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India Unveils the World's Largest Solar Power Plant (aljazeera.com)
Kamuthi in Tamil Nadu, India is now home to the world's largest solar plant that adds 648 MW to the country's generating capacity. Previously, the Topaz Solar Farm in California, which was completed two years ago and has a capacity of 550 MW, held the title. Aljazeera reports: The solar plant, built in an impressive eight months, is cleaned every day by a robotic system, charged by its own solar panels. At full capacity, it is estimated to produce enough electricity to power about 150,000 homes. The project is comprised of 2.5 million individual solar modules, and cost $679 million to build. The new plant has helped nudge India's total installed solar capacity across the 10 GW mark, according to a statement by research firm Bridge to India, joining only a handful of countries that can make this claim. As solar power increases, India is expected to become the world's third-biggest solar market from next year onwards, after China and the U.S.
$679 million for 550MW. A bargain.
So that's the largest solar plant in the world and it only outputs 648 MW?
I'm having trouble finding something to compare this to since the nuclear plant near me generates 846 MW with one unit (total 1824 MW) course it was built back in 1974 at a cost of $901,500,000 so about $494,243 per MW (Back in 1974) about $2,423,384 per MW in today's dollars and this project only cost $1,047,839 per MW. Hmmmm. I wonder if you could find a way to make solar panels work at night for less than 2 mil per MW?
Minimum threshold fixed. Thanks!
The costs are always in the maintenance, an important part of operations that Eastern cultures usually ignore, anyway.
I don't want to belittle this because India is one of the places where solar actually makes sense. But even there its capacity factor is only about 20%. Compared to 14.5% for the continental U.S. and about 10% in Germany. Capacity factor is the ratio of actual electricity produced (after taking into account night, weather, angle of the sun, downtime due to maintenance, etc) to nameplate (maximum) capacity.
So while it's capacity is 648 MW, its average electrical generation over a year will only be about 20% that, or a more modest 130 MW. Electricity costs about 8 cents/kWh in India. So payback time (excluding operational expenses and interest on loans) will be
($679 million) / (0.2 * 648 MW * 3600 sec/hour * 8766 hours/year * $0.08/kWh) = 7.47 years
India is one of the better places for solar. (The 150,000 home figure seems a little screwy, since 648 MW / 150,000 homes = 4320 Watts, which is about 3.5x the electricity consumption of the average U.S. home. I suspect the 150,000 homes figure already took into account capacity factor, and is not "at full capacity" as TFA claims.)
I've never understood how that could be correct it wasn't manufactured for free all resources used in its manufacture had to be paid for and the company that made them made a profit.
Are they manufactured in some mythical land where electricity is free?
Minimum threshold fixed. Thanks!
Yes but that's a base load solution.
This solar plant is a peak load solution.
You need both.
Having a nuke idle all night is a very expensive waste.
Yeah, how dare they not include the cost of stellar fusioning in their energy budget!
Let's see, 24 hours at 2.5-3 billion Kelvin...
648 MW ... .0007% of India's electricity consumption, based upon 2011 figures... at that rate, they'd need to cover a fifth of the country with PV panels, never mind night time load.
That's a hell of a lot of land for
Your numbers are way off.
648MW / .0007% = 92 TW
All of human civilization consumes about 500 exajoules of energy per year, which is only about 16 TW. (Of which electricity is only a fraction, BTW)
Covering 1/5 of India with solar panels would actually potentially generate enough energy to power the entire planet several times over.
When I was a child, our field trips were to actual fields, where we helped plant the potatoes and bale hay. I was three when I got my first mule and we used to plow five acres before breakfast. Once I reached five years of age, we ate the mule and I pulled the plow my damn self.
No sir, we didn't have any fancy "field trips" where you visit some industrial park and have some pencil neck tell you how you too can grow up and sit in a cubicle picking pencil shavings out of your ass.
You are welcome on my lawn.
The average adult I've talked to knows jack shit about electricity generation and supply. If you tell them that people in big hamster wheels produce their electricity they'll smile and nod. I need to move apparently.
heat salt with the sun and you get a base load capacity (throughout the night)
that combined with mini nuclear reactors seem to hold the answer to power generation... critiques ?
