alt Hacker NewsPhotos capture the breathtaking scale of China's wind and solar buildout
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China has also just launched a megawatt scale wind generator a the helium-lifted balloon, the S2000 , they have active thorium rector the TMSR-LF1 and GW/h Vandium flow battery. The scale , speed and breadth of what they are doing is incredible and I think missed my people
Technological, manufacturing and energy advancements aside (congrats China on those), the pictures look beautiful. Amazing work from the photographer.
Meanwhile, in London, UK, local council doesn't allow you to put anything on your rooftop that doesn't gel with the Victorian look..
Also worth checking out some of the mega projects on Open Infrastructure Maps like this one in central China.
I would love to see photos like these from Australia too one day. We have so much inhospitable land that would be perfect for solar and wind farms. Suncable is trying to do this on a small(er than China) scale. We are just too politically confused and too deep in the belief that mining is the only thing we can do here.
That looks significantly more like a long-term energy strategy than grabbing oil from Venezuela and Greenland.
One of the solar farms is in a tidal flat. Are those solar panels meant to be waterproof? I’d imagine they may not last as long from sea salt exposure too.
Chinas policy around energy works and it has allowed them to become the world’s engine for renewable power. They get the benefit of energy efficiency and being a critical trade partner for every country in the world.
My experience is that the UK (for example) doesn’t really know why it is building offshore wind. Is it to reduce bills to consumers (OFGEMS remit), is it to create local jobs in manufacturing (Clean Industry Bonus Scheme), is it to stimulate national wealth by ownership of projects (British Energy). It’s a mess unclear picture for me.
It would be nice if politicians could spend some time trying to work together, cross parties a come up with some sensible resolutions and long term plans instead of trying to score points for soundbites and clips.
Power is quite literally power, in both the physical and political senses. The Chinese know this, and Europe is catching up fast. American private enterprise knows it too.
Battery storage isn't quite where it needs to be, yet, so there's still some need for fossil and nuclear power, but when it is, decommissioning the remaining fossil power system is a no-brainer, and those with the biggest existing solar and wind estates will benefit most, and fastest.
I love this. I recently found a few solar panels dumpster diving that put out a good load. Just basic scratches and that is all. I am building out my own system to power my house and in the next 2 years will be energy off grid in the city.
For a German none of those photos are particularly remarkable or impressive.
Especially wind mills - they are all over the place. Outside of cities and forests it would be difficult to not see at least one ... and they like to flock.
For example:
- https://www.google.com/maps/place/Energiepark+Witznitz+MOVE+...
- https://www.erneuerbareenergien.de/energieversorger/stadtwer...
- https://www.erneuerbareenergien.de/energieversorger/stadtwer...
One neat thing is that solar/wind farms can be multi-use. You can position panels to provide shade and wind-break to provide micro-climates for plants and animals.
The "100 panels per second" number sounded a little high so I did a bit more reading. Apparently this was the peak pace of installation around May 2025, when there was a change in pricing structures associated with solar power so developers were rushing to finish projects so they could get in on the old structure.
Average pace across 2024 was closer to 25-30 panels / second (which is still incredibly high!)
One can only admire China's progress in this area. These days, if I got to choose between American and Chinese product, I always choose the latter for ethical reasons. I don't want to support anything American as long as its regime remains a puppet to fossil fuel companies.
They've got some impressive power cables too https://www.bbc.co.uk/future/article/20241113-will-chinas-ul...
Meanwhile the US is using its remaining carbon budget to bomb and burn in one last effort to expand its dying empire. Eventually this system will fall, and the west will realize they wasted all their energy (literally) on non-civilian hardware that needs massive amounts of cheap oil.
This is more or less what we thought the 21st century infrastructure would look like in the 20th century. The only minor detail is it was supposed to happen in this country first.
When you're not trying to act like the "richest" country in the world, the sensibility of asource of energy is a complete no-brainer.
Even though associated costs exist, a free source is the lowest of its kind you can find.
On the one hand, the geometry is beautiful and almost serene; on the other, it's a reminder that decarbonization at this scale is still an industrial transformation of landscapes
Wow, pictures look great, well done Mr Weimin Chu
The photos demonstrating the scale of China's solar arrays are impressive. The wind farms are beautiful, but don't show a scale unfamiliar to me. Driving through the Columbia Gorge on the Oregon and Washington border, or through the Coachella Valley in Southern California, you will see wind farms of larger scale than depicted here.
