
India is now producing the world’s cheapest solar power - ljf
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/06/india-is-now-producing-the-world-s-cheapest-solar-power/
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piyushpr134
The current largest solar park in India and possibly the world, on google maps
here
[https://www.google.com/maps/place/Thirumani,+Karnataka+57213...](https://www.google.com/maps/place/Thirumani,+Karnataka+572136/@14.2417003,77.4657737,618m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m12!1m6!3m5!1s0x3bb1112c75a4dd9b:0x5f29eec6b8f7ec6c!2sPavagada+Solar+Park!8m2!3d14.2379672!4d77.4372877!3m4!1s0x3bb1114cbc9bc231:0x1657630d81a440b8!8m2!3d14.2376735!4d77.4529868)

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ehnto
Wow. I kept zooming out and there was more and more. That is incredible.

Do you know how much power it produces?

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hjnilsson
Just eyeballing it there seems to be 1 square kilometer of panels total. At
regular solar panel efficiency, output would be 1000-2000MW total. So the same
order of magnitude as one nuclear reactor.

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ben_w
I think you’re off by a factor of ten. Sunlight is about 1 kW/m^2, so 1 km^2
(=1e6 m^2) would only be 1000 MW at 100% efficiency, 100-200 MW at 10-20%.
That said, the plant looks bigger than 1 km^2 to me.

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celrod
The wikipedia link shared above by aunty_helen (
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pavagada_Solar_Park](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pavagada_Solar_Park)
), which matches the name in the google maps link, says 53 km^2.

It also says that it could produce 600MW by the end of January 2018, can
produce 1400MW now, with 650MW more under construction. It also says 2000MW
capacity being planned for by the end of 2019.

I'm not sure how much of the 53 km has active solar panels, but they'd only
need 3.8% efficiency to hit 2000MW with that much area.

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ben_w
Thanks, I didn’t see the link earlier. I’m glad to see it’s the array which is
bigger than estimated. :)

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zuron7
From the graph in the article it is pretty evident that the margins are very
low compared to other countries. This is a case of the government doing
something that makes sense for the growth of the country rather than letting
privately run companies make large profits.

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mmsimanga
We are also benefiting here in Africa. I have begun to see Indian solar panels
being sold here and they tend to be the cheapest at my preferred online
retailer.

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gingabriska
Which indian company is that?

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mmsimanga
The solar panels are called Renewsys[0].

[0][https://www.sustainable.co.za/solar-power/solar-
panels.html?...](https://www.sustainable.co.za/solar-power/solar-
panels.html?manufacturer=1858)

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lota-putty
Article says "low-priced panel imports from China". There is ~30% Govt.
subsidy in costs for residential installations. Also,
[https://solarrooftop.gov.in/rooftop_calculator](https://solarrooftop.gov.in/rooftop_calculator)

Does anybody here know the percentage of panels actually produced in India and
major solar cell(mono/poly) manufacturing(not assembly) plants in India?

Edit: (old data)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_photovoltaics_companie...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_photovoltaics_companies)

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Heliosmaster
What's more suprising is Italy 2nd place, which is a great thing. IMHO we need
to transition our energy generation even more into solar, but also changing
our habits to reflect that (do laundry during the day vs the night, cool down
things during the day, etc.)

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JeanMarcS
Why do you do laundry at night ?

Is it like in France where you can have different prices during day and during
night ? The night price being the lower ?

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addicted
Largely because people are at work during the day.

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jl6
> Renewable energy now generates a third of global power capacity.

I find this remarkable and uplifting, because if I ask myself whether I could
live using only 1/3 of my current electricity consumption, my answer is that I
would have to make sacrifices, but relatively painless ones.

And this is the baseline - renewable capacity is only going to grow.

~~~
pjc50
Really? You already know you're wasting two thirds of your electricity? If I
had to cut consumption by two thirds I'd be sitting in the dark a lot. Do you
have an example of what you'd cut?

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jl6
I would ditch the TVs, re-wear lightly soiled clothes instead of using the
washing machine / tumble dryer so often, more line drying in the summer, be
vigilant about switching off unused lights, unplug unused appliances
overnight, cook with the electric hob and microwave less, eat more fresh and
uncooked food, buy a more efficient fridge and freezer, use the computers
less, get rid of the electric shower, spend more time out with others rather
than indoors.

That’s just in the home.

All would involve sacrifices, but doable ones without having to live in Mad
Max.

~~~
mikekchar
Seriously, ditch the dryer. You'll be amazed at how much power you don't use.
You can even line dry inside although you have to be careful of the humidity
in your house. If you live in a cold climate and heat your house, then
probably you'll be doing yourself a favour by drying indoors. We have a
combination dryer washer (the dryer uses a heat pump), but use the dryer maybe
2-3 times a year (only during the rainy season when it rains for weeks on
end).

If you want to simply save energy, avoid the car. It's really apparent if you
have an electric car because you have units that you can compare with other
things, but for example, we burn probably 6 kWh per day in the car and this
absolutely dwarfs our daily consumption in our apartment. If it's close enough
to walk, then walk it.

Just dryer and car may get you close to your goal.

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chime
At $793/KW, a 10KW system means no electric bill after 3 years. If the
lifetime of the system is 20 years, that's at least 15 years of free
electricity.

~~~
reitzensteinm
Only when someone else is subsiding the grid, which under net metering acts as
a battery for free.

That's not sustainable, especially as the price of solar drops making it a no
brainier.

The true cost of solar includes enough batteries to cut the grid connection,
or buying and selling energy at market rates, which will involve generating
many more kWhs than you consume.

That said, we desperately need a carbon tax which would help swing the
pendulum back even without net metering.

