
India has launched a 648MW solar power plant - Osiris30
http://venturesafrica.com/india-launches-largest-solar-plant-world/
======
mirekrusin
Topaz, California - 580 MW - cost $2.5 billion - built in 2 years

Tamil Nadu, India - 648 MW - cost $677 mln - built in 8 months

...wait, what?

~~~
Roritharr
I'd guess much of it is labour and land cost.

~~~
legulere
Also falling prices for photovoltaics probably, the topaz farm was completed
two years ago.

~~~
yummyfajitas
Extrapolating a few graphs I found via a quick google search, you don't get a
5x drop in costs due to cheaper solar panels.

[http://solarcellcentral.com/images/module_prices.jpg](http://solarcellcentral.com/images/module_prices.jpg)
[http://www.data360.org/temp/dsg605_500_350.jpg](http://www.data360.org/temp/dsg605_500_350.jpg)
[http://costofsolar.com/management/uploads/2013/12/solar-
pv-c...](http://costofsolar.com/management/uploads/2013/12/solar-pv-cost-
trend.png)

------
_FKS_
While by no means I mean to minimize this announcement, if the press was
publishing an article every time a Coal plant opens in India, we would have an
article every few days or so on HN.

Just to put things into perspective:

\- A plant like Topaz, California generates ~1100 GWh/year. [3]

\- "India was the third top electricity producer in the world 1272 TWh in FY
20014-15" [1]

\- "India was the third top coal producer in 2015 with 283.9 Mtoe (7.4% global
share)." [1]

\- "Nearly 80% of total electricity generated (utility and captive) in India
is from coal." [1]

So we're about at 3 orders or magnitude, in terms of generated electricity,
between what you currently get from coal plants and this new Tamil Nadu plant.
While the penetration rate of renewables is faster than coal [2], the same
thing cannot be said of generated capacity. Globally an unit of power from
renewables has a far lower EROI compared to Coal [4].

So I support what kumarski said below, this is much of a hype. If India wants
to be serious about climate change, they should at least stop building Coal
plants.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_India](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_India)

[2]
[https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/Renewables-](https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/Renewables-)
Are-Outpacing-Coal-in-India

[3]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topaz_Solar_Farm](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topaz_Solar_Farm)

[4] [http://festkoerper-
kernphysik.de/Weissbach_EROI_preprint.pdf](http://festkoerper-
kernphysik.de/Weissbach_EROI_preprint.pdf)

~~~
sremani
The electricity penetration and per-capita usage in India is abysmal. If
Quality of Life for Indians is a concern (which it rightfully should be),
India should open more coal plants.

US and Europe's path to prosperity went through Coal and to demand Indians and
Chinese sacrifice while not making any thing substantial themselves (i.e. in
US and Europe) is hypocrisy.

Indian population : 16% of world pop US population : 5% of world pop

Just one more stat for perspective.

~~~
amluto
> US and Europe's path to prosperity went through Coal and to demand Indians
> and Chinese sacrifice while not making any thing substantial themselves
> (i.e. in US and Europe) is hypocrisy.

Regardless of whether hypocracy is involved, wanting India and China to avoid
the mistakes the West made is entirely reasonable. If nothing else, the US and
Europe built coal plants before better technologies were available. India has
access to modern natural gas plants, fuel cells, wind, solar, etc if it wants
them. No one would suggest that India or China build lots of steam engines,
after all.

~~~
shripadk
> Regardless of whether hypocracy is involved, wanting India and China to
> avoid the mistakes the West made is entirely reasonable. If nothing else,
> the US and Europe built coal plants before better technologies were
> available. India has access to modern natural gas plants, fuel cells, wind,
> solar, etc if it wants them. No one would suggest that India or China build
> lots of steam engines, after all.

Building steam engines and maintaining them was more expensive than building
fuel based / electric trains. Even the initial cost was less. So the
transition was faster and made a lot of economic sense.

Solar energy prices dropped to around parity with coal for the first time this
year, hitting 4.34 rupees (about 6 US cents) a kilowatt-hour (kWh), while coal
tariffs range usually range in between 3–5 rupees/kWh (about 5–8 US cents). It
wasn't possible until April of this year to even consider Solar a viable
alternative. With prices dropping (and hopefully continuing to drop until at
least 2030) we can now think of installing new power plants backed by solar.

