"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.
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, Australia and past the end of the grid (it ends at the Daintree river, I think). All the B&Bs, houses, hotels and such were running on Diesel generators. Smelly, noisy... People turn them off at night. I wonder if solar has replaced much of this yet.
If local solar reduces the need for power infrastructure in areas where marginal costs are highest, I wonder if the economics of grids changes in some sort of useful way generally. Maybe the cost savings in marginal infrastructure reduce overall costs meaningfully. If governments (or the quasi independent private energy players) are too broke or disfunctional to provide good central power, there's an alternative. When telcom infrastructure was simplified by mobile, that had a big impact in places that never had wired infrastructure in the first place but got mobile phones.
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).
Which is a real pity as we traded the flu for cancer when we discarded nuclear in favour of carbon. What will those that will have to live through the fallout of the coal era have to remember ?
In the age of global terrorism, local nuclear is a no-go from the start.
Dirty bombs hardly make sense in terms of headcount, but their psychological effects would be tremendous. Therefore, security around nuclear installations will remain high - and that's easier to organize and cheaper around big, centralized stations.
absolutely. thorium and thorconpower.com comes to mind. Recent news on supersonic jet comebacks makes me optimistic that eventually someone is going to pickup nuclear and challenges the status quo.
The same thing has played out in mobile telecom vs wired. The 3rd world has leap frogged those who had to move from wired to wireless. For residential, micro grids are a totally viable solution where bulk storage happens at what would have been the substation. Generation happens at the edges and point of use, storage happens on a block or neighborhood level. Absolutely required load at night can be pretty low.
This will definitely lower the demand for coal, which in turn could lower its prices as well. This is good, because India might still need few coal power plants, considering its population size.
No! Solar is solar; depends on available sunlight. India is not going to shut any nuclear power plant and is working on new one or next phase of existing ones.
The important part here is that solar is still under heavy R&D with consistent real-world non-zero advances in efficiency and cost reduction while coal has, AFIAK plateaued. Even under perfect market conditions, solar will still, eventually price-cut coal.
And it is still true, wind will be never be able to compete with nuclear for the simple fact that wind blows when it blows and you need energy when you need it. Unless we develop a technology that is able to cope with the huge spikes that windmills put on the energy grid and store energy in a very efficient way (including gaining the energy back when we need it) wind will not be more than few percentage of the overall energy production with the cost of having gas turbines in the system to just to balance windmills. Solar is obviously far better, there are few things to sort out but the progress we made is definitely promising.
Wind actually provides power at night. Currently at night wind has to compete against cheap base load power which tends to be subsidized. If coal and nuclear plants are phased out the economics of wind is very attractive.
Note that nuclear is also not exactly grid-friendly, since you cannot quickly change the power output of a nuclear power plant. They are useful for base load and nothing else.
This is not the definition of grid-friendly. I am just calling out that windmills could never serve as base power plant, and serving as peak power source has a serious side effect of requiring gas turbines to provide smooth energy production that does not stress the grid. You do not change the output of your base power plant on a daily basis, this is why it is called base. For the peak coverage you have something that is easy to change the performance of.
>And it is still true, wind will be never be able to compete with nuclear for the simple fact that wind blows when it blows and you need energy when you need it. Unless we develop a technology that is able to cope with the huge spikes
A) The spikes aren't actually that huge (fossil fuel companies exaggerate, who knew?).
B) It's a problem that's relatively easily dealt with by overproducing and variable pricing. After years of championing free markets, fossil fuel companies 'forgot' that they are efficient mechanisms for mediating fluctuating demand and supply.
Can you provide some info about how pumped storage doesn't cover this need? Because pumped storage was developed to deal with the huge spikes that user demand put on an energy grid that's mainly generated with nuclear.
Neither - just production-level economies of scale. Operating costs of solar are way below that of coal, and setup and manufacturing costs have dropped significantly with volume.
Note the comparison is for new installations - coal power is only cheap now because the massive construction expenses were sunk long ago. Constructing a coal plant is a huge expense, particularly as it has to be centralized because it makes no sense below a certain size. Whereas with solar you can have very small installations closer to point of use that are still financially sensible. You win on capex, you win on operating costs, and you win on transmission losses. Capital expense used to be much much higher a decade ago for solar, and emission standards for coal plants were not rigorously enforced for old installations, making coal appear cheaper. Of course, if you count the expenses related to the pollution and health damage done by coal plants, coal was always more expensive.
From the article: “Of course there are challenges of 24/7 power. We accept all of that – but we have been able to come up with a solar-based long term vision that is not subsidy based.”
Headline is not possible at face value except that it is.
As best I can tell India's government is currently spending billions of dollars on solar. Maybe it will some day not be subsidy based. But as best I can tell it currently is.
In fact the government appears to be spending one hundred billion dollars on solar in the next six years. By 2022.
Furthermore, "The Ministry of New and Renewable Energy provides 70 percent subsidy on the installation cost of a solar photovoltaic power plant in North-East states and 30 percentage subsidy on other regions." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_in_India
I'm all for renewable energy. Solar is great. At this point I don't see how the headline isn't clickbait bullshit.
