Slashdot Mirror
Solar Is Now Cheaper Than Coal, Says India Energy Minister (climatechangenews.com)
An anonymous reader cites a report on Climate Change News: India is on track to soar past a goal to deploy more than 100 gigawatts of solar power by 2022, the country's energy minister Piyush Goyal said on Monday. Speaking at the release of a 15-point action plan for the country's renewable sector, Goyal said he was now considering looking at "something more" for the fast-growing solar sector. "I think a new coal plant would give you costlier power than a solar plant," he said. "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." In the past financial year, nearly 20GW of solar capacity has been approved by the government, with a further 14GW planned through 2016 according to the Union Budget.More details here. "I met this man in Meghalaya, who has a solar set-up for his homestay. He mentioned that only the initial setting up costs you much," Deepika Gumaste, a travel writer told Slashdot. "But once you have set it up, the operating costs are not much and more importantly, the environmental costs also go down. Good on your pockets too in the long run." It is worth pointing out that India is currently among the handful of nations that is increasing its coal consumption, according to a Guardian report from late last year. Also see: India aims to become 100% electric vehicle nation by 2030.
...a large majority of their population is shitting in the bushes.
Seems to me some priorities are a bit off.
But not at night
When you consider that each has about the same environmental impact, one is not really cheaper than the other. You're just playing a game of whack-a-mole with the pollution.
With coal, you're polluting at the generation site. With solar, you're polluting at the manufacturing site. But, make no mistake, growing silicon consumes a ton of energy, a ton of water, and then by the time you mine enough lithium to keep the country going at night, I seriously doubt you're going to be easier on the environment than coal.
Solar may be in some contexts cheaper, but that may not continue for the long-term. Solar power experiences value deflation, where the more solar power there is, the less it is worth (because unlike conventional power sources, it all peaks at the same time). This can lead to serious limits on how much solar a given area is likely to have http://www.vox.com/2016/4/18/11415510/solar-power-costs-innovation. Either the cost per a panel needs to go down by a lot, or the storage and transmission costs need to improve by a lot. The last link includes an estimate that in order to really get solar to succeed one needs an approximate cost of around $0.25 per watt. If one improves batteries and transmission that may not be necessary, especially if we have enough other sources of power, such as wind, nuclear, hydroelectric (which unfortunately has probably gotten close to its peak in much of Europe and North America), tidal, and geothermal. Nuclear is going to definitely be a part of any long-term solution, but one has silly things now like Sweden trying to give up all fossil fuels at the same time they phase out nuclear power http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/sweden-first-fossil-fuel-free-country-in-the-world-a6684641.html and they call that "green."
At least in most places, we're very far from where solar can be even without improved transmission and storage. In much of the US, you can get home solar and have it pay back in a few years. The solar panel cost guide is a good place to start http://www.solarpanelscostguide.com/. Or, if you want to help other people out while helping the environment you can donate to Everybody Solar http://www.everybodysolar.org/ which helps get solar panels for non-profits like schools, homeless shelters and science museums. Every little bit helps.
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How are these related??
They aren't, and most of those are old enough to be archived... actually, they all are...
That guy is incompetent. The way he compares cost of each solution just doesn't make sense at all. You need to compare over a lifetime the total energy produced in both cases including maintenance costs. If you cannot produce electricity at night, what is the cost of this? You have to buy electricity outside the country? Build another facility just to provide electricity during the night? This guy should be fired.
Achille Talon
Hop!
Even if you don't believe in climate change or you don't care about climate change, stories about new types of electric power and increasing competitiveness of solar power falls pretty strongly under the "news for nerds" ideal.
There have been mixed messages coming from China lately. The countryâ(TM)s carbon emissions may be declining more than a decade earlier than anticipated, thanks in part to reductions in coal power. And yet, China is planning 210 new coal-fired power plants despite existing overcapacity. Why?
http://bit.ly/1qCWXzc
Is China doubling down on its coal
power bubble?
