India Eyeing a New Monster 100GW Solar-Capacity Goal (arstechnica.com)

AmiMoJo writes: In a confirmed report India's energy minister suggested that the country is considering issuing a tender for 100 gigawatts of solar energy, which may be tied to solar panel-manufacturing buildout. In 2015, India set a goal to reach 100GW of solar capacity as part of its larger aim of 175GW of renewable energy in general by 2022. This latest 100GW tender would be for a 2030 or 2035 target.

The existing goal is ambitious, so a stretch goal further into the future is even more so. The country's current total solar capacity is just 24.4GW, (for context, as of this month the US has about 55.9GW of installed solar capacity total) but it's growing quickly. Utility-scale solar capacity grew by 72 percent in the previous year.

Comments

Re:What a priority

[avandesande]

There are lots of places in India with no power at all. If you have trouble raising the capitol to build a full scale power plant a solar installation might be more appropriate especially without a nationwide grid. This might be practical -vs- environmental.

Re:What a priority

[iggymanz]

Yes, more energy will help with infrastructure problems and should be a priority.

Good for you India

[fredrated]

Thanks for showing us what can be done.

Re:Good for you India

[tbannist]

Are we really so detached from reality that praise is given in the present for accomplishing a possible and unlikely future event? Remember when India claimed they were making a tablet for $20 or when they said they would be on the moon by a few years ago without any external help?

Have you looked at the American government recently? Even just having a plan to do something reasonably achievable that's not inherently evil does seem like a vast improvement over the current American government...

Re:What a priority

[Anonymous Coward]

what an idiot. the country has pollution levels through the roof, inefficient coal plants built in the 60s and is at least attempting to move in a positive direction to reduce pollution; and our resident genius gets to talk about their trains and corruption. I assume they should put everything on hold till they fix trains and corruption? what do you say about Trumpism then...

175 GW would be roughly 23% of India's energy use

[SuperKendall]

Translating a few numbers from here, that means India would be getting about 23% of total energy consumption from solar (it's currently 2.89%). And is attempting to roughly double nuclear power generation within 25 years...

With even India onboard for a rapid ramp-up in low CO2 energy production, the CO2 reduction targets the world desires will be beat quite handily and without any additional effort. It was always the nations like India and China that were the big sources of CO2 so they are the main ones to watch in dealing with this issue.

Capacity?

[LynnwoodRooster]

What matters is actual output, and in India that is around 15-19%. So installing 100 GW of "capacity" really means installing around 15-19 GW of actual generation, or about 2% of their actual electrical need.

That was from 2013...

[SuperKendall]

What matters is actual output, and in India that is around 15-19%. So installing 100 GW of "capacity" really means installing around 15-19 GW of actual generation

That's an interesting point, but that data seems to be from 2013 so it seems like upcoming generation would be quite a bit better.

This article on Wikipedia indicates that even currently solar generation exceeds the 2% figure you gave, it's at 2.9% now - so essentially an order of magnitude expansion should be a pretty decent amount of actual output.

Re:That was from 2013...

[Namarrgon]

From GP's link, solar generation in '16-'17 was 12.08 GWh of solar power, which was 0.98% of their utility generation that year. This was from 12.3 GW of installed capacity, of which 45% was added in that time period, so contributed partially. That suggests 100 GW should produce somewhere between 98 and 178 GWh, or 7.9 - 14.4% of 2017's total.

And since the 100 GW described in TFA is on top of the existing target of 100 GW by 2022, you can probably double that (though of course total demand is also likely to increase as well).

Let's do the numbers

[ishmaelflood]

100 GW sounds a lot. By the time this is installed the population of India will be roughly 1 billion. So this gives each Indian roughly 100W of installed capacity. This will generate 400 Wh of electricity per day (pV generates about 4 hours of nameplate power output per day), so it'll run a lightbulb, and maybe half of a small fridge.

Wow, that's transformational.

Now, fair enough, if you don't have a lightbulb and a fridge that sounds jolly nice, but it isn't exactly energy nirvana is it?

Re:Let's do the numbers

[angel'o'sphere]

They cost the same everywhere
No they don't.
Why the fuck would they? You never heard about the fact that not every food grows everywhere? That wages are different? That transport actually costs something?

An Avocado in Germany is about $4. It does not grow here.
A sack of Avocado in Thailand, about 25 pieces, is $2.

