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Solar is now cheaper than some coal, says India energy minister

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Re: Solar is now cheaper than some coal, says India energy minister

#121

Post by Kliment »

downandout wrote: post #119

"Solar energy prices hit a new record low in January with the auction of 420 megawatts in Rajasthan at 4.34 rupees a kilowatt-hour. In comparison coal tariffs range between 3-5 rupees/kWh." So the headline here is, as is usually the case with articles in this space, misleading at best. It's slightly cheaper than the highest-end coal, but dramatically more expensive - nearly 1.5X more - than the lower end. Overall, it…

The comparison is between the cost of new installations - coal power is very cheap because the facilities are old and the capital expenses were sunk a long time ago. New solar power is now cheaper to build out than new coal plants, which is reasonable enough given the cost of both raw materials and production processes for solar had plummeted over the last decade whereas coal is a very mature technology that is effectively at the end of its efficiency curve (and getting worse over time as the cost of extraction grows).

Re: Solar is now cheaper than some coal, says India energy minister

#122

Post by Brakenshire »

mcv wrote: post #107
noisy_boy wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are correct that every country puts their economy before others. However, India is not asking another economy to help them. India can develop its solar energy sector by itself. The west accuses the developing countries to be big polluters since they use less environmentally-friendly means of energy production. Then when countries like India try to subsidize the domestic solar energy market, WTO accuses them of il…

The WTO should STFU in this particular case. It is clearly something that needs to be done, and many western countries also subsidize markets they want to stimulate. It is unreasonable to expect India to play by stupid rules that the US and EU constantly violate.

> many western countries also subsidize markets they want to stimulate

Subsidizing markets is different to favouring local suppliers. For instance, Germany's feed in tariffs subsidized solar, but it didn't distinguish between German, American and Chinese manufacturers, and that policy is a major reason why solar prices have come down so much - Germany almost single-handedly supported the scaling up of capacity, and scaling down of cost of the global solar industry, from about $20/W down to $2/W.

Re: Solar is now cheaper than some coal, says India energy minister

#123

Post by Kliment »

a_imho wrote: post #112

Bit of a clickbait title, the article mentions only one case where solar was traded at a lower price than coal, which is still not lower than coal's average price. For a better comparison we should include the cost of manufacturing panels vs building coal plants and the money spent on r&d and pr. Also, afaik solar panels are not exactly eco friendly. I believe it is up to personal taste which power lobby agenda one b…

The minister being quoted explicitly compared cost of new solar installs versus cost of new coal installs - that's where the "cheaper than coal" quote was taken from, it's not about spot prices for solar energy (which are a senseless comparison anyway, as they go to zero and even negative in times of low demand)

EDIT: low demand, not high demand, of course

Re: Solar is now cheaper than some coal, says India energy minister

#124

Post by Intermernet »

levemi wrote: post #23

Whatever the realities of the cost of solar, I tend to worry about a future in which we cover vast swaths of areas with solar panels and the impact such a thing will have on the environment. I don't know if anyone has done good studies on it. A bunch other sustainable forms of energy have environmental problems. Wind generators cause harm to birds, geothermal electricity sources like in Hawai'i raise the temperature…

> Wind generators cause harm to birds

This is an often repeated exaggeration.

The Australian government did a study on this[1] as it was claimed that the Orange-bellied Parrot (an endangered species) was at risk from wind farm developments. They concluded:

"The potential threat that wind farm developments in Tasmania, western Victoria and south-eastern South Australia pose to the Orange-bellied Parrot has been quantified in the Wind farm Birdstrike Cumulative Risk Assessment Report (Smales et al. 2005). The assessment report concluded that the predicted annual cumulative mortality rate from all the wind farms modelled corresponds to an additional Orange-bellied Parrot mortality of around one bird per year."

The full study. "Wind farm collision risk for birds" can be found at [2].

[1]: http://www.environment.gov.au/cgi-bin/sprat/public/publicspe...

[2]: http://www.environment.gov.au/system/files/resources/2d42fcb...