Over 210 new coal-fired power plant projects being permitted in China -
Version updated in Feb 2016
http://bit.ly/1Shj4Gf
NREL forecasts that if we build a modern grid and implement smart metering then we can potentially beat the problems of regional and daily variability in Solar and wind. But short of that these will cap the amount of this that can be deployed in the intial stages.
If you don't do that then you can run into a problem where you need to have energy sources spooled up but not producing to cover short falls, expected and unplanned.
Thus what we need is a breadbasket of many different renewable energies including geothermal, ocean, hydro. We may need things like the thermal-solar plants not just for their own power production but as batteries to store energy from PV solar and wind.
If we just keep pushing the thread on the cheapest possible renewables (PV solar and wind) we will be building a fragile system.
Germany discovered that it's tax incentive system didn't adequately take those effects into account. As a result it's actually shifting from nuke and natural gas to coal in a race to the bottom to have the cheapest form of neccessary backup power. It appears that they may stall out on further deployment until they can remedy the right balance.
the US has the advantage of a much larger mass and many time zones (not to mention more sun-- germany is compared to alaska). Thus we can buffer across this range if we build the grids. And smart metering can be more effective if we can use it across many regions as well. Smart metering offfers an approach to buying time and smoothing surge demands to allow other systems to spool up.
So the risk we face with something like a carbon tax or other flat incentives for solar and wind is that there's no inherent balancing of the funding across the breadbasket of sources, many of which might not be competitive in terms of KW/hr.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Not cheapness, but storage.
Have a cheap, easy way to store energy for days without leakage? You just became the next Rockefeller / Carnegie/ Vanderbilt / Gates.
Laptops, phones, electric cars, solar panels companies, and nuclear power companies (they can't transmit the power very far so the plants are uncomfortably close to cities) will beat your door down trying to shove money.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
I know India. Was born there. Almost everyday the minister of this or minister of that will make big announcement about something. Usually not much happens after the announcement. India does improve, things do happen in India. But usually at a vastly different time scale than what is announced by the ministers.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
So you'd be ok with articles about ecological studies related to say the beef industry because it also deals with climate change and power sources?
That all sounds great, if most of them weren't propaganda pieces with little basis in reality.
For example:
India is on track to soar past a goal to deploy more than 100 gigawatts of solar power by 2022
Great, wonderful... maybe that'll power all the air conditioners that Indians generally don't have (but some do I suppose).
It will help with daytime peak power, and that's a good thing. But the assumption seems to be among many people that if they can do that, they can just go ahead and go all wind/solar.
---
What is missing is the big picture conversation. Lots of stories posted about specific detail points that support a narative, without actually HAVING a narrative that has a beginning, middle, and end.
All of the stories posted for the past month are nice, but they don't fix the CO2 problem.
Even if you don't believe in climate change or you don't care about climate change
I do, and I do care. CO2 is a massive problem, but none of the stuff being done is going to alter the outcome by enough to matter. That is the great lie, that people can take comfort buying a hybrid or installing LEDs and they are saving the planet.
I suppose it helps, much in the way a bucket brigade would have bought another 10 min for the Titanic to not sink, but everyone would just be fooling themselves. The changes required to hold global temps below 2c rise over 1800 are simply not going to happen, they are way, way too extreme.
Sure. And if that's in the context of synthetic meat which is a clear tech thing, I think that would pretty obviously fit under what Slashdot is supposed to be about.
The changes required to hold global temps below 2c rise over 1800 are simply not going to happen, they are way, way too extreme.
Probably true. But maybe we can keep it below 3C rise, or 4C rise, while at the same time shifting away from finite fossil fuels. And you can't make a big step without starting with a smaller one.
I wonder what point you thought you were making here. Whatever it was, you failed.
They're user submitted and user approved. Boy democracy sure is great until the things you don't like get voted in, eh?
I was just thinking what a shame it is that the Americas have a long north-south aspect ratio. If we could just rotate the planet axis so that the north-south axis of the Americas aligned with the east-west equator we could have rolling generation across dozens of time zones. I suppose other countries might object to this pole shift, though they might make nice ski resorts for us.
