China Smashes Solar Installation Record In May (oilprice.com) 56
An anonymous reader quotes a report from OilPrice.com: China installed its highest solar power capacity for a single month in May, according to official data, which showed mind-boggling figures that the country installed more solar capacity in a month than any other nation did for the entire 2024. With 93 gigawatts (GW) of solar capacity installed in May, China smashed its own record of 71 GW in December 2024, per data from the National Energy Administration cited by Bloomberg.
China's solar capacity additions in May were rushed ahead of a new government policy -- effective June 1 -- to remove pricing protection for solar power projects. Under these protections, solar projects had all but guaranteed profits when they start operations. Another new rule, effective May 1, made connecting rooftop panels to the grid more difficult. These new policies are expected to moderate the growth in solar power additions this summer, analysts say. A separate report notes that China's cumulative installed solar capacity has surpassed 1 TW, according to the National Energy Administration (NEA). "By the end of May 2025, solar capacity had reached 1.08 TW (1,080 GW), up 56.9% year on year," reports pv magazine.
"NEA data show total power generation capacity stood at 3.61 TW at the end of May, an 18.8% increase from a year earlier."
China's solar capacity additions in May were rushed ahead of a new government policy -- effective June 1 -- to remove pricing protection for solar power projects. Under these protections, solar projects had all but guaranteed profits when they start operations. Another new rule, effective May 1, made connecting rooftop panels to the grid more difficult. These new policies are expected to moderate the growth in solar power additions this summer, analysts say. A separate report notes that China's cumulative installed solar capacity has surpassed 1 TW, according to the National Energy Administration (NEA). "By the end of May 2025, solar capacity had reached 1.08 TW (1,080 GW), up 56.9% year on year," reports pv magazine.
"NEA data show total power generation capacity stood at 3.61 TW at the end of May, an 18.8% increase from a year earlier."
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Sunlight is the keyword here, they don't work at night.
However that can be managed and new power storage techniques are being developed all the time.
It's a matter of when in countries that have coal mining jobs holding cities up.
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The average solar PV capacity factor in the U.S. is 24.5%. 3.61 TW at 24.5% for one year is 7.7 PWh. Total electricity usage in China last year was 9.5 PWh.
If they figure out storage, their fossil fuel plants can all be shut down in a few years.
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"If they figure out storage, their fossil fuel plants can all be shut down in a few years."
Guess what, they are figuring it out. Storing a kWh now just adds a few cents to its cost.
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"If they figure out storage, their fossil fuel plants can all be shut down in a few years."
Guess what, they are figuring it out. Storing a kWh now just adds a few cents to its cost.
You meant to say guess what they knew all along.
Storing electricity, is a concept as old as ripping people off for it.
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"Sunlight is the keyword here, they don't work at night"
yet that doesn't mean they're completely useless in the dark.
large installations - i'm not sure at what size they become useful for the following purpose - can provide grid services, specifically reactive power which is critical to grid stability
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yet that doesn't mean they're completely useless in the dark.
large installations - i'm not sure at what size they become useful for the following purpose - can provide grid services, specifically reactive power which is critical to grid stability
And yet I recall a few articles highlighted on Slashdot that made opposing claims.
https://hardware.slashdot.org/... [slashdot.org]
https://hardware.slashdot.org/... [slashdot.org]
https://hardware.slashdot.org/... [slashdot.org]
That last link is likely the most relevant. There's a claim that new inverters can provide "synthetic inertia" but this is an untested technology. As much as I like to see new technology I also like to see simple solutions to problems. If spinning metal solves the grid stability problem then do that. An inverter that is tryin
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Sunlight is the keyword here, they don't work at night. However that can be managed and new power storage techniques are being developed all the time.
Correct. Teslas Powerwall has generally addressed this at the personal consumer level. And most humans don’t work at night either, making addressing that demand a bit easier.
It's a matter of when in countries that have coal mining jobs holding cities up.
Adapt or die. Coal is dying. In those cities and countries, we must determine if it is corruption or capability holding back progress. And then address it.
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And most humans donâ(TM)t work at night either, making addressing that demand a bit easier.
I've recently started looking at my power consumption on a 15-minute graph, and it turns out that power usage isn't all that much less during the night. In fact, at times it is higher because all the lights are turned up. But even at night, there's the fridge and freezer, the house electronics, security cameras, etc.
Turns out the stuff I need for work - a notebook and an external screen - barely register.
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"Sunlight is the keyword here, they don't work at night."
