Comments on: China Quadruples 2015 Solar Power Target!

By: China to Double 2015 Solar PV Target to 40 GW - CleanTechnica

China to Double 2015 Solar PV Target to 40 GW - CleanTechnica — Tue, 18 Sep 2012 13:28:39 +0000

[…] " "))]); }); Editor’s note: China has a habit of increasing its solar power targets. I think it’s done so 3 times in the past year and a half. Its initial 2015 target of about 5 […]

By: Ronald Brak

Ronald Brak — Sat, 07 Jul 2012 00:26:00 +0000

More solar means less coal, which means clearer Chinese skies, which results in increased solar generation. A very virtuous circle.

By: Ronald Brak

Ronald Brak — Sat, 07 Jul 2012 00:23:00 +0000

I will mention that the situation is not simple. China imports huge amounts of coal, but is also a coal exporter. It ships in low sulphur coal from Australia and other places and exports high sulphur coal. China needs low sulphur coal because in many Chinese cities weather conditions like the London inversion have the potential to kill tens of thousands in days.

By: Ronald Brak

Ronald Brak — Fri, 06 Jul 2012 15:31:00 +0000

Well, not really. It was only three years ago it was $62 a tonne. China’s slow down is the immediate cause of the fall in coal prices, but high prices resulted in increased coal production in various countries and so increased supply has also lowered the price. Now that China has introduced a generous solar feed in tariff thermal coal will never go back to $120 a tonne.

By: Ronald Brak

Ronald Brak — Fri, 06 Jul 2012 15:30:00 +0000

Well, yes. The price of thermal coal is $90 a tonne at a port and there is a lot of people and industry near China’s ports and electricity can be transmitted a fair distance.

By: Zachary Shahan

Zachary Shahan — Fri, 06 Jul 2012 14:53:00 +0000

yeah, quite curious about the profit now. 120 down to 90 is a lot.

By: Bob_Wallace

Bob_Wallace — Fri, 06 Jul 2012 05:16:00 +0000

Does $90 get it to where they need to burn it? Their coal is pretty cheap out of the mine, but the price of oil was making it expensive by the time it arrived in their manufacturing centers.

By: Ronald Brak

Ronald Brak — Thu, 05 Jul 2012 23:17:00 +0000

Bob, ran out of space to reply. In case you missed it, it now costs China $90 a tonne to import thermal coal.

By: Ronald Brak

Ronald Brak — Thu, 05 Jul 2012 02:24:00 +0000

The days of $120 a tonne coal are over. The immediate cause is the Chinese slow down, but with PV at its current cost $120 coal will never return, barring an extreme set of circumstances. The spot price for exported Australian thermal coal is currenty $90.15 Australian. Very roughly this gives a cost of about 6 cents a kilowatt-hour.

By: Bob_Wallace

Bob_Wallace — Thu, 05 Jul 2012 00:21:00 +0000

“China’s vast reserves near Inner Mongolia can be mined for $25 a ton. But by the time it travels by rail across North China, then by sea to southern coastal cities, thecost rises to more than $125 a ton.”
“There is cheap coal in the Powder River Basin, in part because U.S. demand for coal is slumping as American power companies shift to cheaper and cleaner natural gas or renewables. Peabody Energy Inc. would love to ship its surplus Wyoming coal to Asia, if it can get it there. Peabody promises investors that it can make money shipping coal to China — precisely because it expects the price to remain at $120 or more. ”

“What does $120-a-ton coal mean for the development plans of India and China? At $120 a ton, electricity from coal costs about 10 cents a kilowatt-hour, before installing pollution controls. But India and China built their economic plans on 4 cents-a-kilowatt-hour power, presuming that cheap Indonesian coal would keep the price down.”

From the Bloomberg link above….

By: Ronald Brak

Ronald Brak — Thu, 05 Jul 2012 00:08:00 +0000

Imported thermal coal currently costs $90 a tonne off a ship at the Chinese coast. Very roughly that gives a prices of about six cents a kilowatt-hour ignoring all externalities. In Australia most power plants paid a marginal cost of perhaps as little as $2.50 per tonne of coal because they generally sit right next to a coal mine and the coal is dumped on a conveyor belt and taken straight to the coal plant. (This week it effectively increased to $60+ a tonne due to our carbon tax.) So basically at the moment we are looking at six cents a kilowatt-hour at the Chinese coast and a couple of cents a kilowatt-hour in a coal producing area. In between areas could be considerably more due to transport costs.

Of course the real cost of burning coal is much higher due to its massive externalities.

By: Germany Sets a New Solar Power Record - 14.7 TWh in 6 months - CleanTechnica

Germany Sets a New Solar Power Record - 14.7 TWh in 6 months - CleanTechnica — Wed, 04 Jul 2012 22:37:59 +0000

[…] While the approximately 1.2 million “solar power plants” owned by households and businesses are producing clean energy from sunshine in record numbers, new solar systems are also being installed throughout the country. Between January and April, another 73,756 solar power systems with a combined capacity of 2,328 MW were installed, according to numbers published by the Bundesnetzagentur (Federal Network Agency). This should put the cumulative installed solar power capacity in Germany at approximately 28 GW as we enter the second half of 2012 (that’s more than China’s 2015 target of 21 GW). […]

By: Zachary Shahan

Zachary Shahan — Wed, 04 Jul 2012 17:36:00 +0000

quadrupling of its initial 2015 target (from just about a year ago).

By: Zachary Shahan

Zachary Shahan — Wed, 04 Jul 2012 17:35:00 +0000

True. Very true.

By: Zachary Shahan

Zachary Shahan — Wed, 04 Jul 2012 17:34:00 +0000

haha

By: Bob_Wallace

Bob_Wallace — Wed, 04 Jul 2012 16:11:00 +0000

Distribution can be a problems in China. Are their coal mines not a long way from their manufacturing centers?

You’ve read this?

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-06-19/cheap-coal-is-dead-long-live-renewables-part-1-.html

By: Ronald Brak

Ronald Brak — Wed, 04 Jul 2012 10:42:00 +0000

In the margin coal power costs about 6 cents a kilowatt-hour in China before distribution costs and ignoring externalities. I know this because they currently pay about $90 a tonne to import thermal coal. But for a coal plant sitting right next to a domestic coal mine, the cost will be considerably less.

By: Bob_Wallace

Bob_Wallace — Wed, 04 Jul 2012 03:17:00 +0000

We probably have a little bit of that operating with EVs. I’m pretty sure that more battery plants were built than the market can keep fully occupied at the moment.

That’s likely to cause downward pressure on prices. Companies will operate with no profit or even losses in order to stay alive while the economy comes back.

By: Bob_Wallace

Bob_Wallace — Wed, 04 Jul 2012 03:15:00 +0000

Gee, Bill. Do you have to use selective reading just in order to be negative?

”
quadruple its initial 2015 target “

By: Bill_Woods

Bill_Woods — Wed, 04 Jul 2012 02:58:00 +0000

“China Quadruples 2015 Solar Power Target!”

Raising the 2015 target from 15 to 21 GW isn’t quadrupling it — it’s a 40% increase.