There are multiple people saying "sounds too good to be true, but it isn't. Solar is great because I said so!". This guy provides evidence to support that it is not true and gets downvoted? Wut?
For the umptieth time HN hears only what it wants to hear.
The headline's accurate in that India energy minister said "solar is now cheaper than coal." Doesn't necessarily mean solar is actually cheaper than coal.
>“Through transparent auctions with a ready provision of land, transmission and the like, solar tariffs have come down below thermal power cost,” Goyal said in a tweet.
There are very little subsidies for Wind and Solar in India. MNRCE subsidies are for specific projects. The vast majority are tenders or auctions. Developers bid a tarrif whatever they feel their Return on Assets can bear.
The developing world is in somewhat unique position. They can skip generations of technology - they can start from latest and greatest - the smart choice when you have tabula rasa..
Also there labor cost, and the cost (and time) of navigating the political system to get permits are lower.
So a big project can be made a lot cheaper and faster from first shovel to producing electricity.
“I sincerely believe that what the West is doing in this respect is anti-development and anti the fight against climate change,” he said, accusing rich countries of charging too much for clean technology."
I really don't believe any country is sincere towards climate change. Every country puts their economy before others. So expecting another economy to help you is a foolish assumption.
I know, right? Why do those rich western countries like Indonesia and Colombia dump their worthless coal reserves into poor countries like the US, Germany, Japan and China?
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 illegally supporting domestic over international solar producers. Its like you are called a drug-addict first and when you try to wean off it on your own, you are accused of cheating the rehab centres. Excellent example of double standards.
America believes in free trade as long as they are able to crush the competition like a bug even before it gets started off the ground.
If you can have local producers that have 8% market share, then they might actually have a sliver of a chance to survive and compete in the market place, and thats unacceptable. Yep, free and fair.
When South Africa (where I live), violated trade rules and put up barriers to US chicken imports, the US retaliated with barriers to the importation of some SA goods into the US. Eventually, SA gave in and removed the barriers.
IMHO Free trade of commodities (food, solar cells etc.) is a good thing.
can someone explain to me how EU/US can heavy handedly protect their own agriculture and not violate the same rules? How is energy infrastructure not part of the same exemptions (assuming that those exist)?
Short version: Agriculture is one of the classic areas where countries usually said "no, we want to be independent, all the talk about free markets aside" .. That was the case when GATT[1] was still active (a framework, which built the base of the WTO), then came the Uruquay round[2] which established the WTO and stated that we now really, really have to find a way to include agriculture, which lead to the Doha round that ran since 2001 and more or less broke down in 2007/2008 - mainly over the issue of agricultural protection. Since then, nothing happened[3].
IMO it makes quite a bit of sense to exclude a few areas from enforced free trade. Otherwise we could as well argue that countries must allow a free market for acquiring military services. The thing is, it's silly to only do this for agriculture. There's a few areas that are vital for a nation to have some sense of independence, and allowing the protection of energy infrastructure is certainly one of them.
Don't get me wrong though, I'd prefer a world without the need for nation states and borders - but as long as we do have them IMO some of these international organisations are overstepping, and WTO is near the top of that list.
You need to be a pretty big country with a wide variety of natural resources to be truly independent (for instance, your "independent" agriculture is only independent if you have domestically produced fuel, fertilizer and machinery, etc. etc.) In today's world I think it's pretty tough (how many countries have their own chip fabs and how many don't? Chips go into a whole lot of products indirectly, etc.)
Of course having to protect this very wide range of domestic industries to maintain true independence will result in a huge loss of economic efficiency; so even if it is done right (without an "oops, we forgot the bit about the fertilizer" issue), not only do you have to be a rather large country with a lot of resources, you also have to accept a significantly lower standard of living and a degree of backwardness.
How much it helps I'm not sure; Britain for instance managed to feed itself during WWII even though it relied on its navy for food shipments and of course its cargo ships were constantly attacked. Certainly it did better than it would without a strong navy but with an independent domestic agriculture, since it would have been invaded.
On the other hand, presumably importing vitally important things without exporting vitally important things in return might put you in a bad bargaining position in international politics in times of peace, and maybe then domestic industries making sure that you can survive without imports are helpful; though even that doesn't seem like a huge problem unless you're importing from a cartel (and even very powerful cartels sometimes break down, the way OPEC did recently.)
As to agriculture - I sincerely think it's protected because producers simply bribe the people in the government; there was even research that the more concentrated and bigger ag producers are in a country, the more protected they are (even though a lot of the nominal arguments for protection are much stronger with many small producers than with few large ones typically employing fewer people), though I didn't look deeply into it and perhaps the researcher was biased by expecting this conclusion.
I agree with pretty much all you wrote - but I also don't think it's an actual counterargument. I never wrote that nation states should try to be fully independant as that is either futile or highly inefficient. However what India shows here is IMO a good example of a middle ground - you don't have to create everything from scratch, but it might be healthy to just mandate some percentage of vital infrastructure to be domestic, just as a reinsurance for when things go sour.