~~~
ZeroGravitas
Most full accountings of solar's value to the grid show that homeowners with
solar are subsidizing the grid (not the other way round) and other customers
by providing power at peak usage times and being paid at rates that are
averages and therefore below peak, and not accounting for wider
costs/benefits:

[https://www.utilitydive.com/news/how-two-value-of-solar-
stud...](https://www.utilitydive.com/news/how-two-value-of-solar-studies-add-
up-to-no-clear-value-of-solar/522892/)

~~~
reitzensteinm
Yeah, I've read a handful of studies that claim to show something like that,
but every time you dig down in to the numbers there are glaring errors.

Given that the Maryland study accounts for the benefit to the local economy
(??), I'm not going to bother spending an hour on that. They've left their
thumb on the scale.

Typically solar does not provide much power at all during peak use, which is
why the duck curve was coined.

You can clearly see that homeowners with solar aren't subsidizing the grid,
because laws needed to be passed in order to force utilities to accept the
power. If someone hands you free money, you don't turn it down.

Net metering was a handy subsidy to get solar started, but it's an obscene
transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich in the long run.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duck_curve](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duck_curve)

~~~
ZeroGravitas
Many utilities are run on a cost plus basis which means they would be entirely
economically rational to literally turn down free money, because it would
reduce the amount of profit they could make.

Also, the duck curve doesn't show peak use. The duck curve shows the peaks
that are left after solar has been subtracted.

Go find a duck curve, note that it will almost certainly be in springtime when
overall demand is low. Then look up the yearly demand peak for that region. It
will almost certainly be in the afternoon in the summer and will dwarf the
duck curve peaks. So solar will be directly reducing the requirement to build
out capacity (and further reducing utility profit potential/ saving everyone
lots of money).

Worst case scenario for the duck is to throw away a bit of solar power
sometimes because other parts of the system need time to ramp. People clutch
their pearls at this, just like they do at negative prices, but it's just
nonsense with no logical basis.

It's like complaining that buying a dozen eggs is wasteful if you only need
11. Yeah, but it's cheaper than buying 11 individual eggs so maybe just think
of something to do with your "free" egg instead of complaining about a non-
issue.

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reitzensteinm
To the extent that solar is economically beneficial, net metering isn't
necessary. Just sell it at market rates, which are astronomical on peak days.
How's that for logical basis?

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ZeroGravitas
Yeah, sounds great to me. Add in a carbon tax, removal of fossil subsidies and
allowances (to capture externalities) and a whole bunch of nonsense gets
solved by the power of the market incentives.

I'm not in favour of net metering as an end in itself. As I said I think it
still cheats solar providers. But it's a neat hack that quickly and easily
moves us closer to the real solution than we were before, while using the
existing deployed hardware (the basic idea is the existing meter runs forward
and backward and you pay the net).

~~~
reitzensteinm
I'd love a carbon tax.

However, I still think you're mistaken that residential solar is in any way
subsidizing the grid.

Utility scale solar is under half the price, and the gap is only going to
widen as PV prices fall and the panels become a smaller part of total cost.
Why would you pay a homeowner $2.5/W to install panels on their roof instead
of paying $1/W to build a power plant that has the same profile?

The only benefit you get is the distribution of the power generation, but if
that's the goal and we're willing to pay a lot of money to subsidize it, BEVs
capable of demand dispatch powering a home or even battery to grid are a
significantly better target. The new Leaf can do this, but there's limited
enthusiasm as the economic benefit can't be easily captured.

We need to switch to BEVs anyway, and it's crazy not to take advantage of the
dual use potential. Solar might shave a bit off the peak days - whether
residential or utility by the way - but BEVs would go much further, and enable
much higher wind and solar mixes in the grid.

Solar is cheap enough already. Net metering did its bit as a kick starting
subsidy, but for new installations today it serves only as a wealth transfer
to the upper middle class, who get to break even on something uneconomic,
greenwash their lives, and displace spending on utility scale solar.

Let's solve the issues of tomorrow instead of doubling down on what worked
yesterday.

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simula67
This is great news! India is extremely energy deficient and imports a large
quantity of oil. Reducing petroleum dependency can help reduce poverty in
India as more production can be consumed domestically and not sent abroad.

~~~
vmurthy
That’s one way to look at it. Unfortunately, Indian banks have been granting
billions of dollars of loans to the coal sector[1] and if solar power cost
drops and we can’t export excess power, we’re in for trouble . Talk of second
order effects ..

[1] [https://mercomindia.com/public-sector-banks-loans-
coal/](https://mercomindia.com/public-sector-banks-loans-coal/)

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clmul
Looking at all the new coal power plants being built / planned in India is
really disheartening though:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra_Mega_Power_Projects](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra_Mega_Power_Projects)

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paulcarroty
Australia has also huge potential in solar power and big problems with
electricily, I wonder why they didn't invested serious money yet.

~~~
michelb
It's a growing industry though.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_in_Australia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_in_Australia)

As for increased investing, there's probably politics at play.

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redact207
Our coal industry in Australia has the government in their pocket. Despite
coal power globally in the decline, the government has agreed to open and
subsidise new coal plants.

It's all socializing the costs and privitizing the profits.

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paulcarroty
Ah yeah, coal lobby.. Thanks Heaven, they aren't too strong in USA/EU.

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gingabriska
I am East Asian in India, where are cheap solar panels being sold in India?

I tried looking for them and everyone told me you need to import Chinese
panels on which government has imposed massive duty.

So which company is offering cheap panels in India?

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PhantomBKB
I'm not 100% sure, but my Dad had brought a solar panel from some exhibition a
couple of years ago and I believe it was from BHEL.

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pkaye
I'm guessing due to lower labor costs and permitting costs.

