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India To Build World's Largest Solar Plant
ananyo writes "India has pledged to build the world's most powerful solar plant. With a nominal capacity of 4,000 megawatts, comparable to that of four full-size nuclear reactors, the 'ultra mega' project will be more than ten times larger than any other solar project built so far, and it will spread over 77 square kilometres of land — greater than the island of Manhattan. Six state-owned companies have formed a joint venture to execute the project, which they say can be completed in seven years at a projected cost of US$4.4 billion. The proposed location is near Sambhar Salt Lake in the northern state of Rajasthan."
4,000MW is 4 jiggawatts...
Believe it or not, even with 1.2 billion people India still has vast tracts of empty land. This 30 square miles is not a big deal.
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and the sun is blazing in your land
Compared to nuclear, there's no radioactive waste to dispose of, there's no nuclear proliferation worries and there's no lengthy and costly decommissioning process.
There's also no risk of Fukushima/Chernobyl/Long Island/etc
Projected Nuclear Power Plant Construction Costs Are Soaring
The construction cost estimates for new nuclear power plants are very uncertain and have increased significantly in recent years. Companies that are planning new nuclear units are currently indicating that the total costs (including escalation and financing costs) will be in the range of $5,500/kW to $8,100/kW or between $6 billion and $9 billion for each 1,100MW plant.
http://www.synapse-energy.com/...
Congratulations to India for leading the world on a big step away from fossil fuels.
This is what all the world should be doing if we are going to reduce the effects of global warming and climate change.
4.4 billion for 4GW is $1100/KW, which is about comparable to simple cycle natural gas turbines, IIRC.
But NG is peaking and dispatchable as hell, unlike solar.
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Line losses would ruin efficiency though. I'm pretty sure they're set on building it in India.
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According to TFA, this will be a huge photovoltaic plant. But as I understand it, solar thermal is more efficient, and for a large centralized project like that, I would have expected solar thermal.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S...
Does anyone know why they are going photovoltaic for this project?
Photovoltaic certainly does have some pluses: it's simple, no moving parts. But for a project of this capacity I should think they would go for the most efficient solution.
Plus a thermal solution with molton salt would provide a nontrivial amount of storage, for power after dark.
So, what am I missing? Does India have lots of factories making photovoltaic cells or something?
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Too bad their electrical infrastructure is like a spider web that got caught in a hurricane.
However, this is smarter than it seems on the surface. If you lose 60% of your electricity during transport due to crappy, outdated lines and equipment, it's a hell of a lot better if solar was the source. If it was a CO2-emitting source, that's an awful lot worse. If it's the sun, you really didn't lose anything.
I am concerned about their ability to store the electricity for night time or when it's not sunny. Even the US hasn't perfected that one.
30 square miles of unfarmable salt flats, solar is a pretty good use of the space, really. Not to mention jump starting the local solar panel industry something fierce.
moox. for a new generation.
First of all: It will generate less energy than that. Averaged over the year about 800MW. The amount of energy it will generate between 6pm and 6am is roughly zilch. During the short time around noon, when it will generate on the order of 3+GW (depending on weather, season, condition of the solar cells etc.), there will be no industry capable of actually using it, because 2-4 hours of electricity a day is simply not worth the investment. (Before and after this time, the power drops off quickly.) Even 8 hours would be too short, because you'll need 2 or 3 factories working in parallel for 8 hours a day to produce as much as a single factory can in 16 or 24 hours.
Finally wrap your head around the fact that quality of service cannot be compared by using peak power generation.
P.S.: Yes, noon is just the right time to get your air conditioning started, but unfortunately, when it comes to India the question is mostly: What air-conditioning are you talking about?
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Aravali hills have Rajasthan on on Levard side, not even much rain there even during monsoons
77 sqkm=77e+6 sqm
Solar constant approx 1300w/sqm
=>total incident power = approx 1e+11 W.
Declared output 4000MW =4e9 W.
if assume this to be the peak power, the conversion efficiency is 4% - WTH??
if assuming this to be power averaged over an entire daylight period.... mmmm... let's ignore axis titl and assume equatorial position=> (-pi/2, pi/2) Sun's ecliptic travel over daylight. Cosine law integrated over the (-pi/2, pi/2) gives a factor of 2, while the max area (if the sun would be straight on top the entire day) would be pi. So, an averaging (fill) factor of 2/pi=0.64. so, if we are speaking 4000MV averaged over the day, the peak power would be 6283.18 MW. Dividing to 1e+11W=> conversion efficiency: 6.28%.
What type solar panels are they going to use??!!! The regular/consumer grade PV panels are somewhere around 11-12%!!
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"The solar photovoltaic power plant will have an estimated life of 25 years and is expected to supply 6.4 billion kilowatt-hours per year, according to official figures."
For reference, a single 1GWe nuclear plant operating at (a conservative) 0.85 capacity factor will produce 7.45 TW-hours/year of reliable power. So this solar plant isn't the equivalent of one reactor, much less four. Considering that nuclear plants typically last 60 years and AP1000s are near $2/W in China, the solar option costs five times as much over that time frame.
