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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.
Ooops, for 648 MW. Now THAT is a bargain. 40% off.
Let's see, 648K kwh * $.08 per kwh * 8 hours in a day * 365 days in a year = $151M per year. So it pays for itself in under 5 years. Yup, not bad.
Maybe half that? I'm guessing the numbers are peak output.
Not sure of your point - India has an energy problem, and a pollution problem. Here's a plant that will produce energy, and little to zero pollution from day 1 of its operation. I'm amazed but glad that it's actually begun to operate.
A nuclear plant would of course, supply energy when the sun goes down, but given the circumstances, what odds would you give of a nuclear plant being in any way cheap, safe, or reliable?
They sentenced me to twenty years of boredom
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!
It is not a bargain at all. Also that price is construction only, and fails to include all owner's costs in development, not to mention the capacity factor is far below conventional power plants.
Well yeah, it's a PV Solar plant of course it has a lower capacity factor than a conventional plant, you might as well just say "It's dark at night"
But given this is India, expecting them to build a modern combined cycle plant without natural gas infrastructure, or nuclear power without experience is too much.
You mean like the Sugen combined-cycle power plant in Gujarat, India? Or one of the 22 nuclear reactors in operation at seven sites that generate about 25% of India's electricity?
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.)
Well, the estimate assumed 8 hours a day, so 4 hours either side of noon. Assuming that power varies as the cosine of the angle, averaging between -/+ 60 degrees gives sqrt(3)/(2*pi/3)=82.7% of peak.
Averaging over -/+ 90 degrees (i.e. 12 hours) gives 63.7% of peak, i.e. the equivalent of 7.6 hours of peak output per day. So the 8 hr/day figure seems a reasonable ballpark estimate.
Doesn't account for latitude, season or weather, YMMV, contents may have settled during transit, etc.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
It's best not to base it on "hours per day", and instead just look at capacity factors. Capacity factors on commercial scale solar plants range from under 15% to over 30%, depending on the tracking tech (none, single axis, dual axis) and plant design (as well as the most critical aspect, of course - location).
A nice thing about solar is that it tends to align pretty well with the demand curve, so up to a point adding actually makes grid operators' jobs easier, not harder. It also runs contrary to wind, which tends to blow stronger at night, and periods of low sun tend to most often be high wind and vice versa.
People said I was dumb, but I proved them.
Exactly my reaction. If they say the project cost $679m to build, then it means just that: the project cost $679m to build. Not "one aspect of it" cost $679m.
A price of just over $1 a watt is superb. That's about what it costs to build a typical fossil plant - except that the cost to build a fossil plant is dwarfed by the cost of running it. Now, a fossil plant will have a 3x higher capacity factor, but still, this is highly competitive power. To put it in perspective, some of the new nuclear plants they're building in Europe cost over $10 per watt. Just to build, not counting operations and decommissioning.
Now, up to a given level of penetration, solar aides the grid by boosting the supply curve when demand is highest (the middle of bright sunny summer days). So up to that point, the baseload vs. intermittent supply argument is moot, and even the capacity factor doesn't play in (in a sunny location, at least), because the only capacity you need is to fill in those daytime peaks. At high levels of penetration however you start having to factor in increasing levels of peaking and/or storage. This can be somewhat offset by geographic smoothing and diversity of energy sources (solar + wind + others), but nonetheless your cost effectiveness will decline once your market penetration becomes large. Still, these are some superb numbers that bode very well for the future of solar.
People said I was dumb, but I proved them.
Your calculation is a just bit too simple and optimistic.
Madurai (about 50km away from the power plant) has an average global horizontal irradiance of 224W/m**2.
At 9 degree latitude North, the optimum tilt angle is pretty close to horizontal : 10 degree tilt only brings 2% more irradiance over the year
Total insolation is year * average irradiance ~ 1960kWh
The performance ratio of such a power plant could be around 85%, with cable losses, inverter losses and automated cleaning.
The nominal power of the installation is 648MWp, tested under an irradiance of 1000W/m**2.
So your expected yield is :
1960kWh/(m**2*year)*85%*648MW/(1000W/m**2) ~ 1.1 TWh/year
compared to your result of 1.9 TWh/year.
The plant should pay for itself in less than 8 years, and your calculation wasn't too far off.
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.
'jigga' is an acceptable pronunciation, even promulgated by the US NBS in the 1960s-1980s. It has since fallen out of widespread use.
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.
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**