Solar power is now cheaper than the grid in hundreds of Chinese cities

[Eugene]

Source: CNN Business

Solar power is now cheaper than the grid in hundreds of Chinese cities

By Jack Guy, CNN
Updated 1456 GMT (2256 HKT) August 15, 2019

London (CNN Business) — Solar energy in hundreds of Chinese cities is now cheaper than electricity supplied by the national grid, and it can even compete with coal-fired power in 75 of them, a new study has found.

Some 344 Chinese cities were found to have solar systems producing energy at lower prices than the grid, without any subsidies, according to the research published in the journal Nature Energy. That could encourage further investment in renewable energy, according to the authors.

China has made huge progress in developing solar projects and pledged to invest 2.5 trillion yuan ($367 billion) in renewable power generation — solar, wind, hydro and nuclear — from 2017-2020.

Solar can also compete on price with electricity produced solely from coal in around 22% of these cities, according to the research team led by Jinyue Yan from the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden.

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Read more: https://edition.cnn.com/2019/08/15/business/china-solar-electricity-scli-intl/index.html

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Related City-level analysis of subsidy-free solar photovoltaic electricity price, profits and grid parity in China (Nature Energy)

[ladjf]

1. Last week it was reported that in France and Germany, the electricity supplied by

wind and solar was creating more electricity than was needed. That means that the electricity meters were running backwards.

[hunter]

2. No, it means the solar and wind plants can't sell their electricity and are losing money.

There comes a point when adding more solar and wind capacity is economically unsustainable even with massive subsidies, expensive "smart grids," and pumped hydro or battery storage.

The problem is the same at any level, from a single off-grid home to a multi-national power exchange. The sun doesn't always shine, and the wind doesn't always blow.

There will always be hours, days, or even weeks when "backup" power is required. In modern systems this backup power is generally supplied by natural gas power plants. Typically it's not backup power at all. Gas is the primary energy source supplemented by wind and solar.

Hybrid Natural Gas / Wind / Solar power grids are better than coal, but they are not going to save the world because there is enough natural gas in the ground, should we choose to burn it for energy, to destroy whatever is left of earth's natural environment as we know it.

An economy powered entirely by wind and solar would look nothing like the economy many affluent people now enjoy.