China cuts solar subsidies to reduce the cost of power

26 Responses to China cuts solar subsidies to reduce the cost of power

1. classical_hero

   #2730163, posted on June 6, 2018 at 11:37 pm

   Even they aren’t as stupid as we are.
2. RobK

   #2730166, posted on June 6, 2018 at 11:51 pm

   Eventually the penny will drop.
3. Nerblnob

   #2730223, posted on June 7, 2018 at 4:01 am

   Next, Australia’s Renewable spruikers will be crowing that “the price of solar is dropping rapidly” as China dumps its surplus equipment on gullible takers.

   Or perhaps I should say, dumps even more.
4. Billie

   #2730247, posted on June 7, 2018 at 4:42 am

   Rob K

   Nope
5. bemused

   #2730260, posted on June 7, 2018 at 6:00 am

   Even when a kid, it was always noted that Australia was 10+ years behind the rest of the world when it came to significant changes. So as the rest of the world wakes up to the climate change scam, Australia still bumbles along like it was 2008.
6. Up The Workers!

   #2730264, posted on June 7, 2018 at 6:29 am

   Even the Communist Chinese Leadership is less cretinously Leftard than the A.L.P.’s seat-warming Prime Quisling, Halal Mal the Head-Loppers’ Pal and his kennel full of Mincing Poodles.
7. Nerblnob

   #2730265, posted on June 7, 2018 at 6:34 am

   They are far more sceptical in the UK.

   Somebody drops a phrase like “carbon footprint” and it sinks without a trace , and conversation moves on to something else.

   The BBC “comedians” still won’t mock the Greens in the way they do anyone to the right of Jeremy Corbyn, but the general public has no such inhibitions.
8. Roger

   #2730345, posted on June 7, 2018 at 8:54 am

   Approved yesterday:

   150+ ha of prime agricultural land to be given over to solar panels on the southern Darling Downs.

   One of many such projects slated for QLD.

   Meanwhile, Premier Palaszczuk has just returned from Japan where she assured their government that QLD will continue to supply coal for their growing fleet of HELE coal fired power plants (45 new plants slated to be built).
9. RobK

   #2730361, posted on June 7, 2018 at 9:30 am

   As RE increases its percentage of its share of the grid the other hidden costs of using RE will become more problematic. Its not just so called “ancillory services” (a term that didnt exist before RE) of frequency and voltage control which are now being tackled by auctioning off these newly made up “services” in order to sure up the grid. (Obviously at a cost, including increased oversight and management which adds to complexity and decreases reliability, these things were intrinsic in the grid at low RE penetration.)
   Ugly design flaws that will crop up with further increased RE include “fault current discrimination” and issues with “ground currents”. Fault currents are important because they are used to determine how the grid protects itself from faults; how it shuts down and restarts after disruptions from accidents, overload or lightening etc.
   Ground currents are involved in all of these as “earth return” to the generator and requires meticulous attention if stray currents are to be kept in control. As RE tends to be “distributed supply”, monitoring and control of currents will become more complex (and by implication more expensive and less reliable as there are more opportunities for unforseen failures in design.)
   As an example of what i mean; domestic solar is a problem because the sun delivers energy that fluctuates wildly by the minute on partly cloudy days. To over come this expensive batteries are suggested. That helps to buffer supply but does nothing to address the impedence matching of the grid to the generators and consumers (power factor correction as supply routes vary). With many suppliers feeding the grid (and leaving it at will), energy is flowing in many varied routes and protecting the grid from failure becomes more complex especially as it is compounded by more ground current issues than ever before. More unforseen faults will arise and reliabilty will decrease. Fixes are technically possible but as layer on layer of expensive fixes accrue you end up with a basket case of junk.
   I think China and Germany are realizing this whilst we are caught up in some kind of euphoria as we turn our back on something that worked very well in comparison. Eventually the penny will drop; the sooner, the less money and heartache wasted.
10. OldOzzie

    #2730364, posted on June 7, 2018 at 9:38 am

    One part stands out from Jo Nova’s Post

    Look at a few home truths from a communist giant

    Using unheard of transparency in the world of renewables, a Chinese academic explains that the main reason to cut solar subsidies is to “make electricity cheaper“.