I dunno, you have to look at the cost side of these things and I'm not qualified in this instance. AFAIK India still protects its handloom manufacturers which IMO is madness cost-wise, but of course there's merit into looking at it on a case by case basis. I think the trouble with protectionism is you might end up subsidizing an inefficient domestic industry indefinitely; and I don't think "reinsurance" is a valid argument most of the time (there's usually enough sellers whom you can buy from even when things are very sour, and not having lost money on inefficient domestic production will keep you rich enough to afford it when things go sour), the valid argument IMO is you want to have a Korean auto company and you doubt that the first few cars it'll make will be able to compete with imported cars so you protect it. But what made this work great in Korea but not so great in India (which AFAIK produced pretty bad cars for internal market under similar protections for many decades) I'm not quite sure.
So what you're saying is that without a local content requirement India is incapable of making competitive solar cells. I don't believe that's true. I think the local content requirement was simply a gift to politically well connected Indian firms. The Indian people should be thanking the WTO in this case, that rather than serving the interests of the crony capitalists, the interests of the people are being served.
Few countries have been damaged as much by protectionism as has India, and fewer have had such great gains by its gradual elimination.
> Then when countries like India try to subsidize the domestic solar energy market, WTO accuses them of illegally supporting domestic over international solar producers.
Doesn't EU do the same (i.e. tax Chinese solar panels to support local producers)?!
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.
That is true. Still, I find it somewhat odd to expect a relatively poor country (per capita) to subsidize rich western companies. I'm for cutting developing countries some slack.
Thanks, this clarifies the intentions of the politicians. They couldn't care less about solar; they just want to help out their cronies. If they subsidized all panels, the Indian firms would probably go out of business while the average Indian got better, cheaper panels from the world leader, China.
It's ironic that a couple of sentences after "accusing rich countries of charging too much" he's complaining about the WTO ruling "India was illegally supporting domestic over international solar producers." Either the evil foreigners are too expensive or too cheap requiring protection for local producers. Or both at the same time maybe.
Or maybe India does not want to bleed billions away with barely anything to show for it (Yes, they get the infrastructure, but the tech is proprietary and foreign and potentially an endless drain)
Instead they try to develop inhouse production that they own and have to cover the initial capital costs.
There was a theory in ~19th century that Portugal/Spain trading wine for machinery from Great Britain mean it was equal to growing said machinery on fields - Britain shot away technologically and that was that.
(I can't find the name of the theory though :/)
You are thinking of Ricardo's Comparative Advantage; and it is a little more complex than that they got machines: they traded for cloth, which was made with machines that the British then spent the time to improve and learn from, giving them eventual advantages in numerous other fields.
> Instead they try to develop inhouse production that they own and have to cover the initial capital costs.
Then provide tax credits and advantageous financing. A local content minimum insures that the local industry faces no incentive to become competitive and is simply a sinecure for well connected and politically powerful industrialists.
They certainly are not. Here in the Netherlands we are mostly coal and gas based for electricity yet we want to (unrealistically) ban sales of fossil fuel powered cars. We also raised import taxes on Chinese solar panels, raising the price of solar installations significantly here. It's all for show.
Why would we raise prices on ANY solar panels? That seems self-defeating to me. It doesn't really matter where they come from. Any solar panels are good solar panels.
To stimulate local production. But local producers just raised their prices. And, when the new import tax was announced it immediately resulted in shortages because companies kept solar panels in stock to sell them after they raised their prices. Sounds like some good lobbying to me.
I've been tracking prices for solar for the last couple of years, and I've only seen them go down. Pulled the trigger and purchased our own install because they went down yet again this year.
Google on "importheffing zonnepanelen" for the reports. I don't have solar panels, I just read the reports from time to time, your input is more valuable.
The excuse was that the Chinese were dumping and local solar industry in the US/EU needed protection. The likely actual reason was that fossil fuel companies demanded it and Obama/EU thought he/they could sell it to the public.
Well, solar installs have still decreased in price overall. I'm writing this as they are in the middle of installing solar panels on my roof in the sunny Netherlands. ROI in <6 years, solar is doing well here. The refund of VAT (BTW) on the full cost of the install does imply the government is serious about solar, too.
Although I do agree government policy as a whole can be sorely lacking in some areas. The gentle, incremental approach has led us to fall behind almost all EU members in meeting renewable goals.
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, wind etc. which is suposedly bringing the price down, not up (though this may be inefficient).
Many countries in the so-called "developing" world, particularly those with oil-based economies such as Malaysia, Saudi-Arabia or Venezuela, are subsidising oil and coal based fuels to their population.
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.
Sincerity varies. There can be economic advantages in moving towards renewables if you do it right as you develop new companies and technologies. One thing is for sure though, every oligarchy puts their mates before others.
>> "expecting another economy to help you is a foolish assumption."
He's not requesting other countries help them, he's requesting other countries help themselves. Dependence on coal and being a last major country to replace coal with solar is foolish. Engery defines economies, and solar is the future.
"I sincerely believe that what the West is doing in this respect is anti-development and anti the fight against climate change,” he said, accusing rich countries of charging too much for clean technology."
> Every country puts their economy before others. So expecting another economy to help you is a foolish assumption.
Wealthy nations have been helping poorer ones for generations. Major institutions are devoted to it, such as the World Bank, World Health Organization, UNICEF, PEPFAR, and many, many more.
