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Comment by teach | Hacker News Reader

Normally I try to go with the most charitable interpretation, but this article makes it difficult.

> Meanwhile China is adding power capacity at a wartime pace—coal, gas, nuclear, everything....

China is adding solar. Mostly solar. The word "solar" does not appear even once in this press release, and that seems disingenuous.

I _do_ think there's a place for more efficient use of the fossil fuels we do have. People are going to continue to burn natural gas for a while, so we might as well do it better I guess. But America isn't going to make up the energy deficit with fossil fuels, no matter how "clever" we are.

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> China is adding solar. Mostly solar. The word "solar" does not appear even once in this press release, and that seems disingenuous.

They are adding everything. They know baseload is important so they build nuclear. They know they can't fill the hole fast enough, so they are still building some coal.

This is designed for "fast" and "high power", but not for efficiency: it's not a combined cycle plant.

Yeah, its totally inefficient - according to Wikipedia a simple cycle gas turbine can be up to 43% efficient - with a combined cycle (you boil water with the first stage jet engine exhaust and then run a steam turbine off that) it can get up to 64%.

So like this there is possibly about 20% of (a lot of) energy/fuel just wasted. You can get even better, running something like a city wide district heating off the waste heat from the steam turbine - potentially reaching 100% in the sense that people get heating, warm running water or possibly also process heat for industrial use.

Or you can do none of that and power a datacenter of questionable utility with it at about 40% efficiency. :P

> China is adding solar. Mostly solar. The word "solar" does not appear even once in this press release, and that seems disingenuous.

On the contrary, check out this graph:

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/energy-consumption-by-sou...

Solar is a tiny portion of new energy capacity in China compared to coal, oil, and gas. But it is similar to nuclear as of 2024. New coal production swamps everything else combined.

are we looking at the same graph? if you look at the past decade or so, the "solar" slice is clearly widening the fastest

In the graph I'm looking at, with no extrapolating, solar energy is a tiny sliver of coal. If I extrapolate, crossing of the lines looks like something in the far future.

So, if you ignore obvious trends, you can reach a conclusion you like.

Have you considered working for the IEA?

https://x.com/RARohde/status/1989447673108410835

They already have well over double the US solar output (US solar output is about 750 Twh according to this source, while China's is a bit over 2000 Twh) and their YoY solar increase is about 4x the US (600 Twh increase in China vs 150 Twh increase in the US)

They are also increasing coal usage, you are correct, however in the past 2 years, their solar output has increased significantly, to the point where it increased more than their coal output in 2024.

My point is that the comment you are quoting is actually technically correct, if you compare 2023 and 2024 in that graph for example, solar was the largest increase in output.

It may be huge someday, but now it is niche, and a tiny fraction of new capacity. Coal is king and not about to be dethroned.

In the last year of that graph 2023-2024, the increase in solar was greater than any other source, including coal, it's 15x greater than nuclear.

And unless people are shoveling coal directly into the data centres this electricity generating gas turbine is intended to be used for the electricity generation mix is more appropriate to conapre:

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/electricity-production-by...

why are you fixating on 1 single year? Look at the past 10 years or past 5 years and its the complete opposite.

Why are they looking at the most recent year when discussing the changing trend of exponential differential growth to point out it has now surpassed others, instead of the prior years where that differential was slower and the other was still growing faster?

I mean... Seems obvious, no?

No because they are highlighting a single year where solar was exceptionally high and when you look at a 5 year period it tells a completely different story. If you look at future investment there is still 60 trillion being spent on new coal and while thats smaller than the future investment in solar you need to account for the fact that there current power is already 60% coal.

Even if we give China the most charity and take their 2025 results at face vault(even though they NEED to be independently verified) China is at best average when it comes % of gridpower that is renewable. Off the top of my head I think they are like 27-30% renewable. But its actually worse because they are the biggest polluter by a mile. Bigger the next 6 biggest polluters combined.

It wasn't a "single year where solar was exceptionally high" because they generated more in 2025 by mid August than they did in the full year of 2024.

https://ember-energy.org/data/electricity-data-explorer/?ent...

The coal line was slightly under the previous year’s and is now overlapping i.e. no growth compared with last year (data up to October)

I dont think your link support the point you're trying to make. Unless you think a 200% increase in solar is better than a 50% increase in coal.

The link you've given shows more coal energy being added over the last 5 years than solar. Looking at end of 2020 to end of 2024.

So the solar deployment starts off unexceptional and gets more and more exceptional with every passing year?

At some point you have to accept this is not some anomaly and there is a pattern in the data that you are trying to to ignore.

The chain is about the statement "China is adding power capacity at a wartime pace—coal, gas, nuclear, everything" being disputed by the solar capacity being added. Whats being highlighted is that while solar is increasing its still a small % compared to the other types being added. If they add 800TWh of solar and 1000TWh of coal and 500TWh of other stuff they arent adding mostly solar like you keep claiming. We are not looking at % increases we are looking at actual increases relative to the total energy supply.

This is going in circles now.

The 3 electricity sources mentioned in that quote combined together added less new generation in China than solar alone last year. Wind beat them all individually too.

This year will be the same but even more so.

> 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.

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).

Capacity factors don’t matter, what matters are total system costs.

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