More seriously, it seems like europe and aisa do have more time zones all together. Do they share solar power across their borders? Making every country solve this problem independently withing its own bordered seems like a poor approach.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Probably true. But maybe we can keep it below 3C rise, or 4C rise
I don't think we'll hold to 4c either, the numbers are what they are...
Pulling numbers from the climate scientists who have been warning us from years, what I see is that the proven reserves of coal, oil, and natural gas in the ground is now over 3 trillion tons worth of CO2. We can emit, give or take, half a trillion tons more CO2 and have a better than 50% chance to hold under 2 degrees C.
But those 3 trillion tons of CO2 are already accounted for on the balance sheets of the world, from Saudi Aramco to Exxon to Russia, the world's financial markets expect that to all be burned. We are spending tens of billions to find even MORE coal, oil, and natural gas.
To hold to 2 degrees, we have to leave 80% of what is proven reserves in the ground. Politically and economically, there is exactly zero chance that will happen.
We spent 150 years getting addicted to fossil fuels, it will likely take a hundred years to wean ourselves off of this stuff. By that time, it will be far too late when it comes to CO2. We probably passed the point of no return 30 years ago and probably the "easy point" to change it 50 years ago.
But since no one wants to hear that, we keep talking about hybrids and solar panels, how much is being installed, while ignoring total numbers because they are ugly as sin.
Yeah, if only we had some sort of distributed load shifting infrastructure in everybody's home... Maybe like 400,000 or so to kick things off.
I suppose it helps, much in the way a bucket brigade would have bought another 10 min for the Titanic to not sink, but everyone would just be fooling themselves. The changes required to hold global temps below 2c rise over 1800 are simply not going to happen, they are way, way too extreme.
That could be but there's nothing wrong with cleaning up your own backyard instead of becoming a NIMBY hypocrite. If we're screwed then we're screwed. The effort may not help much but what is it hurting?
Really? And where exactly is one to find that much raw material for batteries? REMs are not all that cheap, and as demand goes up, the fact that China controls 95% of the world market is going to bite them in the ass.
Bearded Dragon
It's not that Solar has become cheaper, but coal is being regulated out of existence.
Some plants have even shut down. If you followed along he law of supply and demand in high school you can see where prices would go.
~ People that think they are better than anyone else for any reason are the cause of all the strife in the world.
Coal will be used for a few existing plants but Natural Gas is the cheap source of power today at least in the US. I am not sure about India
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
My small solar system has a breakeven time of 4 years, after that it's free!
What ISN'T addressed in all these news stories are two things:
1. 24/7 dependable power
2. The per-KWh price of that power
---
I'm perfectly happy to have tons of solar, I have nothing against solar at all, bring it on.
So long as my per KWh price stays around 10 cents per KWh and the power is 24/7 dependable and I can use as much or as little as I want, whenever I want.
Address THOSE points and you'll find me on board with wind and solar.
What I REALLY see however is that power prices will go up and dependability will go down.
Note: Telling me that I can no longer use my appliances whenever I want is part of the dependability going down.
Natural gas is cheaper than coal But last year in the US we put in more solar than natural gas and more natural gas and coal in new generation, but the thing about solar is there's a breakeven time and from that point on it's free
Parent post is a snarky ill informed troll
Now most people in the country have not seen smart grids so maybe I'm being to hard on you. Or maybe I explained it poorly in my first post.
. Wind and Solar need buffering. That's what I said in the parent post. How much? well less that you probably think. There's two aspects of it. the first is predictable variation. July will suck for wind but be great for solar. The other is daily variation with clouds. Large grids pretty much buffer local variations out. See the article I linked to. But instant variation? well we actually have that right now and it's an issue for existing power supply now. But smart meters address this quite nicely. They mean you need LESS spooled up backup power not more as you think. Your water heater can pause for a while and pocket a rebate to boot. It's all fast auctions that you never see. Maybe you have some thermal storage units-- well charge them up when power is cheap at auction. The result is load shifting that buys time for alternative sources to spool up if there's a concerted change in demand or concerted loss in production. But it also means they may not have to spool up at all if the fluctuation is transient.