    Lin Boqiang, director of the China Center for Energy Economics Research at Xiamen University, said the policy will curb the fast growth of PV power bases, amid efforts by the central government to make electricity cheaper for consumers.

    “This year’s government work report clearly stipulated that 2018 electricity prices will be lowered by 10 percent. But the PV subsidy comes from continuous hiking of electricity prices in the past, which was paid for by ordinary consumers,” Lin told the Global Times on Sunday,

    He added that with the need to cut electricity prices, the PV subsidies must now be scaled back.

    The academic also admitted that the PV subsidy is paid for by “ordinary consumers”. If only Australia could aspire to have academics so honest, open and free to speak?
11. Snoopy

    #2730367, posted on June 7, 2018 at 9:41 am

    Not that they ever did, but now there’s absolutely no chance for any disinterested research or analysis on CAGW and renewable energy from the University of Queensland.

    Terrain Solar submitted the application to develop a 154-hectare site at Freestone Valley near Warwick, but the University of Queensland (UQ) will take ownership of the project when construction begins later this year.

    Southern Downs Council yesterday approved the development application, with Mayor Tracy Dobie casting the deciding vote 5-4 in favour of the $125 million project going ahead.

    I wonder if the UQ Senate received advice from one John Kwiggen?
12. egg_

    #2730369, posted on June 7, 2018 at 9:44 am

    Australia’s Renewable spruikers will be crowing that “the price of solar is dropping rapidly”

    The Energy racket itself is saying that the end user price will drop – after it goes up.
13. Roger

    #2730373, posted on June 7, 2018 at 9:55 am

    Not that they ever did, but now there’s absolutely no chance for any disinterested research or analysis on CAGW and renewable energy from the University of Queensland.

    Absolutely, positively no chance.
14. Louis Hissink

    #2730379, posted on June 7, 2018 at 10:06 am

    Perhaps we grow too many poppies but cull the wrong ones.
15. manalive

    #2730420, posted on June 7, 2018 at 11:19 am

    It can’t be repeated too often: solar PV, at least in middle and high latitudes, is not economically sustainable — at the bottom of the EROI scale (Weißbach et al 2013).
16. struth

    #2730425, posted on June 7, 2018 at 11:35 am

    The U.N.

    Um, I’ll say it again.
    The U.N.
17. Dr Fred Lenin

    #2730452, posted on June 7, 2018 at 12:04 pm

    They don’t like ecocarpetbaggers in communist countries,the party and politburo is full of carpetbaggers already. Our left wing carpetbagger governments welcome them with open arms ,they could be a nice little earner for the polliemuppets when they retire to spend more times with their families .
    Make Australia Great Again ! Get rid of career politics and political gangs .
18. Dr Faustus

    #2730481, posted on June 7, 2018 at 12:36 pm

    Eco-loons and professional wrongologists believe that China is wisely guiding the “away from fossil fuel-based power production to eco-friendly generation.”

    In fact, over the past 10 years China has been using a small amount of solar to manage supply gaps and voltage drop in its undeveloped power distribution system. Solar contributes less than 2% of China’s total electricity mix, mostly in utility scale distributed power applications in the Northwest and Central East provinces – where (as manalive points out) it operates at low efficiency.

    In 2017, China’s installed PV reached 130GW nameplate capacity. However, this investment delivered only 118TWh of sent out power – ie approximately 10% effective utilisation.