Re: Solar is now cheaper than some coal, says India energy minister

#125

Post by yAnonymous »

dexterdog wrote: post #115
netcan wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is some other interesting economics at play. Solar is more suitable for local, small scale production for a few reasons including relative costs and the way those costs are distributed (capital cost vs variable cost). That in itself is interesting for all sorts of reasons, many of them applying to countries like India with infrastructure difficulties. About 7 years ago I visited Cow Bay, north of Cairns, Austra…

Can't the same be said for local nuclear?

No.

Re: Solar is now cheaper than some coal, says India energy minister

#126

Post by drjesusphd »

kristopolous wrote: post #63
levemi wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These problems pale in comparison partly because these sustainable forms of technology aren't being used any meaningful scale yet. How much area do we have to cover with solar panels to power a largish metropolitan area?

Depends. If you assume that w/m^2 still have some growth and that solar panels will be as common on houses as front lawns, and that energy efficiency will continue to rise, it may be appreciably near zero; especially if the average future home becomes a net energy source (These are called zero energy buildings, or ZNE) and we still use wind, geothermal, tidal etc... If you get high deployment in places with high urba…

> w/m^2 still have some growth

There's a pretty solid upper-bound on that.

Re: Solar is now cheaper than some coal, says India energy minister

#127

Post by aangjie »

dexterdog wrote: post #115
netcan wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is some other interesting economics at play. Solar is more suitable for local, small scale production for a few reasons including relative costs and the way those costs are distributed (capital cost vs variable cost). That in itself is interesting for all sorts of reasons, many of them applying to countries like India with infrastructure difficulties. About 7 years ago I visited Cow Bay, north of Cairns, Austra…

Can't the same be said for local nuclear?

Erm.. I assumed when he said about capital vs marginal costs of solar it was because the capital is not too high(compared to coal and other power stations/generators). Wouldn't nuclear be the opposite. I can imagine proper waste disposal alone costing more than a solar setup.(I know the solar setup for a small farm-house was very cheap).

Re: Solar is now cheaper than some coal, says India energy minister

#128

Post by ptaipale »

fiftyacorn wrote: post #59
ptaipale wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a bit strange to say that "rich countries" are "charging too much for clean technology". The countries generally don't own, operate or even develop the technology. The countries don't charge for it. Individual companies, people, innovators make new technology, and they charge as much as they can, as much as the technology is worth to buyers. If "rich countries" mess things up, it's through subsidies to solar, wi…

They are charging in the sense that the policies seeks to maintain the monopolies or positions of existing energy providers. An example being Spain where people have became energy independent, yet still have to pay to maintain the electricity companies infrastructure

You could argue that rich countries are charging too much from their own residents, but what does the energy minister of India have to complain about that? Spaniards certainly can complain about these policies, but I don't see how Piyush Goyal can.

Re: Solar is now cheaper than some coal, says India energy minister

#129

Post by swah »

kristopolous wrote: post #2

This is called Swanson's law: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swanson%27s_law "The future is solar" isn't some hippy fantasy, it's a sincere market projection. Apparently, a robust, distributed, decentralized, sustainable power grid is unbelievably the actual long-term direction of free-market forces.

Isn't "The Man" selling the solar panels though? Of course that is much less dependency than being connected to a power grid.

Re: Solar is now cheaper than some coal, says India energy minister

#130

Post by a_imho »

Kliment wrote: post #123
a_imho wrote: post #112

Bit of a clickbait title, the article mentions only one case where solar was traded at a lower price than coal, which is still not lower than coal's average price. For a better comparison we should include the cost of manufacturing panels vs building coal plants and the money spent on r&d and pr. Also, afaik solar panels are not exactly eco friendly. I believe it is up to personal taste which power lobby agenda one b…

The minister being quoted explicitly compared cost of new solar installs versus cost of new coal installs - that's where the "cheaper than coal" quote was taken from, it's not about spot prices for solar energy (which are a senseless comparison anyway, as they go to zero and even negative in times of low demand) EDIT: low demand, not high demand, of course

Thanks for the clarification, it seemed to me that the writer was using these numbers to justify Goyal's claim. Without them we are left with the sentence that imo is worded exactly that way to reflect the minister's personal opinion/pr after Sun Edison bankruptcy. Which still makes it clickbaitish without any more facts.
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