The world isn't entirely altruistic, of course, but there's a trendy notion these days, a sort of Ayn Randian (or Objectivist) idea, that it's entirely, unavoidably selfish, which is just as unrealistic.
Also, note that India is offering to help poorer nations with solar power, for free.
Now comes the agonizing process of explaining this to many millions of people who have been propagandized by the coal lobby for decades. Hopefully we can also work in some best practices around these photovoltaics that leads to less pollution from the process of mining elements for them, and making them in the first place. It's still better than coal, but "better than coal" is a very low bar.
"I think a new coal plant would give you costlier power than a solar plant"
He thinks a NEW plant would give you costlier energy. Secondly, aren't the solar projects subsidized in a BIG way? I have seen many smart people say that solar is a sham. They say it's just an opportunist's play. Entrepreneurs want to get on the government's tit and the politicians are happy to portray themselves as environmentally friendly in front of the increasingly global warming wary voters.
If anyone can argue against that, please speak up. I haven't seen anything other than wishful thinking and naive people patting themselves on the back because someone got their hands on tax money.
Well it's going to cost over $150 Billion to clean up the Hanford Nuclear Site, so shouldn't that be considered as government support of nuclear power?
To be honest, that's a very fair point and figuratively speaking, a kill-shot. I might be right that solar subsidies are never going to pay off, but at least we can be sure it's not going to suddenly fail, foot us with a bill for the clean-up, and poison innocent people.
Capital costs [for solar] have fallen 60% in the past four years and could drop a further 40% reports Deutsche Bank
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.
I can't do the math because there are no baselines. Talking about capex reduction in percentages doesn't tell me the overall picture. You also talk about energy prices, but are those prices subsidized?
All the talk about solar energy is making unfair comparisons and people are eating it up because it aligns with their wishful thinking. Just take as an example this article. The minister said that solar energy might be cheaper compared to energy from NEW coal plants. But everyone in here heard something else.
Solar and wind is for the majority not subsidized in India.
What you are referring to is the Min of New and Renewable Energy offering a VGF "viability gap funding" for certain very large projects termed UMPPs (Ultra Mega Power Plants) of 1000-4000MW. These are few and take-up has been poor due to the execution complexities.
India is adding 15-20k MW of Solar and 10k MW of Wind per year - the vast majority of which is completely unsubsidized. State electricity distributors tender for plants, and private developers bid a tariff they feel will support their ROI.
Apart from the US and its PTC structure, most of the huge capacity additions happening in wind and solar in Europe, Asia, Africa, China and India are happening from pure private unsubsidized auctions for power.
>Apart from the US and its PTC structure, most of the huge capacity additions happening in wind and solar in Europe, Asia, Africa, China and India are happening from pure private unsubsidized auctions for power.
I don't want to enter into debates about the rest of the comment, but this is demonstratebly false in Europe from my experience as a EU citizen keeping an eye on funding programs and public discourse.
A quick google search says that the 2012 EC report on energy subsidies concluded close to 15 billion euros in subsidies for solar alone. The report DOES NOT include tax credits and DOES NOT include preferential lending support.
In addition, German citizen's bills have skyrocketed to the 2nd place (behind Denmark) because of solar power. German business refuses to eat up the solar power as part of a package because it will make them uncompetitive. This sentiment echoes around Europe, so I suggest you check your facts.
I don't even want to START on Chinese equipment manufacturers, many of whom face bankruptcy after the government dialed back on subsidies.
In all honesty, your opinion seems completely false based on the evidence I've seen.
Your use of the suspiciously specific phrase "direct subsidies" suggests that you already know that coal receives plenty of government subsidies and that if those were removed, and coal had to account for the damage it does, then yes it would just happen.
>Your use of the suspiciously specific phrase "direct subsidies"...
Was to contrast cash grants from other forms of subsidies like feed-in tariffs, cheap loans, net-zero metering, etc. There's no reason to parse my comments like some kind of religious text - I will tell you what I mean.
This is the carrot to the Paris Agreement's stick (which India and China refused to sign until the differentiation of developed and developing is added).
Its basically an attempt to show that as a country, we can move to cleaner power if the right technology transfer is supported by US and Europe. It is the second step after the agreement to transfer US nuclear energy tech to India (which has not signed the Non Proliferation Treaty).
I think the US govt will have to open up its technology and patents to be used by India - if the climate change deal needs to be ratified. Otherwise there is zero chance of it being passed in the Indian parliament.
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 of bodies of water disrupting wildlife. Nuclear power comes with great risks of radiation leakage. Biofuel is hugely inefficient. It seems any solution comes with problems.
The best location for covering a large area of land for purposes of solar energy would arguably be a desert. "90% of the world’s population lives within range of a desert and could be supplied with solar electricity from there", says this article, which also shows you how much needs to be covered to supply the entire globe in theory: http://cleantechnica.com/2009/06/22/half-a-trillion-dollars-...
There is some type of coating that doesn't allow anything to stick to it. That is a start. I think is called enduroshield. It is not a permanent solution because it wears down but it would help.
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 urban sprawl (lots of rooftops), the long term prospects (say 35 years) negative power bills may become the norm - I know a number of people that already have them.