    In China, as elsewhere, by far the largest cost of sent out power is capital – in the order of 50% to 60% of total costs. The capital inefficiency of solar power was been propped up by the State – until the economic absurdity became too much even for central planners.
19. Entropy

    #2730567, posted on June 7, 2018 at 2:00 pm

    Southern Downs Council yesterday approved the development application, with Mayor Tracy Dobie casting the deciding vote 5-4 in favour of the $125 million project going ahead.

    Warwick is close enough to Brisbane to be overburdened with cut lunch commandos spending too much for weekenders and pricing real farmers out.
    It also means retirees voting for like minds and getting on Council, which means you end up with an ex DFAT person as Mayor, and retired bankers as councillors, who then promote this sort of thing to look hip and impressive when their city mates come up to visit for the weekend.
    Freestone is good country, with too many overpriced blocks to make a living from farming. These days it breeds rabbits, weeds, unremarkable bush jams and bad macrame.
20. Percy Popinjay

    #2730574, posted on June 7, 2018 at 2:03 pm

    the main reason to cut solar subsidies is to “make electricity cheaper“

    97% of our political and media class are too stupid to understand that statement.
21. Habib

    #2730604, posted on June 7, 2018 at 2:43 pm

    Australian idiots are the last to know, the rest of us are well aware. Unfortunately the idiots are in office, and everywhere else. It was never that flash, but I think the national IQ has shriveled in the last forty years, ever since a national brain fart saw the disastrous Whitlam government elected.
22. Dr Fred Lenin

    #2730618, posted on June 7, 2018 at 3:01 pm

    I agree with continuing to build the massive monuments to the greatest confidence trick in history , why should Europe and the USA be the only ones with the ruins of eye polluting wind farms ,and leaking roofs that can’t be fixed because of the solar panels that are so old and dirty they don’t work anymore . And dismiss the fortune to be spent fixing the grid after the removal of intermittent power supply from the scam to get it back to where it was before the scam was invented . Sorta feel sorry for the polliemuppets who created laws enabling the scam ,then retired to consulting well paid “jobs” with the carpetbaggers if they are not excecuted or jailed they will get to spend lots of time with their poverty stricken families in their rented caravans at the caravan parks for the poor.
23. BoyfromTottenham

    #2730627, posted on June 7, 2018 at 3:09 pm

    The (mainland) Chinese government can do this because they don’t have to worry about the threat of lawsuits by solar rent-seekers claiming damages for their lost subsidies. Or maybe they were smart enough to write contracts that didn’t guarantee these subsidies for 20 years. Either way I wish our government was as smart as the (mainland) Chinese.
    PS – I put (mainland) before the word Chinese in support of the sovereign rights of Taiwan, unlike Qantas.
24. Squirrel

    #2730748, posted on June 7, 2018 at 5:05 pm

    Clearly there is something wrong with the following quote from the following article – we are constantly being told that renewables are rapidly reducing power generation costs which is why all those older sources of generation are “stranded assets” –

    https://www.smh.com.au/national/act/act-households-face-extra-299-a-year-on-electricity-bills-from-july-20180607-p4zk2e.html

    “The ACT’s Independent Competition and Regulatory Commission has released its annual decision on regulated retail electricity prices for the 2018-19 year, outlining a 14.29 per cent increase for households, or about $5.73 a week. …………

    Of the 14.29 per cent increase, 7.80 percentage points were attributed to the rising wholesale price, while national green schemes run by the Clean Energy Regulator make up the remainder.”
25. Entropy

    #2730819, posted on June 7, 2018 at 6:21 pm

    Of the 14.29 per cent increase, 7.80 percentage points were attributed to the rising wholesale price, while national green schemes run by the Clean Energy Regulator make up the remainder.”

    So, all attributable to propping up renewables then.
26. Tel

    #2730829, posted on June 7, 2018 at 6:30 pm

    They don’t like ecocarpetbaggers in communist countries,the party and politburo is full of carpetbaggers already.

    I dunno, Maurice Strong managed to talk them into forced abortions and depopulating their own country, and they treated him like minor royalty.

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