Unlike nukes.
Heatwaves raise river temperatures, forcing plants to shut down because the water is too hot to cool reactors without exceeding safety limits. Droughts reduce water levels so much that there's simply not enough to run the cooling systems. Freezing conditions can block intakes entirely. These aren't rare events anymore.
Maintenance and refueling take reactors offline for months at a time, while solar panels and wind turbines can be swapped
Re: Imagine explaining solar (Score:1)
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Nuclear power. Makes electricity free from nuclear fission. Why dont we have it everywhere.
Because it's FAR from free. I'm very pro-nuclear, but we need to be honest about the pros (MANY) and the cons (several) of nuclear energy. One of the biggest problems is waste storage - instead of stashing it in an abandoned mineshaft in the Nevada desert (we can thank ex-senator Harry Reid for that), we store it on site. This is an expensive problem. This can be remedied with legislation, but unfortunately the Legislative branch of our government has a very difficult time passing laws, except on culture wa
Re: these (several) cons are HUGE (Score:2)
1.
Advancing nuclear, will also make it available to way more countries.
By that giving this tech to those.
Teaching those.
Building infrastructure and education to handle radioactive stuff.
From there it's only a small step sell stuff others can use for nuclear bombs.
By advocating nuclear, you also advocate giving atomic bombs to the whole world.
2.
risk of meltdown exists
newer nuclear is 100 x more secure
building 100 x more nuclear power plants / 100 x more secure equals the risk as of Tschernobyl and Fukushima
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So called "green" tech like solar panels actually do produce vast quantities of incredibly toxic waste at every stage of their lifecycle that we have no viable way to deal with, unlike nuclear.
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So called "green" tech like solar panels actually do produce vast quantities of incredibly toxic waste at every stage of their lifecycle that we have no viable way to deal with, unlike nuclear.
Sounds like copium to me. Nuclear fission has lost the PR war, the economic war, and the tech war, and now you're hoping you can bring it back from the dead by slagging the competition with baseless hyperbole. Well, good luck with that; but it sure looks like that race has already been called. I still have hope for nuclear fusion, FWIW.
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To be fair, the losses in economy and tech primarily are only because of the loss of the PR war.
nuclear is so expensive, because A everyone and their mother gets to cry NIMBY, eco groups are not held responsible for coming up with bullshit reasons why nuclear cannot be beuilt THERE and so forth. And because we haven't built nukes in quite some time, you'll have to expect overhead for companies regaining the know-how and fixing blunders.
The additional time all this takes adds to the interest on the building
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They actually don't.
That is american propaganda.
And this "whataboutism" is pretty pointless, as anyone with a some interest in it, can list you 100 steps in the production where nuclear fuel rod production, leave waste behind .... or simple coal digging.
Solar cell production is very similar to computer chip production, at least the early stages. Guess what: the "waste" is so valuable: it gets reused.
And the other stuff are acids, which are forbidden to be released into the environment. Even in China, facepa
Re: Imagine explaining solar (Score:2)
I have 28 15 year old panels on my roof. Replacing them with more efficient ones is possible, but costly, not due to parts cost, but labor costs. I won't do it because it has negative ROI.
I did however add another 32 more efficient panels in recent years, filling every side of my roof. That had positive ROI.
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I might need a $300converter though, but I could increase my panel area to 10 sqm for a total price of $1300, which will ge
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They last for 10-15 years before being replace
Actually, they last for 30 years at 80% capacity or better.
Why aren't they installed on every surface?
At least in America, it is illegal to install cost-effective solar panels.
Biden and Trump both agreed on high tariffs on solar, and American manufacturers have no incentive to be more efficient.
This is the way. (Score:4, Insightful)
Every house should have solar panels. Forget the environmental impact of oil, look at all the screwed up things oil money funds. For that reason alone we need to switch to solar. Furthermore, if your house has solar .. that gives you more freedom. You're not subject to energy price fluctuations. And heck if you lost all your money you can still survive. I guess you'd need to figure out food I suppose (in theory can grow it indoors with solar energy), but maybe you can use the solar power to get on TikTok and get money for food.
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You need local battery storage in order to have off-grid capability, right?
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Yes, and different inverters. I've got a very small solar array, and the micro-inverter on it doesn't even work if it can't find the main power grid to sync to.
A battery will get you over some power grid outage, but not totally off-grid.
