China’s Electricity Problem

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Writing by Sam Denby and Tristan Purdy
Editing by Alexander Williard
Animation led by Josh Sherrington
Sound by Graham Haerther
Thumbnail by Simon Buckmaster

References

[nasonguy]

1.1MV DC transmission lines?!?! That deserves a 45 minute video all on it's own.

[anthonybeervor]

"China has a problem" -9000 social credit

[eragonawesome]

You should totally do a whole video on the economics and ethics of services like Hello Fresh and whether they really live up to the ad reads in terms of claimed benefits

[PLPCPLAPD]

I find it kind of funny because about 10 years ago (or even longer, can't remember), I found out that China was building a new coal plant every week or something such, and my intuitive response was "Oh, so they got infinite coal or what? Won't that be a tough and costly transition when they finally run out?" and I guess this answers that

[laurenconrad]

I spent a week in August in Florida where my grandmothers took me out to eat every night. You will not find a building without AC. In those months, you need to wear a t-shirt and carry a sweatshirt because you'll be inside your car with the AC blasting, then in 100 degree weather for 2 seconds before entering a restaurant where the AC makes it freezing. lol

[AN-xlej]

Here in India not turning the AC on during summers just isn't an option. Soon the temperatures of north Indian cities are going to literally be unlivable, and ironically ACs are a big part of that :(

[chaosXPRT]

It's crazy how people talk about temperature, but they don't talk about humidity. I wore a long-sleeve shirt and jeans in Nevada in 90°F (32°C) weather and I was fine. If I wore that in Florida or Georgia, in 60% humidity, I wouldn't be having a great time.

[dasottonator]

If you think China has electricity problems. You'd be shocked to see the electricity crisis South Africa is facing, going as far as declaring it a national state of disaster

[verchojanskij]

"China has a problem, it's getting hotter and it's getting wealthier"
I know what it feels like... don't worry China, you're not alone

[zhuowang]

6:26 It's inaccurate to say that Beijing doesn't regulate domestic coal prices. The National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) regularly summons leaders of coal mining companies and electricity corporations to "negotiate" a fair coal price. The price is not fixed but doesn't fluctuate as much as the international market.

[austinmitchell]

I thought I read somewhere that China had plans to drastically expand it's nuclear energy capabilities; I'm surprised there wasn't much discussion about that.

[twa]

“China, like the US, is hot”
Me in Beijing and freezing to death: Am I a joke to you?

[maxheadrom]

We're building a new house for our family - here in Brazil we use masonry. The walls that will receive direct sunlight will be made of solid ceramic bricks while the others will use the hollow ones. Thick walls make for more expensive foundations and costs more but in the long run makes for a more comfortable and more energy efficient house. That's way, btw, the Empire State Building is the more energy efficient building in NY - the walls are made of stone.

[therougechipmunk]

Perfect video to why being an HVAC tech is a great job, money only increases with skill plus job security.

[maxheadrom]

One of them - the first - is in Brazil and connects Itaipu to São Paulo state. The DC power lines are also useful to insulate the grid's parts so a disturbance on one part won't propagate to other parts. Brazil's DC line has other reasons: Itaipu was built on the border of Brazil and Paraguay and, at the time, there was a decision to set up half of the generators in 60Hz and half in 50Hz. Brazil buys the 50Hz produced for Paraguay - retifies it at Itaipu and alternates it near São Paulo city.

For those who don't know, Itaipu was, until the Three Gorge Hydro Power Plant was built, the largest in the world.

[bikingmoments]

In 2021, half of this video’s footages of China are filmed before 1991 lol.

[Directlite]

Why didn't you consider population of USA and China? China with 1.5B people is expected to have 5 times more electricity consumption when compared with usa with just 300M people.
As you said in the video, because majority power consumption is domestic, population measurement makes more sense than gdp one.

[Paul_Lucas]

I have never noticed that China is a (kinda) similar shape to the continental USA before!

[samreid]

Another downside to relying so heavily on coal is that it’s not very adaptable. The grid’s demand is constantly fluctuating and utilities have to match the demand rather accurately or they risk either brownout or surge. This means you have to have a segment of your generation capacity devoted to matching the ebbs and flows of the grid. This is pretty easy in the US as this job is assigned to natural gas turbines. Regulating the generation of a turbine is a simple matter of restricting how much gas flows into the turbine. If more generation is needed, a gas turbine can go from cold to spin up and synced with the grid in about a half an hour. For coal, it’s not so simple. For a coal plant to heat up takes hours and regulating using a coal plant is highly inefficient. It isn’t a matter of throwing more coal on the pile. Generally, if you want to close regulate with a coal plant you have to throttle the turbine, which is less adaptive and still uses the same amount of coal as going full blast. Utility providers are much like farmers, using an almanac of previous years to predict the power peaks based on time of year, temperature, weather, etc, but even with the best predictions, grid providers can still be surprised. The US is fundamentally better equipped to deal with these fluctuations because the grid is built around fluid adaptability

[divinexrogue]

Great video, you should look at the electricity problem in South Africa. Currently the power goes out for 4 hours a day which has happened consistently for over a decade now with almost no exceptions. The electricity market in South Africa is a complete monopoly with only one government owned business providing electricity to the entire country. The company is called eskom and has proved to be extremely useless. Due to this constant power outages in South Africa, it’s caused their economy to suffer drastically with one article I read even saying it causes South Africa to be 50% less attractive to foreign investors and companies due to the lack of electricity.