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China Power Technology

Chinese Air Pollution Dimmed Sunlight Enough To Impact Solar Panels (arstechnica.com) 122

Posted by BeauHD from the counterattacks-from-coal dept.
Using a record of solar radiation measurements around China going back to the late 1950s, researchers from ETH Zurich found that China's coal-driven air pollution is significantly reducing the output of solar panels by dimming the Sun. Ars Technica reports: The researchers found that, over the entire record between about 1960 and 2015, the average potential solar generation declined by about 13%. Expressed in terms of capacity factor -- the fraction of a solar panel's maximum output that is actually produced on average -- the drop from the start to the lowest point in 2008 was 0.162 to 0.142. The change wasn't the same everywhere, though, as air pollution and local conditions varied. The five worst provinces actually saw potential generation drops of fully 20-28%. These included industrial centers in the east but also some clearer high-elevation areas in the west where a small amount of air pollution can have a big impact.

If China could go back to its 1950s air quality, its existing solar installations in 2016 would have produced an additional 14 terawatt-hours of electricity for free. As more solar panels are built, that number would only grow. By 2030, cleaner air could net an additional 70 terawatt-hours of electricity each year -- about 1% of total projected electricity generation at that point. To put some dollar signs on these numbers, the researchers used the current feed-in tariff of $0.14 per kilowatt-hour and a projected drop to $0.09 per kilowatt-hour in 2030. In 2016, this would mean cleaner air would have brought $1.9 billion worth of electricity. In 2030, the extra 13% or so of solar potential could be worth over $6 billion per year. The study has been published in the journal Nature Energy.
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Chinese Air Pollution Dimmed Sunlight Enough To Impact Solar Panels More

Chinese Air Pollution Dimmed Sunlight Enough To Impact Solar Panels

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  • Dimming the sun? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Ol Olsoc ( 1175323 ) on Wednesday July 10, 2019 @09:17PM (#58905662)
    I've seen pictures of Modern Chinese cities, and it looks worse than the old pictures of Los Angeles Smog or Pittsburgh Iron industry pollution.

    This must be having a big impact on the good citizens of China's cities health and life expectancy.

    • live longer without the harmful chemicals in sunscreen I bet.

    • The health effects are far costlier than the electricity output from the solar panels. sure a billion dollars, but if you scale it to china it's not really all that much money.

    • Allow me to plug one of the best YouTube channels if you're interested in China, from a western perspective.

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]

      I'm in no way affiliated btw. Just a subscriber.

    • I've seen pictures of Modern Chinese cities

      Careful what you look for. Some of the worst pictures are of rare events. Chinese pollution is bad, but it's always worth actually going back to the hard data on air monitoring rather than just relying on seeing pictures.

      Yes data shows it is negatively impacting health and life expectancy.
      No Chinese cities don't generally look like old Los Angeles Smog. Chinese Cities on particularly smoggy days do, which is typically when they take pictures for news stories on air pollution.

      • I've seen pictures of Modern Chinese cities

        Careful what you look for. Some of the worst pictures are of rare events. Chinese pollution is bad, but it's always worth actually going back to the hard data on air monitoring rather than just relying on seeing pictures.

        Yes data shows it is negatively impacting health and life expectancy. No Chinese cities don't generally look like old Los Angeles Smog. Chinese Cities on particularly smoggy days do, which is typically when they take pictures for news stories on air pollution.

        You're right, although the bad pix of those American cities were of bad days as well.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

        And some places can temporarily be worse - especially during wildfire season.

        I remember when forecasted temperatures were to be around 90F (33C-ish). It only came out to around 83F (28C) or so because the wildfire smoke blocked enough sun that it didn't heat the ground up as much (and thus the air was much cooler).

        Small benefit in a heatwave.

    • Yes it's that bad. When I was ten my family drove to LA and the smog was terrible. My eyes burned, the sky was brown. I have seen the pictures of cities in China, nuclear power isn't safe, coal and oil are dirty. Solar power isn't free, poor people can't afford panels.
    • They are polluting, but part of the problem is dust storms coming from the Gobi desert. Even without any human activity at all, there are days when those areas have low visibility and atmosphere quality is low.

  • poor air quality is just an downside to makeing CCC
    And apple hardware.

  • AGW Clouds (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    I wonder how much additional cloud cover due to warmer temperatures increasing the rate of evaporation has/will affect capacity factors in China and elsewhere.

  • Solar panels need to be cleaned occassionally, too (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    With all the atmospheric gunk that gets deposited on them, even in non-China parts of the world, solar panels should be properly cleaned with detergent and rinsed each season to maintain decent power generation over their lifetime.