Same for rice and any other food like Mango, Papaya, Shrimps/Prawns, Octopus or actually any sea food etc. It gets even more interesting if you go eating in a restaurant. In Thailand I pay for a kingly meal for 3 or 4 persons $25. The same meal would cost me in Germany $300 or $400.

What do you think a box of simple Pasta costs in Thailand? Or olive oil? 10 times as much as in Germany, 20 times as much as in Italy or Spain, 40 times as much as in Greece. Already in Europe the price difference can easy be a factor 4 to 10, from east to west or north to south. Why should a Cheddar cheese from UK cost the same in Paris or Berlin as it does in Manchester? For funk sake, obviously it is more expensive outside of the UK. Why should red wine from Italy or France cost the same in Germany or the UK like in the land of production? Are you really such dumb?

America seems to be focused around cheap food everywhere, so you can not imagine that at other places it is cheaper. However: at many places (first world nations) it is more expensive than in the US. OTOH if we talk about quality food, it seems to be incredible hard to find "affordable" places in the US.

Real reason - a stable demand for panels

[willy_me]

India does not want to rely on China for solar panels - they want to build them locally. To justify building a local factory there has to be a stable demand to pay for it. You do this with large, long term projects -- like this one. It is important for India to not have their future energy production dependent on a country like China.

Re:175 GW would be roughly 23% of India's energy u

[stooo]

Confusing GW and GWh
Using the wrong case for an unit.
Yeah.

Re:175 GW would be roughly 23% of India's energy u

[Maxo-Texas]

We are already past the c02 limit for a 1.5 C temperature increase. We blow thru the 2.0 C temperature increase in 2025. To not do so, we would have to lower our carbon output by 90%.

I just don't see that happening.

In the mean time, natural gas extraction is leading to very sharp increases in methane.

Nothing short of directly removing CO2 is going to work. And we are not even close to reduction much less extraction.

Re:175 GW would be roughly 23% of India's energy u

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Wrong, 100 GW of solar power at about 20% capacity factor is about 6.3e17 joules of annual output, which is about 2% of 775 Mtoe = ~3.25e19 joules.

Re:What a priority

[Applehu Akbar]

There's an old joke: "Why do the British drink warm beer? Because they keep it in Lucas refrigerators."

Arrogant first worlders

[sjbe]

100 GW sounds a lot. By the time this is installed the population of India will be roughly 1 billion.

"Will be"? The current population of India is roughly 1.324 billion today. Are you thinking India will lose 300 million citizens in the near future?

So this gives each Indian roughly 100W of installed capacity.

Are you trolling or idiotic? They already consume 751W per capita. Using your (incorrect) math that would be an addition of over 11% to their generating capacity so that's far from trivial.

Wow, that's transformational.

Yes it is. It would provide stable power to a lot of people who don't already have access to reliable power. That is a LOT of people in India. 58% of India's population reportedly lives on less than $3.10 per day. If you actually knew anything about India you'd know they have some pretty severe infrastructure problems holding the country back, not the least of which is their power grid.

Now, fair enough, if you don't have a lightbulb and a fridge that sounds jolly nice, but it isn't exactly energy nirvana is it?

Only to an arrogant rich westerner with no clue how a large portion of the world actually lives.

Re:175 GW would be roughly 23% of India's energy u

[rtb61]

Simply a matter of industrial economic development. Clearly the India government wants to promote the manufacture of solar panels in India for export to the rest of the world in very large volumes. So it is seeking to promote the development of major very high production level solar panel plants. So it is putting out a tender which will promote that development to fill that contract and then go on to export panels as well as fill local need at a low manufacture cost per kWh of energy produced.

This might seem a major investment but compare it to pouring similar amounts of money into the black hole of military misadventures and espionage corruption and crime promotion. The Billions going into those solar panels to provide a future economic advantage in the production of solar panels is a sound investment into the future.

So how low can the solar energy limbo bar cost per panel go before it breaks the back of say, coal as a start. This kind of investment is what will drive it and why US fossil fuel corporations fight so hard to block it's development in the US, via lobbyist corruption but will ultimately cripple the US in the future as a result of this quarters greed. Being the cheapest at making solar panels in largely automated factories will be a big thing in the future competition between nations, having the raw resources close to production facilities they will favour by regulation, will be critical.

If you have the raw resources why would you not force the export of solar panels only and not the raw materials, things will get interesting.

Re:What a priority

[tsa]

Oh please. Just watch the last Star Wars movies.

Re:What a priority

[Shotgun]

You've never heard of "Lucas Electrics, The Prince of Darkness"?