John
I recall hearing a calculation on the radio: if we keep expanding our energy use at the present rate, in 2000 years, we will need more energy than all the stars in our galaxy produce.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
Please! "Free-range organic assets".
It really puts into scale Doc Brown's 1.21GW.
With the fact that solar panels require more energy to make frames, fab the PV junctions, and make the inverters, then move to a site and install, than they ever will gain back in their usable (20 year) lifespan, how is this a net gain?
Maybe they'll build a solar panel factory right next to it. 648MW ought to be good for a few solar panels per day.
No sig today...
Your slip is showing. First of all, joules are energy and TW are power, so your conversion is nonsense. Secondly, assuming you actually meant TWh, not TW, you are off by several orders of magnitude. The total worldwide electricity production in 2012 was 18,000 to 22,000 TWh
I recall hearing a calculation on the radio: if we keep expanding our energy use at the present rate, in 2000 years, we will need more energy than all the stars in our galaxy produce.
True, but we won't be around to see it, because of the black hole that will be created by the mass of all of the disco records we'll have produced by then.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
Yet they don't pretend they do and pontificate about "capacity factor" instead of understanding that some things you want to run all of the time and some things you only need every now and again.
Errrr, if you didn't mean to belittle him, then why add "Didn't you people do field trips when you were children?"
Perhaps you meant to say "I do mean to belittle you" or "I am about to belittle you" or "I will try to belittle you"?
My pics.
His math works out, averaged over a year:
500e18 J/(356*24*3600 s) = 15.85e12 W
The payback time is around half a year, worst case up to three years.
And it NEVER was longer than 10 years, and that was over 40 years ago!!!
You must be both:
- stone old
- and never reading new since your birth
(how did you end up here on /. ? )
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
So it cost a good fraction of a billion dollars BUT it's a magical machine that basically spits out money so who cares? Except, does anyone know how long a modern solar panel like the one they'd be using lasts before it expires or degrades or whatever? Or even what the overall maintenance expense is? Because to me solar panels seem like a class AAA rated bond on steroid when it comes to ROI.
I'm all for exploring alternative forms of generating electricity. The continued investment in these technologies will be very helpful in building a future that generates more power with less pollution. I also think that it is useful to look at these numbers in context. The state of Tamil Nadu generates around 23,000 MW of electricity using many types of fuels and technologies. Coal fired power plants account for about 10,000 MW making it the single largest source of power for the state. This is similar to many developing areas. What is impressive is that they are able to use so many different means of producing power. Hydro electric in Tamil Nadu is 2,200 MW, Nuclear is 1,000 MW, and 'other renewable' a hefty 8,000 MW. In comparison the Three Gorges Dam, located in China has a capacity of 22,500 MW. It is the largest power station in the world, also the largest construction project ever.
if we keep expanding our energy use at the present rate, in 2000 years, we will need more energy than all the stars in our galaxy produce.
In America, per capita electrical energy consumption peaked in 2007, is now 6.4% lower, and is continuing to decline. If this trend continues, in 2000 years, the fission of a single atom of U-235 will supply all of our energy needs.
... 500 exajoules of energy per year ...
Your slip is showing. First of all, joules are energy and TW are power ...
He said "joules per year" ... which is power. There is nothing wrong with his units or his math.
I think the correct reading is: "It's not my intention to belittle you, but I just did anyway". Like, it was a collateral damage belittling.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
The belief that the EROEI ratio of solar panels is less than one is pretty common. Also common is the belief that they only last ten years.
One of the issues for UK solar PV is the initial cost which is unlikely to be recovered on selling the house, so given the typical house move frequency in the UK it's marginal on whether reduced energy costs will offset the capital cost, given that feed in tariffs have been slashed. The other alternative is to essentially rent your roof out, but this can make it hard to sell at all. That leaves older people less likely to move as a prime market, but they may be less informed of the benefits. None of it is insurmountable, of course
And in 400 years we will have literally boiled the oceans, and the earth will become unlivable on much sooner than that.