Smart grids are coming on line in selected communities. Often ones with a lot of renewables by the way such as in New Mexico. It is still a pilot effort. But it will spread.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Now, where are shipstones when you need them? Drat!
Yes, a magical device that spits out unlimited free energy does tend to be cheaper than dead trees dug out of the ground. It always was. It always will be. What the heck math were they using before to say it wasn't, something with a static time period?
Well, water is one solution to this, but generally that means consuming and polluting your water. One the other hand, there are ways to deal with waste that often require... (guess what) ... power!
One of the simpler versions of this would be a solar composting outhouse. Heat the waste up to kill all the bacteria etc and you're left with a bunch of nice usable soil.
If prices go up, they go up. That is going to happen no matter what. But since it's likely, in the medium term, integration of renewables will be staged, I doubt in many places you're going to be forced to dry your clothes at 2am. However, you may end up with a pricing model that encourages that. So what? That's why timers were invented.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Much of India doesn't even *have* 24/7 power, so Solar power is actually a pretty damn good fit. Solar is definitely cheaper in this situation. Minimal battery (just needed to stabilize the load and handle occasional occlusions from clouds), the panels, and the inverter and you are done. Night-time LED lighting can be battery powered.
Big deal in India which has virtually no reliable national power infrastructure.
-Matt
For someone who seems to be so aware of the issue you'll also note that there is no "point of no return." So fuck off.
If prices go up, they go up. That is going to happen no matter what.
Nonsense, they don't have to go up any faster than the rate of inflation.
A few places in the world have done a good job of doubling or tripling their power prices, such as Germany.
I doubt in many places you're going to be forced to dry your clothes at 2am. However, you may end up with a pricing model that encourages that. So what? That's why timers were invented.
First, why should I have to change? I get the same power rate any time of day or night. Why in the world do you think it is somehow a "good thing" to be forced to time of day pricing?
Second, timers don't help when my wife wants to do 4 loads of laundry on Saturday.
First, why should I have to change? I get the same power rate any time of day or night. Why in the world do you think it is somehow a "good thing" to be forced to time of day pricing?
So the rest of us aren't forced to subsidize the expenses of accommodating your needs putting a higher demand on the neighborhood supply.
Some of us feel that's letting you take advantage of us.
Not to mention the aggregate demand on power production, which instead of being level, tends to spike then plummet, causing further problems.
Now, you, taking advantage of others, probably support continuing that idea, but maybe we'd rather not let you go on being a parasite.
And don't say we didn't try to do things the nice way. We did. But you kept right on insisting on drawing more and more power, till everybody else got fed up with the brownouts you were causing.
So no more. No more. Stop. Desist. You don't get to be a thief forever.
Same with your pool. Yes, you want one. But you can't just empty and refill it any time you want, that makes everybody else's pressure go down. You will also likely find yourself paying more for that much water. And we won't let you just flush it down the sewer or the storm drains at will either.
Much of India doesn't even *have* 24/7 power
Perhaps, but I suspect that the parts that don't, can't afford this either...
The parts that do, already have coal...
http://articles.economictimes....
At the end of the day, big business needs to sell the coal they have, so solutions will be found to sell it and burn it.
Meet the new site. Same as the old site.
There is no such thing as 'catastrophic man-made global warming'.
What is the difference between the maximum and minimum temperatures in your country? About 40 degrees? 50 degrees? Yet we're being led to believe that a (non-existent) increase of 0.5C over ten years is a big deal?
www.climatedepot.com
www.wattsupwiththat.com
it's a step in good direction..but have they thought about recycling all those used/damaged/__ batteries coming out of those electric vehicles?
"I met this man in Meghalaya, who has a solar set-up for his homestay. He mentioned that only the initial setting up costs you much," Deepika Gumaste, a travel writer told Slashdot. "But once you have set it up, the operating costs are not much and more importantly, the environmental costs also go down. Good on your pockets too in the long run."
Did this guy just extrapolate grid-sized solar capacity from one guy's home solar setup???
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.