It’s a good thing we are pretty good at performing all kinds of not simple tasks and have been for a very long time.
Aren’t we good at this especially since fossils fuels ?
Unless the government in its infinite wisdom decides to exterminate all sparrows or so and causes a countrywide famine, I guess...
Some of the limitations are pretend, but some are very real. European countries in general want their grid to be stable and reliable, and the surges and dips of power that come from "too much sun" or "too much wind", or lack of either, are going against it.
On the other hand, India, mentioned in the article, has so many blackouts already that it can cope with some extra instability. Of course, the unreliability of the grid contributes to the reluctance of foreign investors to build industrial plants in India, which is a major downside, but hey, they can alter their grid faster.
"Too much" solar and wind are not, and have never been, a problem for a grid.
Large thermal plants provide inertia that renewables simply can't provide. A lot of the work around incorporating renewables into grids is around the provision of synthetic inertia and how to manage sudden drops in supply.
Battery storage is one solution. Better demand response solutions backed by energy markets that incentivise the participation of large numbers of energy users is another.
Grids that have a high level of interconnection with other grids also reduces the impact of inconsistent supply, but not every grid has enough inter-connections for that to be a viable full solution. (See ERCOT in Texas, AEMO in Australia, Eirgrid in Ireland for examples)
Here in Ireland, we frequently run the grid up to 80% renewables, but the grid operator only does that because they have the mechanisms in places to handle sudden drops in supply.
https://www.google.com/search?q=germany+czech+grid+windfarm+...
Most of this has been dealt with in the meantime, but such problems really do occur, but they're utterly blown out of proportion by the anti-renewables lobby.
This is not a technical problem, but a legal one. And even the legal issue has at least 3 technical solutions, they're just negotiating over who should bear the cost of working around the legal situation.
and that's also one of the reasons they still have so many coal fired plants close to population centers.
and we'll see how long Xi's luck lasts (which in practice means how long the benefits of the reforms will last, before the inevitable corruption of dictatorships eats it up)
also, tiny nitpicking, so far it seems China is just very authoritarian, but not totalitarian like North Korea.
https://www.power-technology.com/features/chinas-mega-transm...
> The Changji-Guquan +/-1,100kV project is a major technical step-up, making it the world’s highest DC voltage,” said Liu ZeHong, executive vice president of SGCC. The project is the first of its kind, but could be followed by many more crisscrossing Asia and the world. Already SGCC has plans for the construction of more ultra-high-voltage DC (UHVDC) lines both domestically and as part of its Belt and Road Initiative, a project that is aiming to increase Chinese-led infrastructure investment in more than 80 countries.
> SGCC president Liu Zhenya has dubbed UHVDC an “intercontinental ballistic missile”. It is a key part of his Global Energy Interconnection initiative,
Its amazing what you can achieve when the main conversation isn't "are all the scientists hoaxing us because they irrationally hate our precious fossil fuels?".
China isn't playing by the pretend limitations you put on yourself and it looks like you've already admitted they deserve to be the new hegemon. Yay for totalitarian communism I guess.