Ultimately we will *have* to get much of our energy from solar if we wish to continue to live on the planet. Thermodynamics is a bitch.
I recall hearing a calculation on the radio: if we keep expanding our energy use at the present rate, in 2000 years, we will need more energy than all the stars in our galaxy produce.
You can find all sorts of absurd naive extrapolations if you bother to look for them. Doesn't make them true.
English: I don't mean to belittle you.
American: I mean to belittle you.
English: With all due respect.
American: With no respect.
English: You're almost right.
American: You are completely wrong in every possible way.
English: I'm sorry but...
American: I'm not sorry, this is your fault.
I hope this helps.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Why are you acting shocked that the plant's power rating is nameplate (aka peak) rather than average? Power plants are always reported by nameplate capacity. If you want to know the capacity factor, that's a different statistic: capacity factor.
Re, India's power consumption: India consumes 1106 TWh/year. Assuming a capacity factor of 0.22 here then this plant would generate 1,25TWh/year, or 0,11% of India's consumption, not 0,0007%. 0.00015% of India's land for 0,11% of its consumption, aka 0,13% of India's land for 100% of its consumption. In terms of wildlife health and agricultural output effects relative to generating power from polluting sources (pollution hurts animals and reduces crop yields), that's a no-brainer - all issues of climate change aside. It's also worth noting that solar plants tend to be more energy dense sources of energy than hydroelectricity (when the reservoir is counted), sometimes by large margins, and many orders of magnitude more energy dense than growing plants for biofuels, per unit energy therein. PV plants also require no cooling water, meaning huge benefits for rivers, and more water availability for agriculture. Lastly, PV plants can be built on marginal lands unsuitable for agriculture on their own - and the shade they provide reduces evaporation from the underlying soil, increasing water availability downstream.
People said I was dumb, but I proved them.
Joules per year = energy over time = power
Your slip is showing.
People said I was dumb, but I proved them.
"we can't/shouldn't do anything about global warming because India and China aren't doing anything."
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
I don't mean to belittle you but by definition everything used to cover demand peaks is going to have a low capacity factor because it is not used all of the time.
It's a depressingly common mistake. There are a huge number of people posting here who know less than the average high schooler about electricity generation and supply.
Didn't you people do field trips when you were children?
Solar panels are essentially used 100% of their output. They are almost never curtailed. So for the purposes of this discussion, the capacity factors stated are the actual full output of the panels, not a reduced amount. They can't produce any more on average.
Pretty sure the amount of shit they produce is dramatically exceeded by the amount that sits between your ears, mate
English: We will lose The Great War without your help
American: We will provide troops and money so you can win
English: We will lose The Second World War without your help
American: We we provide troops, money and materials so you can win
English: We will lose our Empire without your help
American: Sod off you limey bastards
There. I fixed it for you.
Your slip is showing.
If you're going to make insults, you better make sure you're right.
First of all, joules are energy and TW are power,
No shit, Einstein.
so your conversion is nonsense.
Are you high?
Secondly, assuming you actually meant TWh, not TW,
You assume much, Grasshopper.
you are off by several orders of magnitude.
Nope, you're just highly confused.
The total worldwide electricity production in 2012 was 18,000 to 22,000 TWh
Why use a stupid unit like TWh/year? Hours/year is a dimensionless number. Just use the plain SI unit: 22,000 TWh/year == 2.5 TW. Which, as I said, is a fraction of the 16TW total energy use.
I call that the "if-current-trends-continue" fallacy. The thing is, they never do. If current trends continue, my teenage son will be 60 feet tall in another ten years.
I suspect from reading the article that the quoted number of 648 MW is actually 648 MWPeak, (about 2.5 million solar panels at 260 kWp).
That number is the peak production of the panels. To get to the actual production you'll have to multiply that by the total numbers of full sun hours that the installation receives. Here in het Netherlands that is in the order of 930-1000 hours yearly. I suspect that India has a higher number of these, being closer to the equator.