There's been dramatic gains in solar output and power efficiency in the past few years. The trajectories are looking good.
In solutions that don't require unobtanium, current cells are arguably only about 1/4th of the way there. In solutions that have been constructed regardless of cost, it's still not 1/2 the way.
I think seeing another 100% gain in affordable solutions is conservative, since 400% is what's possible.
If the vast majority of buildings used "negative" power (that is that they generated more back into the grid then they took out) due to small scale power generation on premises, then the net effect may not dictate a need for a grandiose centralized solution.
When people compare say a million homes power needs, which is about 1000Gwh/month, in the non-distributed systems you need a 1000Gwh/month solution (think nuclear). However, this hypothetical 4-fold increase in efficiency would need only 7 solar panel (1.6m x 1m) per house for a net zero need distributed system.
If the right market incentives were there, and in a future market anticipating the swanson curve, someone may install say 25 panels (18 in excess of their need) to generate monthly passive income ("fans" of solar have 30+ panels)
Under this model, someone would be powering their house and two of their neighbors.
You can see how this can add up with the right market structure.
My argument is that in a world of a free-market entrepreneurial energy, you won't need a centralized power generator capable of powering 1 million homes. In fact, you may not need centralized power generation at all.
The future problems aren't going to be in power generation, but in storage.
> I don't know if anyone has done good studies on it.
And why would they! If an industry or country can get an advantage out of a renewable tech, it's not in their interests to fund studies if they could give the wrong answers. That's the reality of it. Biofuel was a good case in point, it's proponents are now back peddling pretty fast. The drive to profit forbids foresight.
You can add diesel cars, electric cars, and CFD, LED bulbs to that list too.
Have a look at this picture - it shows the total area needed to be covered by solar to power the whole world. With efficient energy transmission technology the area is negligilbe.
> 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.
Compared to the downsides of coal and gas and the risks of nuclear? I really don't think you should worry.
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].
I once drove from Sydney to Cooktown (according to Google, 30hrs over 2720.4km, which sounds about right) and horribly managed to kill 2 birds, 1 wombat and 1 wallaby. I'd hate to think what the truck transport industry kills with every single trip compared to this apparent risk from wind-farms.
Last month I drove from Launceston to Scottsdale, I stopped counting dead wallabys at I recon about 120 (pademelons propably, hard to tell if their spread so thin). Many of those were in pairs, a bigger smear, followed by a smaller, joey-sized smear... Amazingly I only almost killed one, and managed to drive over a echidna (missed him)
Took the fun edge of an otherwise very pleasant island trip.
A colleague recalls a trip from Perth to Port Hedland on a overnight bus when she was doing picking up north as a student. Bus has a formidable roo-bar. During the night she was constantly woken up by annoying "pings" from the front. Early morning se got off at a stop to take a piss and witnessed the driver hosing of the roo bar. Something he did at most stops up.
It doesn't. The subsidies are used as a bootstrapping mechanism, the projections in the article indicate that as the market scales, costs of solar energy production will drop below coal.
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Is solar viable for small installations without any subsidies ? I was recently looking at a 30KW proposal for a small enterprise in Tamil Nadu. The quoted price is Rs. 36 lakhs. At the rate of Rs 6.75 per unit, it doesn't even cover the interest costs. Does this match with your capex costs or is this way off ?
Solar is viable, you will be looking at a 6-7year payback on the system with interest, 36Lakhs is very high for a 30kW system. The prices should be in the range of 25-27L for an on grid system with a simple structure. Where in Tamil Nadu is this? Ping me if you are looking for more details(mail Id in profile), I work for a company that does solar installations.
Thanks for the reply. I could not find your mail id in your profile. You can send me an email to {My HN username}{at}gmail and I can send you more details
What we've found is it's immediately viable for commercial properties that make profits e.g. malls, workshops, small factories, petrol pumps, etc. The accelerated depreciation benefits mean you'll make your money back in little more than a year. If you own any such rooftop, this ought to be a no-brainer for you.
Even if you're not making profits (and so have no tax, and accelerated depreciation doesn't help you), commercial electricity rates in India are high, and you can expect break-even in about 3 years.
For residential consumers, break-even is 5-7 years, depending on which state you're in.
For your specific example, would need to know details to offer comments. At first glance, the quoted price seems way too high. Consider not installing batteries unless you absolutely must for your use-case.
Cheaper, or better subsidised? Politicians are usually quite keen to describe their pet projects as either cheap or free when in reality they're just taxpayer funded.
Suggesting that costs are not falling fast enough to overcome value deflation. Seems quite US-focussed though. The numbers in the two articles don't seem directly comparable.
For the near term, financial engineers have not done solar any favors with recent "yieldco" abuses.[1] Though with value deflation, financial innovation and regulatory protection may not be able to save solar.
When enough of the worlds billionaires and other powerful riffraff get spooked by climate change, you'll see carbon taxes imposed. And countries like China and India will simply phase out burning coal.