While this solar farm is idle at night and unreliable by day, the transmission infrastructure must be built to handle the full capacity of the equivalent four nuclear plants, and it will sit idle most of the time. The solar option makes no economic sense, when instead they could purchase two actual 1GWe nuclear plants, and have 15 TW-hours/year of reliable power for more than twice as long.
Rajastan is the Arizona of India with its Thar desert
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Plenty of sunshine. Not cloudy at all. Not enough power infrastructure. Cheap, non-arable land.
Solar is a no-brainer for Rajastan.
Your assumption is that the panels will be edge-to-edge, covering 100% of that 77 sqkm area. Given that the panels need to tilt for efficiency, and you obviously can't tilt a single 77sqkm panel, there has to be some gap between each independently-tiltable set of panels.
Also, industrial-scale solar collection is usually done using focusing mirrors and liquid sodium, not PV panels
I like that you put forth the effort to do the math though
The Shoreham nuclear plant was built on the north shore of Long Island, but was never operated.
This generation can be used to offset the additional load of air conditioners - it is not going to be the only power source. Considering that air conditioners use the most power when it is sunny, it actually works out all right.
Doing it may be a no brainer, but that doesn't guarantee profit marking it up for other people.
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Now add the cost of decommissioning the plant and the ongoing cost of fuel. Then the cost of storing the waste fuel for longer than civilization has existed...
That plant chews through 500 tons of fuel a year.
Even 8 hours would be too short, because you'll need 2 or 3 factories working in parallel for 8 hours a day to produce as much as a single factory can in 16 or 24 hours.
India recently announced a National Electricity Grid with southern grid joining, the north, east and west. So its a single grid which is supposed to do all sort of wonders (which I don't know much about, but sounds good anyway.)
Plus Rajasthan borders Delhi and Gujarat...two of the most industrially developed states which will consume any electricity thrown at it, and Madhya Pradesh - one of the backward states - think of Appalachia - where your contention "what air-conditioning in India" rings somewhat true.
So me thinks the people behind the planning and execution are on to something...and definitely they know better about the local conditions than we on Slashdot.
Tat Tvam Asi
India already has nuclear weapons, as do Pakistan, so I'm not sure what nuclear proliferation you're talking about.
For most of December, the central European wholesale price of electricity was negative. Yes, that means people paid other people to take their electricity away. This was a direct result of reliance on wind power. This is _not_ a good thing.
The total construction and decommission costs of wind farms and the problems associated with them have not been realised yet. They may well be lower, but until we actually start taking them down and getting rid of the tonnes of concrete and other infrastructure for each turbine, we don't really know.
But NG is peaking and dispatchable as hell, unlike solar.
Or you could combine the two
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
Pakistan and India had equal opportunities to develop after partition. They both took different directions.
Now one has its flag on the moon and the other has a moon on its flag.
I mean, I understand how it could be unprofitable for those who paid to build the turbines, but cheap electricity has got to be good for the economy as a whole.
Unless the subsidies encourage people to do otherwise wildly unprofitable stuff. That money has to come from somewhere.
In both of these cases, the subsidy is a good investment for the government, but would be a bad investment for private industry (with the possible exception of very large companies that have subsidiaries in a very broad range of endeavours).
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That's measured out in space. On the ground, under clear skies, normal to the incident rays, it's under 1000 W/m^2. Many things affect the calculations, which don't all fit neatly on the back of an envelope. For one: you can't ignore latitude and assume it's at the equator. Sambhar Salt Lake is located at about 28N, so you are already down to maybe 700 W/m^2 on horizontal ground at noon on a perfectly clear day. Second, the capture and conversion efficiency of most panels, even with anti-reflective glass, is relatively poor, meaning that you don't get much power at until the incidence angle gets above, say, 15. That will tend to make that cosine integral more like cos^2: more concentrated in the middle of the curve, much less at the tails. Third: I don't know how the weather is at this location, but surely it isn't perfectly clear every day of the year. When the monsoons come rolling through, there may be days or weeks when it is overcast. Last: there's fill-factor. You won't be able to carpet the entire area with wall-to-wall panels - there will be streets and avenues to allow any part of the array to be reached.
Incorporating solar panels into low income housing doesn't sound like a bad idea so long as the panel infrastructure were stable and went undamaged by the residents. They get housing, and they provide themselves and others energy.
Quite well in the middle of a desert.
Here's a graphic example of that:
http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2008/08/solar-to-reboot.html
Even what is possibly the coldest place on Earth with a very long dark winter is a good place for solar panels - even if they are just tied vertically to poles!
Here's another:
http://icestories.exploratorium.edu/dispatches/wp-content/uploads/2008/11/pn31.jpg
So comparing a 4GW peak power solar to 4 nuclear plants is bollocks.
If information wants to be free, why does my internet connection cost so much?
Its simple math. The sun is only directly pointing at the panels at 90deg at noon. So when the sun is a 45deg compared to the panels you get about 70% of peak output etc. Integrate over a full day, where negative angles give zero output. You get an area of 2 between 0 and 180deg of the sine curve. The total peak area is 2pi. Divide, and yes i had a typo in my R, its ~32%, not 17%. So its average of 1.2GW. But that is for perfect weather and for a permanent summer.
Talking about cost per watt is a bullshit way of comparing solar to something that can work at any time of day.
If information wants to be free, why does my internet connection cost so much?