Energy Corp. in July.
The factory, which could cost about 20 cents a watt, could be part of a medium-term plan, said Wang Xiaoting, a Hong Kong-based analyst from Bloomberg New Energy Finance....
= new reply since forum marked as read
...at all presenting a "pot and kettle" argument, this time raising a "reliability" issue. Really? Really?
One need not be much above the level of a 5th grader to compare the capacity utilization of nuclear power plants world wide with the capacity factor of solar plants.
One can find this data on just about any authoritative energy website, the EIA, IEA, etc, but as usual, as opposed to doing so, we have a case of just making stuff up.
Let me ask you something more obvious. Does a nuclear plant shut down every time the sun goes down? How about when covered with snow? When the wind isn't blowing which device doesn't work, a nuclear power plant or a wind turbine?
One of the real annoying things about the liars in the anti-nuke industry - a front for the dangerous fossil fuel industry - other than the fact that they always use peak power units to characterize the toxic so called "renewable energy" junk, as opposed to units of energy, is that they assume that everyone is stupid.
Actually, one would need to be a total idiot to not know that the sun disappears each evening.
This apparently doesn't stop the "solar will save us" (fossil fuel fronting) industry from assuming that everyone is a total idiot.
The capacity factor of nuclear power plants, despite the representations of people who not only hate science, but also hate the truth can be found (in the United States) on the EIA's webpage: Performance of US Nuclear Reactors. Except for a single reactor out of service, there is not one reactor operating at the theoretical maximum for a solar cell, which, given the existence of night, is 50%, although this toxic garbage in reality is barely above 10% capacity utilization.
The nuclear summer capacity was 101,004 MWe, and it follows that by multiplying this by the number of seconds in a year (and converting mega to unit measurement) that the US theoretical nuclear output was 3.19 exajoules of pure electricity. The actual delivered energy was (converting MWh to exajoules is 2.91 exajoules. It follows for anyone who has passed 4th grade math - and clearly many anti-nukes are incompetent to do so, that the capacity utilization of US nuclear reactors was 91.4%.
This makes US nuclear reactors the most highly reliable power generation system in the entire United States, higher capacity utilization than coal, higher than gas, and far, far, far higher than all that redundant wind and solar crap we're wasting money on while we could be providing for education, health care and real infrastructure.
One wonders whether anti-nukes are smart enough to figure out how stupid they make themselves appear, when they assume stupidity on the part of everyone else.
A fool assuming that everyone else is as stupid as he or she is is still a fool, and anyone who is not a fool can see as much.
If we don't have a chance at another pleasant chat during your constant cheering for cadmium leaching in China, (and, as reported by Greentech, the Bankruptcy of so many American solar companies that it's not worth spending the time required to count them) the financial rape of any investor dumb enough to invest in this junk, have a great Thanksgiving, certainly better than the Thanksgivings the poor slobs who financed all these failed US solar companies. only to lose their shirts, might be having. It would seem that the solar scam is Enron all over again; one hopes that not too many people lost their life savings on the "solar sure thing."
If we don't have a chance to chat again, do drop by to tell us how renewable energy in the US is all about jobs! jobs! jobs! (That's another great whopper that the solar scammers used to throw around, and are probably still throwing around since they have a difficult relationship with something called "truth."
Again, have a great Thanksgiving!
It is simple - the thing you love about that big massive, husky hunk of energy which is nuclear, is also what works against it (in several ways) for the needs of today's grid.
It is a routine occurrence for nuclear plants to have operating problems that require them to shut down immediately - the safety issue demands it.
Unless you have an extremely large amount of fossil fuel standby, taking that much power offline will crash the grid. Since we can't predict the sudden state of energy vacuum that a scrammed reactor leaves in its wake, we have to keep a shitton of fossil running all the time - just in case.
Wind and solar, though variable, are extremely predictable. That and the widely distributed nature of the collection devices, reduces dramatically the issues associated with compensating for their variable nature. We Do Not Need to Keep a Large Amount of Fossil Generation Up And Spinning "just in case" a gigawatt's worth of power is lost in an instant.
Another problem with that always on aspect of nuclear is that renewables ARE what is being built and nuclear is simply incompatible. We've seen a wave of shutdowns in coal and nuclear as these large plants are losing marginal market share to no-fuel-cost renewables. That is only going to get worse.
The world is changing and the nature of the change means nuclear is set to be only a minor distraction in our energy future. Given it's negatives of cost, safety, proliferation concerns and toxic wastes, that is a really good thing.
ETA: Since you're so fond of posting things that are totally unrelated, I'm sure you'll indulge me tossing this chart into the mix to show another aspect of nuclear that the nuclear industry likes to pretend doesn't exist:
Let’s not forget, either, that nuclear power has some of the largest per kilowatt- hour subsidies of any electricity source.
As the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette said, “a new nuclear project may be the hardest large-scale construction venture to keep on schedule and on budget, because of the cost, the regulations, and the infrequency of such events.” Compare that with solar power, with prices falling 50% in five years and new installations completed every 2.5 minutes.
By Tom Randall, Bloomberg
We all know the story of how mobile phones took off in emerging markets. Suddenly small cocoa farmers in Africa who never had a landline or a computer were checking commodity prices on their smartphones.
Today something similarly profound is starting to happen with renewable energy.
For the first time, more than half of the world's annual investment in clean energy is coming from emerging markets instead of wealthier nations, according to a new analysis by Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF). The handoff occurred last year, and it's just the beginning.
The chart below shows quarterly clean-energy investment in OECD countries versus non-OECD countries. The trajectory is clear: If you’re a power plant salesperson, you’re probably going to be working with renewables in poor countries from now until the foreseeable future.
The world recently passed a turning point and is adding more capacity for clean energy each year than for coal, natural gas, and oil combined. For that trend to continue, rapidly developing economies are critical.
Last year, emerging markets invested a record $126 billion in clean energy, up 39 percent from the prior year, according to BNEF's new report, called Climatescope. China dominated, adding 35 GW of clean energy, or more than the U.S., U.K., and France combined. India may soon be a contender, with a plan announced this year to add 175 GW by 2022.
The report...
http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/articles/2015/11/leapfrogging-to-solar-emerging-markets-outspend-rich-countries-for-the-first-time.html?cmpid=renewablesolar11242015&eid=291112127&bid=1241690