Aren't warm countries incredibly suitable for solar power? I assume most of the electricity is used during the day for things like electric motors during the work hours and air-conditioning. So they don't need to store that energy to keep homes warm during the colder night (even if residential AC is kept running during the night it will consume less energy since the temperatures will fall)
Absolutely- factoring in refrigeration as well, it seems like an ideal location for widespread solar. On top of that, power transmission in a developing country would benefit a ton from decentralization. The tough aspects of managing a decentralized grid (sensing and load shedding) are much easier today than when the North American / European power grids were developed. I'd even wager to say that some non-industrial areas should push for HVDC transmission and start to move away from AC altogether. With most of our household amenities trending towards relatively low DC voltages, the AC losses don't seem as worthwhile if we can avoid it.
Interesting times for the energy economics and geopolitics. If people believe that solar(renewable energy) is getting cheaper, the prices of the oil is drop faster. And you don't want to keep holding to oil when the music stops.
I would argue this trend is showing off. The oil producing countries pumping out their oil, because they don't see value reducing the capacity, while the oil prices are historically low.
Yes. Still OPEC cartel doesn't seems to be working, neither does any kind monopoly. Given the wide and often conflicting interest between the oil producers I like to view this as less probable outcome.
Only if it includes the price of all the overcapacity and storage required to produce baseload and still comes in lower can solar be considered to cheaper than coal (or more usefully whatever fossil/nuclear mix is actually currently providing that).
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 263 ms ] thread"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.
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, Australia and past the end of the grid (it ends at the Daintree river, I think). All the B&Bs, houses, hotels and such were running on Diesel generators. Smelly, noisy... People turn them off at night. I wonder if solar has replaced much of this yet.
If local solar reduces the need for power infrastructure in areas where marginal costs are highest, I wonder if the economics of grids changes in some sort of useful way generally. Maybe the cost savings in marginal infrastructure reduce overall costs meaningfully. If governments (or the quasi independent private energy players) are too broke or disfunctional to provide good central power, there's an alternative. When telcom infrastructure was simplified by mobile, that had a big impact in places that never had wired infrastructure in the first place but got mobile phones.
Dirty bombs hardly make sense in terms of headcount, but their psychological effects would be tremendous. Therefore, security around nuclear installations will remain high - and that's easier to organize and cheaper around big, centralized stations.
Modern LFTR and TWR designs addresses most of your concerns and leaves the rest with less risk than the incumbent status quo.
Update your ken on nuclear, the current narrative is hurting as all deeply.
So the same storage tech that is needed to increase the share of renewables we can rely on also makes things better for nuclear.
A) The spikes aren't actually that huge (fossil fuel companies exaggerate, who knew?).
B) It's a problem that's relatively easily dealt with by overproducing and variable pricing. After years of championing free markets, fossil fuel companies 'forgot' that they are efficient mechanisms for mediating fluctuating demand and supply.
Note the comparison is for new installations - coal power is only cheap now because the massive construction expenses were sunk long ago. Constructing a coal plant is a huge expense, particularly as it has to be centralized because it makes no sense below a certain size. Whereas with solar you can have very small installations closer to point of use that are still financially sensible. You win on capex, you win on operating costs, and you win on transmission losses. Capital expense used to be much much higher a decade ago for solar, and emission standards for coal plants were not rigorously enforced for old installations, making coal appear cheaper. Of course, if you count the expenses related to the pollution and health damage done by coal plants, coal was always more expensive.
Headline is not possible at face value except that it is.
In fact the government appears to be spending one hundred billion dollars on solar in the next six years. By 2022.
Furthermore, "The Ministry of New and Renewable Energy provides 70 percent subsidy on the installation cost of a solar photovoltaic power plant in North-East states and 30 percentage subsidy on other regions." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_in_India
I'm all for renewable energy. Solar is great. At this point I don't see how the headline isn't clickbait bullshit.
There are multiple people saying "sounds too good to be true, but it isn't. Solar is great because I said so!". This guy provides evidence to support that it is not true and gets downvoted? Wut?
For the umptieth time HN hears only what it wants to hear.
>“Through transparent auctions with a ready provision of land, transmission and the like, solar tariffs have come down below thermal power cost,” Goyal said in a tweet.
http://cleantechnica.com/2016/01/22/solar-power-now-cheaper-...
See here for more https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11520789
http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/cat/longres.aspx?sk=42940.0
Also there labor cost, and the cost (and time) of navigating the political system to get permits are lower.
So a big project can be made a lot cheaper and faster from first shovel to producing electricity.
I really don't believe any country is sincere towards climate change. Every country puts their economy before others. So expecting another economy to help you is a foolish assumption.
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 illegally supporting domestic over international solar producers. Its like you are called a drug-addict first and when you try to wean off it on your own, you are accused of cheating the rehab centres. Excellent example of double standards.
Until the US sues them and the WTO rules against them. http://in.reuters.com/article/usa-india-solar-idINKCN0QV2FD2...
IMHO Free trade of commodities (food, solar cells etc.) is a good thing.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Agreement_on_Tariffs_a... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uruguay_Round / https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agreement_on_Agriculture [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doha_Development_Round
Don't get me wrong though, I'd prefer a world without the need for nation states and borders - but as long as we do have them IMO some of these international organisations are overstepping, and WTO is near the top of that list.
