I'd like to use this nice news thread from @YanQinyq about China's new Renewable Energy FiTs as a foundation to talk about amazingly quickly Chinese solar and wind power production costs have come down in China.

Thread:
FiT means Feed-in-Tariff. It's the rate that the grid company pays the generating company for its power.

These are the Chinese utility-scale solar PV FiTs for the last decade. The regions are determined by abundance of solar irradiation (i.e. natural solar resources). Image
The important thing to note about FiTs is that they were MUCH higher than tariffs for coal generated power. This is because the cost of developing solar (or wind) used to be much higher.

For comparsion, coal power prices across the country these days are 0.24-0.45 RMB/kWh.
The high FiT levels worked to push more developers to build wind and solar plants, which spurred manufacturing R&D and encouraged economies of scale.

Solar and wind development costs dropped quickly, and the FiT level dropped over the years as well, to reflect these lower costs.
Now we see from Yan's thread, the offtake price in some provinces is already lower than coal!

So who exactly paid to subsidize wind and solar and pusth them into economic competitiveness in China? Who was putting up the money to give to RE developers, hoping costs would drop?
Well basically, big industrial and commercial power users in China did.

The Chinese gov't created a Renewable Energy Development Fund (REDF) and collected a surcharge from power end-users to be able to subsidize the higher cost of the wind and solar power.
Some people might know that the REDF is in deficit now. This is because the # of projects that were connected to the grid and demanded subsidies was way more than what the fund could collect from end users.

This is also one of the reasons the FiT level had to reduce. Image
Of course RE developers are not going to be happy with the new, lower FiT levels.

But will they be complaining because they aren't making as much money as they used to, or because they are now fundamentally unable to make money at all?

This is an important distinction
We'll see when the new capacity statistics for 2021 eventually emerge next year. If we see a huge drop in new capacity additions, we'll know the FiTs were probably too low and revisions are needed.

Personally I think we'll see a YoY drop in solar capacity additions. Why?
1. Because they were high last year, with companies scrambling to take advantage of the last year of subsidies and grid-parity policies.

2. Because many regions are now mandating RE + storage but don't have a mechanism to allow the developer to get a higher offtake price for it.
I'd be happy to be wrong on this one, but my gut feeling is that these FiTs are a bit too aggressively low for 2021 and RE developers, especially private sector, are going to turn up their noses. Or get VERY picky about their regions.

This is not investment advice 😉

End.
*Technically a FiT refers to a special rate that is fixed by policy or regulation and is usually (when promoting RE) HIGHER than the market rate, or in China's case, the coal benchmark rate.

Getting ahead of any pedantic peters out there 😉

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More from @pretentiouswhat

21 Jun
So an update thread on this...I bought a smart controller for my AC, per the suggestion from @Silmarillion88 .

It was pretty easy to install...just plug the device into the wall and plug the AC into the device. Then you download the manufacturer's app and pair with the device. Image
Now I can control my AC from my phone, which is sweet for reducing energy usage.

I like coming home to a nice cool apartment, but I don't want to leave the AC running all day while out.

Last night I turned it on while landing at SZ airport and watched my AC work from the taxi.
Here's the interface from my phone (took this picture right after I turned it on yesterday).

It even gives me two pieces of information I can't get from my AC remote: the current indoor temperature and the power draw in watts. Image
Read 7 tweets
20 Jun
Hi! I often tweet long threads about China's energy sector, mostly grid, renewables, and nuclear.

This is a master collection of my favorites, from oldest to newest.

I will add more as they are created and remove oudated ones.
1. The messy recent history of China's nuclear power industry:

2. A summary of China's regional power grids and dispatch model:

Read 17 tweets
16 Jun
Finally, a press release from China's NNSA out just a few minutes ago re: Taishan.

Link [Chinese]:

mee.gov.cn/ywdt/zbft/2021…

My (as usual) quick and dirty translation here:

pastebin.com/YVASuXQ6

Commentary on main points to follow.
Point 1:
There are 5 damaged fuel rods in the Taishan Unit 1 core, in accordance with EDF statement yesterday and general commentary/predictions from nuclear industry tweeps. Well below design basis for continued operations of the reactor, so no shutdown expected.
Point 2:
An increase in radioactivity in the primary loop is indeed very different from a release outside of the plant. As long as that is the case, this is an operations issue for plant personnel, not a public safety concern.
Read 10 tweets
14 Jun
A few thoughts:

1)
Taishan is a Chinese plant built with French technology with a large French equity stake and Framatome is a French MNC offering technical services everywhere around the world (including the USA).
2)
Taishan is owned by CGN, which is on the US Entity List. Thus it would normally be forbidden to transfer US-derived technical information or data to CGN. A waiver may be obtained, however, for reasons of "operational safety", which is what Framatome is applying for.
3)
They're likely applying because either A. the information they are preparing to transfer originated in the US, or B. they don't want to impact their business in the US by doing work with CGN without full transparency. Probably both actually.
Read 11 tweets
19 Apr
Fairly important morning news from the China RE sector. I'll discuss a few more interesting tidbits from the release, beyond the lede:

1
Firstly, this is still a public consultation draft, so the final details could change a bit, but and revisions would likely be only minor.
2

Beyond the (non-hydro) RE consumption goals for 2021 and 2025, the notice also mentions the objective of hitting 25% non-fossil (includes hydro) energy consumption in time for the carbon peak in 2030, with at least 1200 GWs of solar and wind.
3

The next item in the notice mentions the need for each provincial region to increase its 'weight of responsibility' 责任权重 for RE consumption.

This is a reference to the next round of renewable portolio standard (RPS) levels, i.e. the minimum RE consumption level.
Read 6 tweets
12 Apr
A short thread about why I am not concerned about Fukushima releasing waste water into the Pacific, nor should you.

Tritium is a very weak beta emitter and the water is highly diluted.

Eating a delicious and nutritious banana will give you similar risk:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana_eq…
The world is full of natural radiation, in the oceans, soil, and air. We live with radiation all the time.

An extreme example is this beach in Brazil, which will will give you a higher dose than working in a nuclear power plant for a year:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guarapari
A CT chest scan will give you a dose of 7-10 mSv, (millisieverts).

A 1,000 mSv dose will get you pretty sick.

A lethal dose is about 3,500 mSv.

(That's about 3.5 million bananas).

webmd.com/cancer/radiati…
Read 6 tweets

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