  • When your feed simultaneously contains multiple articles about mass die-off of insects and articles explaining that capitalists plan to make edible insects the foundation of the human diet in the future.

    — Decivilized (@decivilized) February 13, 2019 [twitter.com]

    "Annual agriculture is all about living through our concepts... our idea we've imposed on reality & when reality doesn't behave according to our idea, what do we do? We input... we can never input enough to make our false concept correct." http://bit. [bit.ly]

  • And if wishes were horses, beggars would ride.

    Yippee.

  • And how much more was made by just burning the coal?

    If you want to affect the bean counters, make them work outside...

  • If China could go back to its 1950s air quality, its existing solar installations in 2016 would have produced an additional 14 terawatt-hours of electricity for free.

    The summary is obviously not factoring in the cost to make China time travel back to the 1950's, which is certainly not free. Not to mention they'd have those millions of Chinese starving to death again in the 60's thanks to "agricultural reforms".

  • China needs nuclear power (Score:5, Insightful)

    by blindseer ( 891256 ) <blindseer@noSPAm.earthlink.net> on Thursday July 11, 2019 @12:05AM (#58906104)

    China is seeing their air pollution as a problem and are working to build a new fleet of nuclear reactors to improve their air quality.

    https://www.worldpoliticsrevie... [worldpoliticsreview.com]

    China currently has 45 reactors in operation, with another 15 under construction. By comparison, the United States currently operates an aging fleet of 98 reactors, while France operates 58 reactors, with the number of reactors operating in both countries expected to fall as current plants reach the end of their operating life.

    The air quality has improved in the USA, and CO2 emissions reduced, because of a switch from coal to natural gas for our electricity production. We'd do even better in the long run if this switch away from coal power included new nuclear reactors. China realized this. Even Japan has realized this.

    https://www.apnews.com/3d2a01a... [apnews.com]

    Japan wants renewable energyâ(TM)s share in 2030 to grow to 22-24% of the countryâ(TM)s power supply from 16%, while pushing nuclear energy to 20-22% from just 3% in 2017. The report said the cost of renewables also needs to be reduced.

    Japanese utilities rely more heavily on fossil fuel plants than those in the U.S. and Europe, the paper said. Coal and natural gas accounted for 74% of Japanâ(TM)s energy supply.

    The UK will have to come to realize that they cannot do without nuclear power soon or they will have to rely on more and more electricity produced across the channel.
    https://www.theguardian.com/en... [theguardian.com]

    Prof MacKay argued that solar, wind and biomass energy would require too much land, huge battery back-ups and cost too much to be a viable option for the UK.

    âoeThere is this appalling delusion that people have that we can take this thing that is currently producing 1% of our electricity and we can just scale it up and if there is a slight issue of it not adding up, then we can just do energy efficiency,â he said. âoeHumanity really does needs to pay attention to arithmetic and the laws of physics â" we need a plan that adds up.â

    Prof MacKay had previously avoided being drawn into the political debate about energy, but told Lynas: âoeI have always tried to avoid advocating particular solutions but maybe because time is getting thinner I should call a spade a spade.â

    The key for the UK, he said, was a zero-carbon solution that works in the winter, when energy demand is highest but sunshine is lowest and winds can drop for days at a time. âoeThe sensible thing to do for a country like the UK, I think, is to focus on CCS, which the world needs anyway, and nuclear,â said Prof MacKay.

    Perhaps large nations with ample hydroelectric resources can rely on wind, water, and sun for its energy needs but small island nations, separated by geography and/or politics from its neighbors, will need to rely on nuclear power for a large percentage of its energy. Maybe large nations that span multiple time zones, such as USA, Canada, Russia, or China, can spread out enough solar panels, windmills, and use hydroelectric dams for storage and backup, to do without nuclear power. Maybe. This reliance on solar and wind will require massive amounts of raw materials and labor that nuclear power would not. China has the labor and natural resources to be successful in doing without nuclear power and yet they chose it. Why? Maybe because they realized that this labor and material could be put to better use in efforts besides windmills and solar collectors.

    • Your Japan numbers are basically a lie and you know it.

      Traditional nukes are not the right thing for small islands. Why did you think such nonsense? They are to expensive and the clients are to few and in case of an accident you can not even evacuate.

      • Your Japan numbers are basically a lie and you know it.

        They are not my numbers. I got them from AP News and they got them from the Cabinet of Japan.

        Traditional nukes are not the right thing for small islands. Why did you think such nonsense?

        I'm not thinking this, that is the official policy of the Japanese government.

        They are to expensive and the clients are to few and in case of an accident you can not even evacuate.

        As the government of Japan found out any orders to evacuate need to be taken with care, more people died in the evacuation than from the nuclear reactor meltdown.