Re:This is the way. (Score:4, Insightful)
"Every house should have solar panels"
long before one gets around to putting them on small residential roofs, every large roof - big box stores, warehouses, schools, etc - and parking lots should be covered with solar panels
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Every house should have solar panels.
Yes, but even if the energy they produce more than pays for themselves many homeowners lack the capital to install them or have other uses for that capital. If government created the means for people to finance them, then they could install them. There are a couple problems there. One is that there is a huge centralized energy industry with investors that make money building large generators and the infrastructure to deliver the power where it is used. So we provide government support for building those la
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If government created the means for people to finance them, then they could install them. There are a couple problems there.
That is easy.
You just put high enough tariffs and if possible some extra taxes in the imported solar panels, and hand out that money with 0.5% interest to home owners, to buy solar panels.
SIMPLE!
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It's a social justice issue though. People getting solar panels to reduce their energy bills, and a divide opening between people who are already better off and can afford their own roof, vs people who have to rent and can at most put a temporary panel on a balcony or something.
For companies and schools it's much easier because they can get a commercial loan. Payback is guaranteed over a predictable period, they have assets to borrow against.
One of the great things about the solar revolution in China is tha
Re: This is the way. (Score:3, Interesting)
The transition is challenging, traditionally we Belgians nag about it, as we definitely do not want to be great. But that does not stop us.
Went to the town hall last week. They did an info session about home batteries. The rules relaxed recently. Dude told us that Germany is actually ahead of us.
No guts, n
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Home batteries are insanely cheap now. 15kWh for about 1,500 Euro as a kit, 2000 Euro assembled.
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Solar only works if you either have a huge roof or get a low energy heat pump for which you need a high level of insulation which may well cost six digits to achieve for existing houses.
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You are totally wrong.
I've installed a really small solar array and on sunny days I produce more electricity than I use. I'm sure it'll be a lot less in winter. BUT - I have a wood-burning heater which needs only a bit of electrical power for its control system. I'm pretty sure I can produce enough of that even in winter. So in theory, with the addition of a battery to cover the night, I could survive even if the power grid went down for an extended time.
Solar as a provider of independence doesn't mean ever
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If it cannot give you complete independence in some area - energy, heating or electric car - its attractiveness is rather diminished.
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Why? 100% is better than 99% is better than 90% etc. But 90% is better than 0%, too. So why be so binary? Being largely off-grid is still good, even if not as good as being totally off-grid.
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Every house should have solar panels.
the vast majority of the population in the world doesn't live in "houses", but in apartment buildings in dense cities with wildly varying exposure to sunlight. in many regions in the world catching sunlight does demand considerable available surface. the roofs of these buildings may not be big enough to provide for the many families that can be stuffed into them, and it isn't an individual choice and operation anymore. so not so simple, although i agree with your bottom line. btw solar farms are a thing but
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Every house should have solar panels.
yep.
I used to have solar in the first house I built, and we had enough capacity to have the AC on pretty much as much as we wanted, and I still fed back to the grid, and got credit from the electricity distributor each quarter.
Stupid Regulations (Score:2)
There are stupid regulations in our neighborhood holding us back. I'd rather not pay for a battery pack, just the panels. It would cost us roughly half as much. But we also want to use our OWN power if the grid goes down, which it does often, but regulations forbid that: we must buy a battery pack to have that ability.
I realize a battery pack gives us off-hour power if the grid goes down, but since it's only a spare, we don't care that it would only work during the day. It would be enough to keep our food f
Three times more power than the US (Score:2)
Ignoring the solar fraction, note China's total generating capacity: 3.61TW
According to Wikipedia, total capacity for the US is 1.28TW. For the EU it's 1.08TW.
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You can't really ignore the solar fraction, though, or the also-large wind fraction; even in 2023, the two made up about 43% of total capacity. Those two chunks are counted as nameplate capacities rather than typical output, and typical capacity factors are 15-25% for solar and 20-40% for wind. That means the actual generation is a lot less than 3.61 TW, almost certainly less than 3 TW, and possibly less than 2.5 TW. The US is a lot less affected by those factors (see, for example, https://www.eia.gov/en [eia.gov]
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You're right. A better measure is annual TWh. Here are the 2023 numbers.
China: 9,456 TWh (not including the extra 2024-25 capacity mentioned in the article)
US: 4,254 TWh
EU: 2,824 TWh (in 2022, and falling apparently)
3.61 TW? ! (Score:2)
Sounds like someone's planning on installing an Nvidia 5090 !
as always... (Score:1)