Chinese consumption of coal and renewable energy

[CRH]

11. So how big a deal is 40 GW ...

I've tried to get figures from the BP site but my computer is old and the beach ball runs non stop. No answers there.

Found a graph from 2011 on TOE for China. The graph indicates a total of about 2.5 Billion TOE. Of that 1.75 Billion is coal. This converts to 2,500 MTOE and 1,750 MTOE.

A problem arises with the 40 GW figure because the figure is useless without a time frame. Is the production for an hour or a year. One assumes that is the production 'potential' for an hour. However without figures for how many hours per day the solar generation is effective and to what percent it is recoverable from the potential, how much actual power are we talking about?

Google indicates a GW of solar generation will supply about 200,000 homes, with consumption equal to US lifestyle. That is about 8,000,000 homes for 40GW, or about 30 - 40 million occupants with first world lifestyles.

So for total energy consumed by China in 2011, 40 GW would represent a small fraction of the total power used, residential, commercial, industrial, and transportation. If the average solar GW could be produced for four hours a day at the full potential, it would convert to (40GW x 1460 GWh/Yr = 58,400 GWh/Yr) of total solar production. This converts to 5,021,496 TOE per year of 5 MTOE.

So if these computations are correct using the loose figures from total energy used in China in 2011, 40 GW of solar production at full potential for 4 hours a day would generate about .2% of the total energy used, and .28% of 2011 coal use.

Where am I wrong?