That puts the actual production in kWh of this installation at about 648.000.000 kWh/annum. Wholesale prices of electricity are pretty low, meaning that you'd get about $0,07 (~ 5 Rs) per kWh (assuming that production during the day is actually peak load and therefore more expensive).
That would mean that the plant (under high electricity wholesale prices but low projected production) would make about 45 M$/year.
679 M$ / 45 M$ =~ 30 years.
However, I suspect that there are fiscal policies and subsidies that also lead to cash flow for this plant. Those make a big difference.
And how much of that 679 M$ is actually 'lost'? It's quote possible that the project was built by Tata solar, an indian company that has to pay taxes and employs many people in india.
And of course, the externalities (no smog, no need for fuel, less death from pollution, having the biggest plant on the planet and investing in technological improvement, local jobs) have to be considered in the cost of this plant. So it's not quite so clear-cut that this is a winning or a losing proposition.
... but they still haven't caught me yet!
Are you referring to a Disco Inferno?
would be small solar panels and solar lamps for villages. Give power to the people.
Kind of sad that they feel it is cheaper to have the panels cleaned by robots than by the hundreds of millions of underemployed poor Indians...
I know, right? Taste like (tough) chicken.
CAP === 'belays'
Night time load is lower than day time load in a hot country where the major load is airconditioning. Solar provides the peak load electircity when its needed.
**Life is too short to be serious**
General versus specific. Different paragraphs. Plural versus singular.
It is a bit odd that you are attempting to give me English lessons after missing all of those things.
It all makes sense if you read the subject heading of the post prior to it.
Work on that attention span kiddies!
Not by magic, but how about we talk about real things and not magic? In reality when demand peaks available sources such as wind or solar farms are brought on line. It does mean they are idle most of the time, but that is life when you have demand that changes and wish to match that demand.
Utter bullshit.
What a nasty little person you are with that pathetic attempted bullying.
Dumbed down to the maximum the comment should read that the poster made a mistake but it is a very common mistake. People should not think less of the poster for making such a common mistake.
Solar provides the peak load electircity when its needed.
Why does this get repeated so often when it is so easily proven false?
Solar power hits it's peak at local noon. Air conditioning load hits it's peak with air temperatures which is somewhere between local 14:00 and 18:00. This need for air conditioning continues beyond sunset.
I've seen people claim this problem is easily solved with some sort of energy storage device. This level of energy storage is not yet economical, with possible exceptions for those that live next to hydro electric dams. Assuming it did exist why limit it's use to solar power? Would not all energy sources gain from this?
Any other tactic to spread out demand to match the supply would also benefit any other source of electricity. Smart grids, efficiency gains, load shifting, etc. all benefit competing energy sources like nuclear, wind, natural gas, and even coal.
I used to be a fan of solar power too, until I saw so many people claiming we can use solar power to replace every other energy source. Solar power makes sense in moderation. Too much and it makes things worse. In many places in the world we've already seen solar power built up beyond what is reasonable. No doubt from wishful thinking, government subsidies, all from lobbying by people with heads in the clouds and hands in my pockets.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
Short and to the point but I think this may be a little clearer for one of them.
The "With all due respect" comments are better thought of as meaning that it is assumed that the person is good at something and should be respected for it but has made a glaring mistake in the current case.
The rare extreme version "with the greatest possible respect" should be read as - that's utterly fucking insane and if I didn't already know you I'd assume you are a complete and utter nutter.
Back on thread I was not insulting the above poster merely pointing out a very common mistake that a huge number of people make on this site so he should not be thought any less of, they are just one of many making a mild false assumption while out of their depth.
Does anyone know average electricity prices in India? How much the average Indian home uses for power and approximate maintenance of this entire plant? (I'd assume, robots or no, they have at least 30 staff?)
I want to believe in solar, heck I do believe in solar but the cost right now,...
If only the god damn panels didn't degrade (assuming that's not some kind of republican myth?) if the panels were consistently reliable or lived for 100 years, it would make much more sense economically.
"Free" power sounds fantastic, especially if it's not damaging the planet.