However, what happens to the old coal based power plants that power 20% of
Indian populace (that is close to 3/4th of the population of the United
States)? It is going to be super expensive to transition those old power
plants to solar. Also, what about 24/7 power? Solar power plants don't
guarantee 24/7 power. So you can't completely get rid of coal plants anyways.
India has to do quite a bit of balancing act to provide energy for it's 1.3
billion and growing population.

It's not as easy as you make it out to be. If that was the case, United States
would have already transitioned to 100% clean energy like it did with steam
engines in the 19th-20th century.

------
titomc
Kerala, India -- The world's first solar airport no longer pays for
electricity [http://money.cnn.com/2016/03/14/technology/india-cochin-
sola...](http://money.cnn.com/2016/03/14/technology/india-cochin-solar-
powered-airport)

USA -- whaat ?

------
anexprogrammer
My biggest hope on climate is India, China and Africa are soon in a position
to put pressure on the West for how little we're doing.

As prices continue to drop there'll be less and less incentive for them to
continue installing polluting power.

~~~
deskamess
The West is very good at pointing to the equation that benefits them while
sidelining the historical path that was taken to get here. The narrative and
finger pointing is strongest if the focus is on per-country impact versus per-
person impact. Very "electoral college-ish", and inappropriate when the core
underlying problem has no borders.

The choice of words and numbers have made it plausible for an 'us' versus
'them' scenario. You do have to give credit to the wing of the PR machine that
runs this so effectively.

Going forward, controlling the narrative, and the associated "baseline" on
geopolitical issues is going to be huge. Western countries have an
unparalleled advantage thanks to the English and other Euro-languages which
can reach a large portion of the globe.

~~~
adrianN
The historical path is completely irrelevant. We need to stop producing CO2 (
_completely_ stop) within the next 30+-30 years if we want to limit global
warming to ~2 degrees. The fact that "first world" countries have historically
polluted much more during their development doesn't change that. We have to
stop pointing fingers and start massively investing in change.

~~~
drcross
There's no way avoid finger pointing. There are tens of millions of people
without electricity for their basic needs (think warming a babies milk or
light for security), yet there are people in the west dumping a single use
coffee cup (unheard of in poorer nations). People cannot continue to drive 5
liter vehicles for fashionable reasons and still expect poorer nations to live
in abject poverty. What i'm saying is that finger pointing is exactly what we
need to do.

~~~
toast0
FWIW, you can train most babies to accept cold or room temperature milk or
formula by simply not offering it warmed. This saves a lot of parental effort
of warming bottles, although the energy savings are minimal. Maybe
refrigeration would be a better critical energy use? Storing milk (human or
otherwise) safely is a big enabler.

------
pvsukale3
Here is the documentary on this project made by National Geographic
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gM-0lrIxCnE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gM-0lrIxCnE)

~~~
agumonkey
And for Letterman's sad fans, some video related to India power management
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RnaBB7lTyjk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RnaBB7lTyjk)

------
gkafkg8y8
> By 2022, India aims to power 60 million homes by harnessing 100 gigawatts of
> solar energy.

That could power 82 Doc Brown DeLorean time machines[1].

In comparison, the 2013 estimate for world energy consumption was 12.3
terawatts[2], which would power 10165 Doc Brown DeLorean time machines.

[1]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DeLorean_time_machine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DeLorean_time_machine)

[2]:
[http://www.webcitation.org/6fzEHL2Bz](http://www.webcitation.org/6fzEHL2Bz)

~~~
contingencies
In general, Indian homes use very little power.

A fan or open windows are likely to replace central heating/aircon, a bicycle
or public transport a car, a radio a television, and locally sourced wood-
fired stoves electricity and gas in the kitchen.

