Aerial view of solar energy , Golmud in Qinghai Province , China
all accessible sites were used to produce it . For 2020 , the technical potential for solar in China is just under 100 petawatt-hours ( PWhr ), or about 13 times all of China ’ s electricity demand . Because of improvements in technology , that technical potential is projected to rise to nearly 150 PW-hr by 2060 , the year China plans on reaching netzero emissions .
Adding storage As noted above , however , the sites that are likely to be the most productive ( and therefore cheapest ) are in provinces that already have to curtail solar production . The widening gap between solar and coal , however , suggests that opportunities will come to add battery storage at a price that would still undercut coal . So , the researchers also did projections for the future price of batteries and used those to determine how much of the solar capacity could be matched with energy storage .
By 2030 , they project that solar-plus-storage could be generating 5.2 PW-hr at prices that undercut coal . That ’ s compared to a total consumption of about 7.5 PW-hr at present ( though consumption is expected to rise in the intervening years ). By 2060 , that will rise to 7.2 PW-hr , which will represent over 40 % of China ’ s expected electricity needs .
The researchers suggest that the batteries would mostly be used to meet the spikes in demand that occur as solar production tails off in the evening and the following morning , when demand picks up again before solar productivity takes off . This would mean fewer fossil fuel plants would need to be brought online , and the baseline power level could be set by the relatively low night time demand .
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