China Will Have 1 Trillion Watts of Solar by the end of 2025

The China Renewable Energy Engineering Institute (CREEI) reports that by the end of 2024, China is set to add 190GW of solar capacity and 70GW of wind. The NEA reports China added 217GW of solar power and 76GW of wind power in 2023 – to reach a total capacity of 1,050GW.

China needs 15 Tesla Megapack factories (150,000 per year) worth of fixed storage every year for the new wind and solar energy. This will increase as China accelerates solar and wind installation to meet AI data center demand.

By the end of 2024, China’s installed solar and wind capacity will be 1,310GW.

In 2023, China’s solar power generation reached 584 terawatt hours (TWh). China had 392 GW of installed solar at the end of 2022. In 2022, the US had 110 Gigawatts of installed solar and it generated 204 TWh. In 2023, China contributed almost 60% of additional global energy capacity (an added 301GW), making it both the largest greenhouse gas emitter and green energy producer.

By May 2024, China had installed 690GW of solar capacity and 460GW of wind, which made up 38% of its power generation capacity.

China is averaging about 1 MWh/year (2.8kWh/day) per kilowatt of installed solar. The US is getting 1.85 MWh/year (4.8 kWh/day) per kilowatt of installed solar.

It is a common mistake for people to assume that the kilowatts of installed energy are all equal. US nuclear power can get 8 MWh/year (22 kWh/day) per installed kilowatt. Other countries get 6-7 MWh/year per installed kilowatt of nuclear. Coal power can get about 4 MWh/year per kilowatt of installed power. Hydro can get about 3 MWh/year per kilowatt of installed power. There is also a lot of variability by country, locations and projects even for the same energy type. At the end of 2023, China had 53 Gigawatts of nuclear power installed and this generated 440 TWh. 600 GW of solar generated 584 TWH of power which was 33% more than 53 gigawatts of nuclear making 440 TWh.

The fast build out of solar power in China could take time to fully connect to the grid. China had much more installed solar power in 2017 at 130 GW than the US in 2022 but it took until 2019 for China to generate more electricity than the US using 110 GW.

Mongolia is a good location for solar power generation, with 270–300 sunny days per year. This is equivalent to 2,250–3,300 hours of sunshine. Mongolia has cold winters with snow and ice. The number of sunny days should not be the problem. Too much heat can also be bad for solar panels, reducing their efficiency by 10%-25%. China’s solar power only generates about 55-65% of the electricity for the same installed capacity as the USA. The fast buildout could have a lag factor before everything is connected. The China solar locations are probably 20-40% worse than the best places in the USA. China has dust and air pollution that is reducing the effectiveness of the solar power. China is choosing to mass install in north and northwest where the Gobi desert is located. China is also building solar in many other locations by the super-scale projects are in the Gobi desert.

China had 3.56x as much installed solar capacity but just over 2X in electrical generation.

The Kubuqi Base Project is a 16-gigawat (GW) solar, wind, and coal project in China’s Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region. It’s the world’s largest wind and photovoltaic power project developed and built in a desert. The Kubuqi base project is roughly the size of 20 Central Parks. China will build 450 Gigawatts of solar and wind power in the desert.

China’s solar power reached 610 GW at the end of 2023. 74 GW was activated in November and December. China’s company and government have put $130 billion into solar cell and energy production. This will capture about 80% of the global market. China will have losses and low margins while they generate a solar power glut while capturing market share. Solar module prices dropped 42% in the last year. They are now at $0.15 per watt. This is down to $150 per kilowatt. The US has prices for home installation of $3 per watt which is $3000 per kilowatt. The $0.15 per watt is 60% below the $0.40 per watt for wholesale utility scale US prices.

China will reach over 1 terawatt of solar installed capacity by the end of 2025. This will generate about 1100 TWh/year. China’s total power generation volume was about 9,360 TWh in 2023. China’s electrical power generation and demand will be about 9600-9700 TWh in 2024 and about 10000 TWh in 2025.

An Australian energy project, Uaroo, combined a 3.33GW solar park with a 2.04GW wind farm and a battery with a storage capacity of 9.1GWh. Swedish state-owned utility Vattenfall also aims to address the grid congestion in the Netherlands with its integrated wind, solar, and BESS project. Its €61 million Energypark Haringvliet, which opened in March, has 38MW of solar capacity, 22MW of wind and a 12MWh BESS.

The BESS (Battery electric storage system) sizing for these renewable projects is roughly 2 hours of storage for each megawatt of solar or wind generation.

The Tesla Megapack provides about 3.9 MWh of storage which would match up with 2 MW of solar or wind generation. 1 Terawatt of solar in China would match up to 2 TWh of battery storage for a fully stored energy solution. This would move the generation from say 9AM-11AM to 6pm -8pm. 2 TWH would be 500,000 Tesla Megapacks. It would take 10 Tesla factories at full 40 GWh per production to build this number of megapacks in 5 years. Global Solar would need to continue scaling for 20 years to meet current world electricity demand. World electricity demand would increase 30% by electrifying all cars and trucks. World electricity demand could start doubling every 5-10 years with growing energy demand from AI data centers. The existing solar and wind energy (2TWh) already need about 1,000,000 megapacks of storage. There is some pumped hydro and other storage but almost all of the solar and wind energy has no battery storage to make the energy created more efficient, productive and valuable.

China’s Energy Storage increased from 8.7 GW at the end of 2022 to 31.4 GW at the end of 2023. China has invested $14 billion into mainly lithium ion battery energy storage in 2022 and 2023.