Your global 'energy consumption' figure probably includes stupid things like
American industrial agriculture, Dubai, the US military, people's calories
from food, ~free geothermal power in volcanic zones, established hydropower,
etc.

~~~
lucaspiller
> Dubai

The UAE as a whole only consumes 15% more energy per capita than the US. Given
how much smaller it's population is (around the size of NYC), it seems unfair
to include it in the list. I assume that number also includes how much energy
is needed to produce oil, which is exported worldwide.

The country is heavily investing in renewables, Dubai wants to supply 7% of
power by solar from 2020, and 75% by 2050.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_energy_co...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_energy_consumption_per_capita)
(sort 2013 by capita)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_in_the_United_Arab...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_in_the_United_Arab_Emirates)

~~~
contingencies
OK so good point - as usual looking at real numbers is far more informative...
Qatar is way worse, yadda yadda.

That said, the US is a pretty bad yardstick. Another way to look at it would
be to say that the average UAE citizen uses 250% of what an Iranian uses, or
the average Qatar citizen uses 650% of what an Iranian uses, despite a (very)
broadly similar climate and self-sufficient energy production.

The US citizen uses 11x more than an Indian, who is only slightly ahead of a
North Korean (despite a horrific climate), both of whom are ~3x more than a
Bengali.

------
ccozan
Can anyone compute the ecological footprint of this power plant?

Just curious how much raw material( water, etc, even waste ) went into
building all that panels and the auxiliar stuff.

~~~
anexprogrammer
Compared to the eco footprint of a nuclear plant with fuel and waste handling,
or coal plant with associated mining and transport?

I'd be astonished if it wasn't clearly the least impactful.

What the world needs is easier ability to compare true impact of building, and
running our stuff. Without all the hidden externalities and hidden subsidies.

~~~
baldfat
> Compared to the eco footprint of a nuclear plant with fuel and waste
> handling,

Nuclear is a close third with waste included for ecological foot print
including waste. Its a $$$ game that Nuclear losses.

[http://www.nei.org/News-Media/News/News-Archives/Nuclear-
Pow...](http://www.nei.org/News-Media/News/News-Archives/Nuclear-Power-Plants-
Are-Compact,-Efficient-and-Re) (Has a strong bias towards nuclear)

Nature article shows its the money and lead time that kills nuclear.

"Add to that the high costs and long lead times for building a nuclear plant
about $3 billion for a 1,000 megawatt plant, with planning, licensing and
construction times of about 10 years and nuclear power is even less
appealing." (2008)

And now the cheap cost of solar and other alternative energy shows that it
makes financially cense to use renewable over traditional carbon fuels.

[http://www.nature.com/climate/2008/0810/full/climate.2008.99...](http://www.nature.com/climate/2008/0810/full/climate.2008.99.html)

~~~
hueving
What is your replacement for baseline load? Solar alone isn't enough and the
cost changes if you need battery infrastructure to handle dark times. Nuclear
power doesn't stop when the weather changes.

~~~
baldfat
I think the cost for nuclear and lead time will have gas powered and coal
plants for dark times. The issue is the cost for these dark time power will go
up. I have a friend who is a Wheelwright and he states that backup plants that
only come online 3 days a month makes more money then if it was running 100%
of the time.

[http://energypost.eu/battery-storage-will-take-backup-
power-...](http://energypost.eu/battery-storage-will-take-backup-power-
plants/)

In the next 10 years batteries will have a larger role and about 25% of coal
power plants will be retired by 2020 in US and Europe.

~~~
akiselev
That profitability is the consequence of regulation. Utilities are generally a
government granted monopoly so any failure to provide service (brown or
blackouts) comes with huge fines. Last I checked, the fine for a utility in
Southern California for a blackout in the LA metro area could be as much as
several hundred million dollars. That would wipe out the profitability for the
year so the vast majority of utilities in the US own or contract out to
"peaker" plants that are on standby but ready to quickly spin up.

If these regulations were updated to require less polluting peaker plants,
nuclear might be the only option because the economics are government
mandated. I wouldn't be surprised if California started moving this direction
by 2050 if it can give up the Nat gas addiction.

------
mpg33
Still feel adding solar to rooftops is better - just in terms of space
utilized - than these giant solar farms..

