The largest plant in the world is the Three Gorges Dam in China at 22GW and it’s off the scales huge. We’re not building the equivalent of four of those every year.
Unless the plan is to power it off Sam Altman’s hot air. That could work. :)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_power_stations
It is possible, just may be not in the U.S.
Note: given renewables can't provide base load, capacity factor is 10-30% (lower for solar, higher for wind), so actual energy generation will vary...
Sure, GP was clearly talking about the US, specifically.
> just may be not in the U.S.
Absolutely 100% not possible in the US. And even if we could do it, I'm not convinced it would be prudent.
On the other hand, I think we will not actually need 100GW of new installations because capacity can be acquired by reducing current usage by making it more efficient. The term negawatt comes to mind. A lot of people are still in the stone age when it comes to this even though it was demonstrated quite effectively by reduced gas use in the US after the oil crisis in the 70s. Which basically recovered to the pre crisis levels only recently.
High gas prices caused people to use less and favor efficiency. The same thing will happen with electricity and we'll get more capacity. Let the market work.
Source?
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/installed-solar-pv-capaci...
Three Gorges Dam is capable of generating more power than all of TVA's nuclear + hydro, combined. In the past decade, TVA's single pumped-storage battery has gone from largest GWh/capcity in the world to not even top ten — largest facilities are now in China.
µFission reactors have recently been approved for TVA commissioning, with locations unconfirmed (but about one-sixth the output of typical TVA nuclear site). Sub-station battery storage sites are beginning to go online, capable of running subdivisions for hours after circuit disconnects.
Tech-funded entities like Helios Energy are promising profitable ¡FusioN! within a few years ("for fifty years").
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All of the above just to say: +100GW over the next decade isn't that crazy a prediction (+20% current supply, similar in size to two additional Texas-es).
https://www.eia.gov/electricity/gridmonitor/dashboard/electr...
Meanwhile, “drill baby drill!”
Authoritarianism has its draw backs obviously but one of its more efficient points is it can get things done if the will is at the top. Since China doesnt have a large domestic oil supply like the US it is a state security issue to get off oil as fast as possible.
Planning gas turbines doesn't help much if gas prices are about to increase due to lack of new supply.
New Zealand put in peaker gas turbines, but is running out of gas to run them, so its electricity market is gonna be fucked in a dry year (reduced water from weather for hydro):
• Domestic gas production is forecast to fall almost 50 per cent below projections made just three years ago.
• In a dry year, New Zealand no longer has enough domestic gas to [both] fully operate existing thermal generation and meet industrial gas demand.
https://oilprice.com/Energy/Natural-Gas/LNG-Exports-Will-Dri...