        Lets talk about the costs. The tsunami caused nearly 20,000 to be killed or missing and presumed dead. Damage from the tsunami is estimated to be in the range of half a trillio

        • What we learned in the Japanese nuclear tsunami catastrophe is that corporations will cut corners if a government is not strong enough to regulate them. And that's what happened. So whatever "theoretical" safety yadda yadda someone might try and use to console everyone about how safe nuclear is -- some fat bastard is going to want more steak and yachts an is going to cut those corners, and then some brave working class hero is going to jump into a reactor and sacrifice their life to deadly gamma radiation i

        • Then why do you cite stuff you know is wrong?

          Japan had about 20% contribution by nukes already. However after Fukushima mostly all were shut down. Now they come online slowly again ... perhaps they build a new one somewhere ... and that's it.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by geekoid ( 135745 )

          "Nobody saw this coming."

          except for all the people that did. IT wasn't down due to money. IN another plant it was done, but because ONE person stood against his on culture to see it got down.

          Also, still leaking.

          It was so bad because the execs. at TEPCO chose to ignore regulations and not move the material out of the pool when they were suppose to.

          All of which takes us to the crux of the problem: People.

          Nuclear relies on every person to always act in good faith, regardless of money gain or loss, for 50 years

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      A bit slow today blindseer, missed first post again. Clearly not being paid enough to hit that F5 key more often.

      China was planning a massive fleet of around 100 nuclear reactors. After Fukushima they changed their minds and cancelled all the ones that had not already started construction.

      Your point about Japan increasing from 3% nuclear to 20% is hilarious. Do you think people have forgotten that Japan went to 0% nuclear in 2011 due to Fukushima? They are actually talking about getting back to where they w

    • I am not so sure about nuclear. In today's political climate, a contractor could make a reactor head from pot metal, turn something into a multi-billion dollar cost overrun, and the top brass of the contracting company would laugh their way to the bank, because even if they were fined to bankruptcy, the people owning it would get their golden parachutes and move on. Even if criminal malfeasance was found (as in a smoking gun like a videotape from the C-levels telling the engineers to use tinfoil), there w

      • It won't be an environmental disaster, or a "gift that keeps on giving" like the Elephant's Foot.

        Positive void coefficient.

        Whenever you think of Chernobyl and the reactor that blew up there remember these three words, positive void coefficient. I say this because that is a very important aspect of the RBMK reactor that lead to it's destruction and the spread of radioactive material from it.

        A positive void coefficient is a kind of positive feedback loop. If a void develops in the coolant water the reactivity increases. If the reactivity increases so does the heat. With the increased heat and neutron

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by geekoid ( 135745 )

          " positive void coefficient"

            It's positive "void coefficient of reactivity".

          and it is not the real problem, people were.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by geekoid ( 135745 )

        "30 years ago, where we had stakeholders, not shareholders... different story. We could trust a company to do the job right."

        Read the after report from TMI. Same thing. Corners cut, people drunk on the job, on and on.

        Technology changes, people don't.

    • No need to go nuclear. Just grid together geothermal and solar.

    • I was hoping someone with the right data would come along and destroy this nonsense. I'm going to make a feeble attempt inspired by greater minds. The simple truth that stares us in the face is that if Nuclear were the way to go, then some corporations would be investing in it -- they aren't. They can't even self insure these damn things. And good luck getting a corporation to spend money guarding a spent reactor for 500+ years after they are done with it. I'm sure France will have buyers remorse after thei

      • Well, someone do the math, but it seems like if I had a parking lot 10X the size of the area taken up by a nuclear power plant and used the MIT solar cells, I could produce as much energy and not have to use copious amounts of fresh water to cool it.

        Lot's of people did the math and it's not 10x the area needed for solar compared to nuclear, it's more like 100x.
        https://www.withouthotair.com/ [withouthotair.com]
        http://www.roadmaptonowhere.co... [roadmaptonowhere.com]
        https://www.theguardian.com/en... [theguardian.com]
        http://cmo-ripu.blogspot.com/2... [blogspot.com]

        The argument about all the labor -- um, I'm part of that labor force. You mean distributing the cost of building energy infrastructure to millions of Americans is a downside rather than to one dude with 10 yachts? No wonder the upper class is worried about solar.

        Those in the upper classes aren't "worried" about solar until the government subsidies run out. These subsidies aren't going to the middle class worker, and certainly not those in or near poverty. I see plenty of solar panels on rooftops around here and they are on h

  • So just by shutting down coal plants, you can boost solar power for free.

  • Dim Sun (Score:3)

    by Opyros ( 1153335 ) on Thursday July 11, 2019 @09:19AM (#58907470) Journal
    At last, I know why "Dim Sun" is on the menu at Chinese restaurants!

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