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pfdietz 11 hours ago

> Solar is a tiny portion of new energy capacity in China compared to coal, oil, and gas.

That graph shows production, not capacity, nor installed capacity in each year.

nandomrumber 10 hours ago | parent [-]

Well good, those are the correct numbers focus on because:

Solar capacity and say nuclear / coal / gas / hydro / fuel oil capacity

Are different beasts.

When solar advocates bang on about adding X gigawatts of capacity, they’re being dishonest. What they really mean is they added X/4, because, obviously, it’s sunny only about 25% of the time throughout a year.

Adding batteries doesn’t change that. Still have to over build.

So let’s focus on the numbers that reflect actual production, so we can have an honest conversation.

Nuclear / coal / gas / hydro / fuel oil, even biomass have capacity factors typically about 80%, often about 90%.

Wind and solar are never going up ro those capacity factors, even with batteries (including pumped hydro).