Of course having to protect this very wide range of domestic industries to maintain true independence will result in a huge loss of economic efficiency; so even if it is done right (without an "oops, we forgot the bit about the fertilizer" issue), not only do you have to be a rather large country with a lot of resources, you also have to accept a significantly lower standard of living and a degree of backwardness.
How much it helps I'm not sure; Britain for instance managed to feed itself during WWII even though it relied on its navy for food shipments and of course its cargo ships were constantly attacked. Certainly it did better than it would without a strong navy but with an independent domestic agriculture, since it would have been invaded.
On the other hand, presumably importing vitally important things without exporting vitally important things in return might put you in a bad bargaining position in international politics in times of peace, and maybe then domestic industries making sure that you can survive without imports are helpful; though even that doesn't seem like a huge problem unless you're importing from a cartel (and even very powerful cartels sometimes break down, the way OPEC did recently.)
As to agriculture - I sincerely think it's protected because producers simply bribe the people in the government; there was even research that the more concentrated and bigger ag producers are in a country, the more protected they are (even though a lot of the nominal arguments for protection are much stronger with many small producers than with few large ones typically employing fewer people), though I didn't look deeply into it and perhaps the researcher was biased by expecting this conclusion.
Few countries have been damaged as much by protectionism as has India, and fewer have had such great gains by its gradual elimination.
Doesn't EU do the same (i.e. tax Chinese solar panels to support local producers)?!
Don't expect logic, empiricism, or any kind of sanity to hold in international trade policies.
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.
Instead they try to develop inhouse production that they own and have to cover the initial capital costs.
There was a theory in ~19th century that Portugal/Spain trading wine for machinery from Great Britain mean it was equal to growing said machinery on fields - Britain shot away technologically and that was that. (I can't find the name of the theory though :/)
http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/free-trade-us-unemployment_b_...
Then provide tax credits and advantageous financing. A local content minimum insures that the local industry faces no incentive to become competitive and is simply a sinecure for well connected and politically powerful industrialists.
I've been tracking prices for solar for the last couple of years, and I've only seen them go down. Pulled the trigger and purchased our own install because they went down yet again this year.
Although I do agree government policy as a whole can be sorely lacking in some areas. The gentle, incremental approach has led us to fall behind almost all EU members in meeting renewable goals.
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, wind etc. which is suposedly bringing the price down, not up (though this may be inefficient).
Many countries in the so-called "developing" world, particularly those with oil-based economies such as Malaysia, Saudi-Arabia or Venezuela, are subsidising oil and coal based fuels to their population.
http://reneweconomy.com.au/2016/coalition-wants-to-build-1-2...
He's not requesting other countries help them, he's requesting other countries help themselves. Dependence on coal and being a last major country to replace coal with solar is foolish. Engery defines economies, and solar is the future.
Look who is talking: http://visualizingeconomics.com/blog/2007/12/09/comparing-po...
Until countries like India do not take steps towards sustainable human population, these are all pointless games.
Wealthy nations have been helping poorer ones for generations. Major institutions are devoted to it, such as the World Bank, World Health Organization, UNICEF, PEPFAR, and many, many more.
The world isn't entirely altruistic, of course, but there's a trendy notion these days, a sort of Ayn Randian (or Objectivist) idea, that it's entirely, unavoidably selfish, which is just as unrealistic.
Also, note that India is offering to help poorer nations with solar power, for free.
"I think a new coal plant would give you costlier power than a solar plant"
He thinks a NEW plant would give you costlier energy. Secondly, aren't the solar projects subsidized in a BIG way? I have seen many smart people say that solar is a sham. They say it's just an opportunist's play. Entrepreneurs want to get on the government's tit and the politicians are happy to portray themselves as environmentally friendly in front of the increasingly global warming wary voters.
If anyone can argue against that, please speak up. I haven't seen anything other than wishful thinking and naive people patting themselves on the back because someone got their hands on tax money.
-- http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-11-05/say-goodby...
Absolutely ridiculous. Can you imagine if we spent $4BN annually on nuclear energy and public outreach on how it isn't dangerous?
Yet another case where leftists would rather feel good than do good.
What a completely useless response. Why even bother commenting? Four words?
Since you can't be bothered to come up with a source, see pages 3-10 of the following document from the Congressional Budget Office. [1]
Renewables get the large majority of the cash, and nuclear isn't even close.
[1]: http://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/cbofiles/attachments/...
Capital costs [for solar] have fallen 60% in the past four years and could drop a further 40% reports Deutsche Bank
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.
You do the math.
All the talk about solar energy is making unfair comparisons and people are eating it up because it aligns with their wishful thinking. Just take as an example this article. The minister said that solar energy might be cheaper compared to energy from NEW coal plants. But everyone in here heard something else.
Solar and wind is for the majority not subsidized in India.
What you are referring to is the Min of New and Renewable Energy offering a VGF "viability gap funding" for certain very large projects termed UMPPs (Ultra Mega Power Plants) of 1000-4000MW. These are few and take-up has been poor due to the execution complexities.
India is adding 15-20k MW of Solar and 10k MW of Wind per year - the vast majority of which is completely unsubsidized. State electricity distributors tender for plants, and private developers bid a tariff they feel will support their ROI.