All this praise around China's buildout is just encouraging others ignore a problem to sell the solution. When the major nations started coming together to reduce emissions it was agreed that they would all aim to reduce emissions. However China did the opposite and purposefully scaled coal at record rates for nearly a decade and implemented no environmental regulations so as to outcomplete the nations who were transitioning and to be the ones to sell the solution. So now that its 2025 and they are finally starting to deploy some solar and wind im just not impressed. Its a dirty move and going forward I doubt we will see global trust in tackling these kind of problems again.
And all the US can do under the current president is steal oil from other nations.
What sort of risk of environmental poisoning comes from having that many solar panels in an area? Is there any risk that it can contaminate the area or are the environmentally safe?
I speak this having lived south of Moffett airfield where the entire area was poisoned from the degreasers used on the military planes in Moffett Field. It's one of the largest Superfund sites in the US and there are thousands of families living there. It might seem innocuous but I'm wondering whether solar panels in the environment leak any chemicals.
China is far more incentivized to champion renewable considering that they do not have the same access as the US. US is also on a path to quite literally invading other countries to extract crude and other resources. I don’t think China is in a position to do this, yet. If China invades Brunei or arrests Bolkiah, they will face irreversible repercussions.
All that said, I don’t think wind and solar are the answers. Geothermal and fusion will need to be the solution.
I know nothing about the topic. Although it seems a better alternative than coal or petrol, is it free of side effects for the nature? I wonder if the heat that would be spread around the atmosphere and back to space can actually gradually serve as a trap for heat?
Does this question make any sense at all?
Americans keep drilling baby drilling for oil that is becoming less and less necessary
Re Wind and Solar Buildout.
The NEXT more challenging part is to build the necessary storage and "power network transmission lines" so that the supply can be made ( Large Scale ) reliable - 24/7 , independent of the weather.
Meanwhile POTUS has his head stuck in the sand [0]:
> “All you have to do is say to China, how many windmill areas do you have in China? So far, they are not able to find any. They use coal, and they use oil and gas and some nuclear, not much. But they don’t have windmills, they make them and sell them to suckers like Europe, and suckers like the United States before.”
One of the most factually BS statements ever.
[0] https://www.forbes.com/sites/mattrandolph/2026/01/12/china-d...
Damn, they've been playing the hell out of factorio,
How can we get HQ versions for a desktop background?
Incredible photos.
They are going for energy security. Not relying on middle eastern oil.
A lesson Europe could learn.
I like Musk's lens: the sun is 99.8% of the galaxy's total mass and over 99.99% of its energy production. Pretty straight-forward where you want to be getting your energy from.
Beautiful!
It is incredible to see just how many big-oil talking points there are in this thread. From renewable energies resource costs, to their land use impact. I didn't realise just how effective their propaganda was in the tech space till reading this thread. That is not to say that these projects should be free of criticism, but anyone who believes these negatives are remotely close to the damage that fossil fuels are doing needs to re-evaluate their world view.
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If the US ever blocks Chinese ports the lights will be kept on. Although I'm sure that situation will end with a mushroom cloud.
Looks quite ugly, actually.
However had, there is one thing working for China: decision-making steps.
I don't have any illusion about the sinomarxist party and I don't suggest that their model - which is a dictatorship, just like the USA has transitioned into now too under an orange-painted TechBro minion - replaces democractic processes. But you do have to ask yourself what the EU is doing here, other than failing in epic ways. You can not assume that current wealth will be retained in the future; and while "green energy" is great, what we in reality see right now is simply price increases. That ultimately means wealth is deducted from a majority, and only a very few profit from this. That is a design-by-failure process now.
All I see is missed opportunities to build a bunch less nuclear power plants and call it a day, without messing up with the landscape. Am I the only one? I believe if we Europeans and Americans start building nuclear power plants again we could finally compete. Renewable energy is not constant and has a storage problem
Where's the pictures of the coal plants that keep energy going when the wind/sun go down?
It genuinely makes me so sad to see the US not doing the same. Having grown up to the constant beat of “energy independence” as the core goal of a party it seemed obvious that the nearly limitless energy that rains down from the sky would be the answer. But instead we’ve kept choosing the option which requires devastating our, and other’s around the world, community. That’s not to exclude the harsh reality of mining for the minerals required to build these, nor the land use concerns. But it’s difficult to compare localized damage to war and globalized damage.