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David Fishman Profile picture
@pretentiouswhat
Jun 20, 2021 • 18 tweets • 5 min read • Read on X
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:

3. A discussion of China's renewable power subsidies and tariff structure:

4. A pretty nerdy and niche summary of how engineers design nuclear power plants to be safe from airplane strikes.

5. An introduction to China's UHV transmission network:

6. China's power shortages in December 2020: Translation of Caixin article + commentary.

7. A short thread about barriers to increased Chinese RE investment in BRI:

(was hoping to expand on this, but my project's funding was yanked and I started doing other things).

8. Everything you wanted to know about nuclear waste:

9. A short thread about the competitiveness of Chinese nuclear exports:

10. Helping out a confused man who didn't know much about nuclear power or China:

(got myself blocked for my efforts)
11. A thead about pumped hydropower storage in China:

12. A history of renewable energy Feed-in-Tariffs in China.

13. Why the Fukushima wastewater release really isn't that big of a deal:

14. Commentary on new RE consumption quotas for Chinese provinces in 2021:

15. A commentary on the Taishan radioactivity release alarmism:

16. Translation/commentary of the subsequent NNSA press release re: Taishan

17. A commentary on Guangdong's new direct power purchase rules for Renewable Energy - important for corporates.

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More from @pretentiouswhat

David Fishman Profile picture
Jan 12
Green hydrogen is China's next overnight game-changer greentech segment.

I slept on it for a long time, because the applications for hydrogen-to-power are very underwhelming, but turns out the real big deal is things like green methanol and ammonia. 🧵
maersk.com/news/articles/…
We don't have to speculate too hard about how much economic sense these technologies make, if major multinationals are already making such huge bets.

A fleet of methanol-burning vessels means long-term, stable demand for the output of these projects.

fuelcellsworks.com/2024/11/11/gre…
I spend most of my time deep in the weeds on individual solar projects, or on the pennies of difference between power tariffs in different provinces. So I don't begrudge articles like this SCMP one, for taking a narrow view on Chinese overcapacity.

scmp.com/business/china…
Read 16 tweets
David Fishman Profile picture
Dec 26, 2024
USA Taxicab Chronicles 1:

It’s 6am and I’m in a Lyft en route to Dulles airport in Washington DC. I’m bleary-eyed and drowsy, but my driver seems chipper. He hops out of the vehicle to help me load luggage, a spring in his step.

Clearly a morning person. That makes one of us.🧵
My driver is about my age. He looks Chinese, and the app says his name is Tong, but he doesn’t sound Chinese. He speaks with the soft tones and elongated vowels of someone from SEA…perhaps Thailand.

“Hello sir, good morning, sir. Dulles Airport…which terminal please?”
“Uhm…not sure. United Airlines”
“Okay, I know it sir”

“Okay great. You have a lot of energy this morning…I guess you just started your shift?”
“Yes…just started this morning.”

“Do you drive full time?”
Read 22 tweets
David Fishman Profile picture
Dec 3, 2024
On the morning of November 28, China's newest nuclear power plant, a Hualong One reactor at Zhangzhou in Fujian, connected to the grid just just 61 months after construction.

How does China build these so fast? Let's review the timeline. 🧵 Image
The first thing to know about Zhangzhou NPP is it's NOT a new reactor. Actually this thing has been planned for AGES.

The first mention I can find of it goes back to 2007, when Guodian (one of the plant owners) set up a Project Office in Zhangzhou.

We learn from this very early notice that the site plans to use AP1000 reactors imported from Westinghouse. Keep in mind, the Westinghouse AP1000 export deal had basically JUST been signed at this point. The first unit at Sanmen wasn't even under construction yet. This was a wild time...there were dozens of AP1000s sites all across China being planned all at once.

sxb.nea.gov.cn/dtyw/hyxx/2023…Image
In March 2009, the Guodian Zhangzhou Project Office publishes its first public consultation notice. It has contracted the Shanghai Nuclear Engineering Research and Design Institute (SNERDI) to do an environmental impact assessment report for the site selection phase.

We learn that they plan to pour concrete in August 2011 on the first of six reactors, across two phases, with grid connection targeted for August 2016.
hbj.zhangzhou.gov.cn/cms/siteresour…Image
Image
Image
Read 31 tweets
David Fishman Profile picture
Dec 1, 2024
Hugely important development here. China's Southern Grid region (Guangdong, Guangxi, Guizhou, Yunnan, Hainan) is the pilot region for China's unified cross-provincial grid reform.

The deadline to get this cross-provincial spot market to full commercial operations is 2025.
When the Southern Grid is unified, all of those five provinces will in be the same system, with pricing reflecting real-time supply and demand conditions system-wide.

In theory, an abundance of power in one province could be immediately reflected in lower pices in another.
...of course, that assumes available transmission capacity between the node where the power is generated and the node where the power is consumed. Figuring out transmission is one of the great dilemmas of this whole process.

I've spoken to researchers working for Southern Grid on the regional unification project who told me one of the big barriers was figuring out how to incorporate certain transmission assets that were financed and constructed in the past under the assumption that they would be operated all the time. But now, allowing them to run all the time is a non-market action that can cause the market to "break" by making transmission unavailable when it's supposed to be, and also making power prices in exporting regions HIGHER than in importing regions.

Balancing what is good for the grid and the needs of power customers vs. what is good for the grid company itself is a fundamental and neverending effort.
Read 5 tweets
David Fishman Profile picture
Nov 22, 2024
"No one mentions this" because it's not relevant. Chinese landholders hold a good deal of power to hold up infrastucture projects and have, MANY times before.

Indeed, national SOEs like China Railway are perhaps the MOST vulnerable to having their plans "derailed" this way.
This is because national SOEs building e.g., highways or railways are the most obligated to do things by the book. The "book" here means the seminal 2007 Property Law, which specified and codified individual property rights in one place for the first time.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Property_…
That means citizens must be offered compensation and must agree to the terms offered (i.e. have the right to refuse).

In later years, more tweaks have been made to land rights laws. In 2011, the requirement for "compensation" was changed to "just compensation", and in 2019, the Amendment to the Land Administration Law in 2019 further specified that compensation must be "just and reasonable".

These definitional changes have opened up a great deal of room for legal interpretation for what is "just" and/or "reasonable. When negotiations fail, we get those famous cases of so-called "nail houses". My sense is these enhanced legal protections have contributed to nail houses becoming MORE common in recent years.
Read 21 tweets
David Fishman Profile picture
Nov 21, 2024
⚡️October 2024 China Power Consumption Update

Chinese power consumption for October 2024 hit 774 TWh, up 4.3% against a high base from October 2023.

Healthy consumption growth in services and residential was balanced out by anemic growth in the industrial sector. 🧵 Image
Secondary industry was up an underwhelming 2.7% YoY. This is the lowest YoY growth I've seen since I started tracking this dataset last year.

This is now the fifth month in a row where industrial power demand growth has been been bad, and also the weakest so far. Image
It's not immediately apparent what's driving weak industrial power demand, since October saw broad improvement on macroeconomic indicators like PMI, retail sales, and consumer sentiment.

Oct 2023 was indeed a high base, but not so high as to explain just 2.7% growth this year.
Read 11 tweets

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