0sprinkl t1_itkipn7 wrote on October 24, 2022 at 9:39 AM

Reply to comment by mithie007 in A city in China is planning an offshore wind farm so big that it could power all of Norway by quellerand

"With local-government favoritism toward coal and inadequate long-distance transmission capacity, Gansu "now has some of the highest rates of underutilization in the wind sector in China". National Energy Administration statistics showed 39 percent of wind capacity in 2015 in Jiuquan was wasted.[2]"

Great effort but it's still China.

mithie007 t1_itkj3ct wrote on October 24, 2022 at 9:44 AM

Just... scroll down. Literally the next line.

"In 2017 the 2,383 km long Jiuquan - Hunan HVDC transmission line entered service connecting the remote complex to the Hunan regional grid allowing full utilization of its generation capacity.[4]"

BTW long distance transmission of wind farms has always been a problem in the industry - since most places with high wind output are typically nowhere near civilization.

Normal grid connectivity is sufficient for sub gigawatt output but when your numbers get up there, dedicated HDVC transmission is absolutely a must. This is something people have learned the hard way, and it is THE number one bottleneck when it comes to upscaling wind farms - not turbine availability - not area limitation.

Most wind farms outside of China are clustered around sub gigawatts precisely because the amount of money and funds required to put in a proper HDVC transmission system can rack up a bill as large as the turbine installation themselves.

Unlike turbine construction and deployment, transmission lines are typically NOT subsidized, and rather rolled into existing infra expansion costs.

Asking an energy company to eat the cost of a substantial megaproject in and of itself with no subsidy and no clear profit projections in the name of renewables is... actually a very Chinese thing.