Apart from the US and its PTC structure, most of the huge capacity additions happening in wind and solar in Europe, Asia, Africa, China and India are happening from pure private unsubsidized auctions for power.
I don't want to enter into debates about the rest of the comment, but this is demonstratebly false in Europe from my experience as a EU citizen keeping an eye on funding programs and public discourse.
A quick google search says that the 2012 EC report on energy subsidies concluded close to 15 billion euros in subsidies for solar alone. The report DOES NOT include tax credits and DOES NOT include preferential lending support.
In addition, German citizen's bills have skyrocketed to the 2nd place (behind Denmark) because of solar power. German business refuses to eat up the solar power as part of a package because it will make them uncompetitive. This sentiment echoes around Europe, so I suggest you check your facts.
I don't even want to START on Chinese equipment manufacturers, many of whom face bankruptcy after the government dialed back on subsidies.
In all honesty, your opinion seems completely false based on the evidence I've seen.
Was to contrast cash grants from other forms of subsidies like feed-in tariffs, cheap loans, net-zero metering, etc. There's no reason to parse my comments like some kind of religious text - I will tell you what I mean.
Its basically an attempt to show that as a country, we can move to cleaner power if the right technology transfer is supported by US and Europe. It is the second step after the agreement to transfer US nuclear energy tech to India (which has not signed the Non Proliferation Treaty).
I think the US govt will have to open up its technology and patents to be used by India - if the climate change deal needs to be ratified. Otherwise there is zero chance of it being passed in the Indian parliament.
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 of bodies of water disrupting wildlife. Nuclear power comes with great risks of radiation leakage. Biofuel is hugely inefficient. It seems any solution comes with problems.
How much area do we have to cover with solar panels to power a largish metropolitan area?
[1]: http://www.google.com/patents/US20120285516
If you get high deployment in places with high urban sprawl (lots of rooftops), the long term prospects (say 35 years) negative power bills may become the norm - I know a number of people that already have them.
There's been dramatic gains in solar output and power efficiency in the past few years. The trajectories are looking good.
There's a pretty solid upper-bound on that.
I think seeing another 100% gain in affordable solutions is conservative, since 400% is what's possible.
When people compare say a million homes power needs, which is about 1000Gwh/month, in the non-distributed systems you need a 1000Gwh/month solution (think nuclear). However, this hypothetical 4-fold increase in efficiency would need only 7 solar panel (1.6m x 1m) per house for a net zero need distributed system.
If the right market incentives were there, and in a future market anticipating the swanson curve, someone may install say 25 panels (18 in excess of their need) to generate monthly passive income ("fans" of solar have 30+ panels)
Under this model, someone would be powering their house and two of their neighbors.
You can see how this can add up with the right market structure.
My argument is that in a world of a free-market entrepreneurial energy, you won't need a centralized power generator capable of powering 1 million homes. In fact, you may not need centralized power generation at all.
The future problems aren't going to be in power generation, but in storage.
And why would they! If an industry or country can get an advantage out of a renewable tech, it's not in their interests to fund studies if they could give the wrong answers. That's the reality of it. Biofuel was a good case in point, it's proponents are now back peddling pretty fast. The drive to profit forbids foresight.
You can add diesel cars, electric cars, and CFD, LED bulbs to that list too.
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2015/10/07/17/2D2AF4010000057...
Domestic cats kill 1.3 .. 4.0 billion birds a year just in the US:
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/cats-kill-more-one-billi...
Even the high estimates for bird kills by windmills are 2 to 3 orders of magnitude lower:
http://savetheeaglesinternational.org/new/us-windfarms-kill-...
Compared to the downsides of coal and gas and the risks of nuclear? I really don't think you should worry.
http://landartgenerator.org/blagi/wp-content/uploads/2009/08...
Its less than you think. Most of them could be on rooftops.
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...
Took the fun edge of an otherwise very pleasant island trip.
1.World's first solar power airport is in India http://money.cnn.com/2016/03/14/technology/india-cochin-sola...
2.Solar power from dams http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2014-11-10/news...
Even if you're not making profits (and so have no tax, and accelerated depreciation doesn't help you), commercial electricity rates in India are high, and you can expect break-even in about 3 years.
For residential consumers, break-even is 5-7 years, depending on which state you're in.
For your specific example, would need to know details to offer comments. At first glance, the quoted price seems way too high. Consider not installing batteries unless you absolutely must for your use-case.
http://www.vox.com/2016/4/18/11415510/solar-power-costs-inno...
Suggesting that costs are not falling fast enough to overcome value deflation. Seems quite US-focussed though. The numbers in the two articles don't seem directly comparable.
For the near term, financial engineers have not done solar any favors with recent "yieldco" abuses.[1] Though with value deflation, financial innovation and regulatory protection may not be able to save solar.
[1]http://on.wsj.com/1SW1BPH
When enough of the worlds billionaires and other powerful riffraff get spooked by climate change, you'll see carbon taxes imposed. And countries like China and India will simply phase out burning coal.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11520789
I would argue this trend is showing off. The oil producing countries pumping out their oil, because they don't see value reducing the capacity, while the oil prices are historically low.
Or you want to be the only one holding to accessible oil, and pretty much sole provider of oil for plastics and other non-fuel petrochemical products.