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India To Build World's Largest Solar Plant

Posted by Soulskill on from the go-big-or-go-home dept.

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."

20 of 253 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Not impressed until it hits jiggawatts by viperidaenz · · Score: 3, Insightful

    4,000MW is 4 jiggawatts...

  2. Re:Good for them.... by symbolset · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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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  3. Re:Convenient by rubycodez · · Score: 3, Informative

    and the sun is blazing in your land

  4. Re:I love numbers but.... by viperidaenz · · Score: 5, Informative

    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/...

  5. Re:77 sq kilos seems like a lot, but it isn't so b by symbolset · · Score: 5, Funny

    Line losses would ruin efficiency though. I'm pretty sure they're set on building it in India.

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  6. Epic-scale photovoltaic by steveha · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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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    1. Re:Epic-scale photovoltaic by slew · · Score: 5, Interesting

      So, what am I missing? Does India have lots of factories making photovoltaic cells or something?

      Why not Solar Thermal? As I understand it...

      1. Lack of local companies that make solar thermal equipment (aka CSP or concentrated solar power).
      2. Lack of experience with large deployment unlike PV like 50:1 in MW to date (no experience means no reference projects to predict ROI for contracting companies or investment banks)
      3. Lack of water resources for cooling (most simple solar thermal needs reliable-access to cooling water to avoid equipment malfunction).

      Of course India could deploy a minimal water solar thermal solution (e.g., air cooled or maybe Heller towers), but they have even less experience with that and most government funded programs require a minimum make-local percentage.

    2. Re:Epic-scale photovoltaic by tp1024 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      It's cheaper.

      There is a glut of photovoltaics on the world market ever since the european countries cut the subsidies. Most notably Spain and, more recently, Germany. Which is responsible for the sudden drop in prices. It is not better technology, despite what the propaganda claims (otherwise solar power companies wouldn't go bankrupt all over Germany).

      And yes, solar thermal is more useful on paper. Unfortunately it takes up just as much space as PV and needs lots of water for it cooling towers. However, solar thermal depends on very stable weather patterns. It cannot tolerate cloudy days very well - so you'd best build it in a desert, where cooling water is kind of rare as you can imagine. You'd need 24 million cubic meters of cooling water per year for an equal sized solar-thermal power plant.

      What would be needed for PV to work is storage. Hydrogen/methane seems to be the only plausible/scalable solution so far. Unfortunately, even with the best technology we have on the planet, you'll need at least 3kWh electricty to get 1kWh of electricity back out of storage. Thus the average power of the power plant will drop from 800MW down to about 500MW, assuming that at least some part of the power will be used directly. (The amount of storage that is necessary depends on a lot of factors, mostly what power is available from other sources and how variable the weather patterns and seasons are. So 500MW is just a ballpark figure.)

  7. Re:Good for them.... by Hadlock · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

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  8. It's not even comparable to a single nuclear plant by tp1024 · · Score: 4, Informative

    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?

  9. Re:77 sq kilos seems like a lot, but it isn't so b by symbolset · · Score: 3, Funny

    Two nuns and a lumberjack walk into a bar. The first nun turns to the lumberjack and asks "do you know how to ruin a joke?"

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  10. Re: 77 sq kilos seems like a lot, but it isn't so by arvindsg · · Score: 4, Informative

    Aravali hills have Rajasthan on on Levard side, not even much rain there even during monsoons

  11. Here's how it compares to 4 nuclear plants... by KonoWatakushi · · Score: 4, Insightful

    "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.

  12. Re:well that's a shame by PPH · · Score: 4, Informative

    spider web that got caught in a hurricane.

    No kidding.

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  13. Re:Weather Forecast by jma05 · · Score: 3, Informative

    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.

  14. Re:I love numbers but.... by sir-gold · · Score: 3, Funny

    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

  15. Re:It's not even comparable to a single nuclear pl by willy_me · · Score: 3, Informative

    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.

  16. Re:The way of the future by fnj · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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

    India has an installed capacity of 234 GW. I'm not sure that adding solar power of less than 2% of that figure counts as a "big step away from fossil fuels". Necessary beginning step, sure. Commendable, arguably. Significant, maybe. Precursor to "big", possibly.

  17. Re:I love numbers but.... by Smauler · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.

  18. It just illustrates again by Chrisq · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.