~~~
dx034
Large parts of both India and China are covered by deserts where you can build
huge wind farm and photo-voltaic capacity without disturbing anyone.
Centralised areas make more sense in terms of maintenance, so building one
plant per village could make much more sense than putting everything on roof
tops

~~~
fooker
India has about 1/10th the desert area as the US.

------
TekMol
If we would collect all energy that get's to planet earth via light, how much
of the total energy available to us would that be? Compared to say converting
all mass of earth into energy somehow.

According to Wolfram Alpha, 1kg of mass contains about 10^17 joule. Let's see
how much Kg earth has... about 10^25. So earth contains about 10^42 Joule?

According to a quick googling around, the sunlight that reaches us contains
about 10^20 Joules per day.

So hey, if we burn up everything we can outdo the sun for 10^19 years!

~~~
csomar
Interesting comment. All the talk about renewable energy forget the fact that
the Sun energy is equivalent to burning the earth for energy. Except it's much
less efficient.

~~~
eklavya
I couldn't understand, can you please explain in detail?

~~~
csomar
The Sun is burning itself in order to create the light that citizens of earth
are then collecting a portion of to generate electricity. That's not much
different than burning oil or coal here; except that it's happening in earth
and at exponentially smaller scale.

------
Element_
This article gives some images that show the scale:
[http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/11/india-unveils-world-
la...](http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/11/india-unveils-world-largest-
solar-power-plant-161129101022044.html)

------
maverick_iceman
I'm not sure devoting 10 sq km for a 648 MW plant is the most efficient use of
land. A nuclear or coal fired plant of similar or even larger capacity will
take up much less space. This is especially problematic as India and
especially the state of Tamil Nadu is one of the densest places on earth.

~~~
govg
That's a pretty bad argument to make. I'm not sure why you call the state of
TN "one of the densest places on earth", it has a lot of rural farmland and
the only population concentrations are in the major cities. It has roughly the
area of Florida, not really the largest of states but pretty large in the
country. The power-plant is in one of the more rural parts of the state, and
the land it uses probably was useless barren land anyway.

~~~
maverick_iceman
600/sq km is pretty dense IMO. It's larger than India's overall population
density (382/sq km). Also you seem to be tragically unaware that land is often
a scarce resource for infrastructure development in India. Taking farmland
under eminent domain is an extremely emotive and political issue. Read up on
the troubles of the present government to liberalize the land acquisition law.

~~~
govg
I think you're conflating two different issues here, the plant is in an area
which is pretty much barren land, far from any major city, and has only a
small town near it. The troubles governments face when acquiring land for
infrastructure is usually for things like metro rail through congested cities,
or building airports on the suburbs of major cities and the like.

The issue of it being densely populated land would have been valid if this was
near some major city and plant actively hampered development. There probably
is no such issue now, the plant provides cleaner energy than the alternative
(coal), and is a huge step forward towards reducing the country's need for
non-renewable sources.

------
kumarski
A lot of news coming out of India is hype.

I promise you that at night we burn 50% ash - lignite coal to compensate for
downticks in solar and upticks in consumption.

For the next few years we'll be opening a new coal plant each month.

To give you an idea of how far we are behind as an energy grid.

The US & China each Produce about 4000 Terawatt Hours Per a Year.

India is somewhere in the ~1500 Terawatt hours per a year.

To make up the difference we're going to burn a ton of coal, the worst kind of
coal.

~~~
prashnts
I don't know why were you downvoted, but it really is true. If they really
cared about the environment, the massive pile of garbage in Delhi would stop
being burned [1]. This is the National Capital we're talking about. And the
landfill is not somewhere far off the city either, you can _see_ it smoking if
you board a yellow line Samaypur bound train and look outside the windows near
Azadpur station.

So yeah, we're going to burn a ton, or two of coal, and keep building Solar
power plants.

To be fair, I applaud the efforts being taken, however, pretending that the
problems don't even exist is what's unfortunate.

[1] [http://www.ndtv.com/delhi-news/smouldering-mountains-of-
garb...](http://www.ndtv.com/delhi-news/smouldering-mountains-of-garbage-
poison-delhis-air-water-1292267)

~~~
kumarski
I don't know either.

