10 ms·

Morocco to switch on first phase of world's largest solar plant

175 points by jaoued 11y ago

dools 11y ago
This is a great project, the only thing that concerns me about it is the very large loan from the IMF denominated in USD they took out in order to build it. Could well have been the work of EHMs [1] http://www.amazon.com/Confessions-Economic-Hit-John-Perkins/dp/0452287081 http://www.amazon.com/Confessions-Economic-Hit-John-Perkins/...
- IkmoIkmo 11y ago
  Could you refer me to the IMF loan, I can't find it? I do know Morocco took our a precautionary loan, iirc with the IMF, in the past few years which was renewed not so long ago. But it was renewed because it was not exercised, it's more of a free loan option they had secured to protect against the very swings in fossil fuel prices that a project like this diminishes due to increased energy independence. Perhaps that's the loan you're referring to? In that case, note that Morocco didn't actually lend the money, it only secured the option to borrow in case shit hits the fan. (oil goes to $100, which is a disaster for Morocco, but no sign of that anytime soon).
  - dools 11y ago
    The article I read that in originally references a mixture of private and "IFI funding"[1] which I took to mean International Financial Institutions (which includes IMF/WorldBank etc. who make loans denominated in USD)[2]. The book I referenced above is by John Perkins who worked as a consultant for a company who would justify huge loans denominated in USD for power infrastructure to developing nations, but a significant majority of the work and materials would come from US companies. So the World Bank or the IMF would loan tonnes of money to someone in USD, much of it being transferred directly to companies in the US anyway, and leaving the nation with a large debt to service in a currency they do not issue (leaving them vulnerable to pressure from the US to export goods, for example, even though people require them locally, to liberalised trade agreements, or even to be allies in conflict etc. all sorts of sordid shit; the John Perkins stuff is well worth reading). When governments take on large debts denominated in a currency they do not issue, it's always a cause for concern. That's why MMT academics were against the Euro[3], and why so many developing nations are now locked into crippling debt service that they cannot possibly keep up with. Countries like the US, UK, Australia and Japan who only issue debt (ie. all currency or treasury securities) denominated in their own currency, have no risk of insolvency and no trouble servicing the debt[4] -- they can choose to stop paying interest any time they want and indeed the "debt" people refer to in those economies is really a "buffer stock" rather than a "bond market"[5] When a nation that does not issue USD (ie. any nation other than the US) takes on USD denominated debt, with interest payments denominated in USD, they're up shit creek without a paddle. [1] http://www.worldfinance.com/infrastructure-investment/project-finance/moatize-ipp-noor-1-csp http://www.worldfinance.com/infrastructure-investment/projec... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_financial_institutions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_financial_instit... [3] http://www.amazon.com/Eurozone-Dystopia-Groupthink-Denial-Grand/dp/1784716650 http://www.amazon.com/Eurozone-Dystopia-Groupthink-Denial-Gr... [4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i35uBVeNp6c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i35uBVeNp6c [5] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=soVyyyXrcwo&index=6&list=PLoGqI16J4bCtzP8aN3sQcZd8xcGrkXmHA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=soVyyyXrcwo&index=6&list=PLo...
    - IkmoIkmo 11y ago
      Ah I see, no I wouldn't mean to take it as the IMF although they may have been part of the loan. A big chunk of the money is from climate investment funds (CIFs), which come from IFIs, of which in particular the regional IFI, the African Development Bank, in addition to private loans from Saudi Arabia and Germany. In fact it's co-owned by some of those companies, e.g. the saudi ACWA Power, the Spanish TSK etc. Anyway, it doesn't matter as indeed all of those could be dollar denominated. I don't know if they are. It's extremely common for, particularly in english/international reporting, numbers to be reported in dollar equivalents. Whether that's the actual denomination of the loan I don't know. I do know Morocco struggles deeply with hard currency scarcity, particularly in the realm of necessary energy imports every year, so they're well aware of the issues surrounding obligations in foreign currency denominations. There's a lot of fluff pieces on this project but sadly little deep insight in how it's all structured. Thanks for the book reference. I'd not read it but I've been introduced to the issue in college classes many times, it features heavily in international political economy classes for example of which I took a few. I hope to find some time this semester to look into all the resources you linked me, thanks for that!
  - aedron 11y ago
    Not IMF, World Bank: http://www.worldbank.org/projects/P131256?lang=en http://www.worldbank.org/projects/P131256?lang=en
- xadhominemx 11y ago
  Ya, I don't think "EHM" is a real acronym that people actually use
  - dools 11y ago
    It's used in the book I linked to above (and stands for "economic hitman", an industry insider term; or so claims John Perkins who used to be one -- interesting book and worth a read)
strommen 11y ago
$9B for a 580MW plant is _expensive_. For reference, most photovoltaic plants cost less than $3/W. Of course, PV stops working as soon as the sun goes down. I'm curious how much additional capacity this thing gets by using solar heat instead.
- strommen 11y ago
  As always, Wikipedia is informative: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ouarzazate_solar_power_station https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ouarzazate_solar_power_stati.... The numbers there suggest a capacity factor of 26%...PV at that latitude might get about 2/3 of that. Also from Wikipedia: they have a contract to sell the power at 19¢/kWh. For reference, coal and wind in the U.S. sell for more like 3¢. It's great to see the world embrace clean energy, but the money in this project seems nuts to me.
  - groby_b 11y ago
    Wild guess - it's a strategic thing for Europe. 1) They're very leery of whatever's Russia up to, and much of their NatGas comes from there. Any alternative energy is good energy. 2) It shores up the economy in a relatively stable part of northern Africa that'd be a prime location for people wanting to immigrate to spain. More refugees are not a good plan. 3) It helps Europe to hit Carbon reduction targets without having to deal with the NIMBY population. Or at least it was a strategic thing. Reading some more, European investors pulled out, and it's the Africa Development Bank now. Maybe the money is too nuts even with strategic goals in mind.
    - ethagknight 11y ago
      Last paragraph in the article: “They had a vision to promote renewables at a time when oil prices were high" Guessing that's why Europe backed out.
    - melling 11y ago
      It doesn't seem like it's big enough to matter on a global scale. A million people is a rounding error. We're never going to succeed if we can't get the cost close to fossil fuels.
waiseristy 11y ago
This whole project just seems so insane to me. A medium sized damn in my area was built for a bit less than $10 million back in the 50's and has a capacity hitting around 1,000 Mw. Obviously dams are highly location dependent, and are somewhat on the shadier side of environmental impact. But 900 times the cost for half the power output is just crazy. Is there really no better way to get power into the country? Or is this just some publicity / money burning stunt?
- jordanlev 11y ago
  Just guessing, since I have no specific knowledge about this area... but perhaps Morocco doesn't have a river they can dam? Also, perhaps it is an investment in the technology and skills required to build solar power plants, so that as things become less expensive and more efficient in the future they are poised to be experts or leaders in the field? (So it's an "R&D" investment of sorts).
  - m0skit0 11y ago
    Morocco has rivers and dams already. Geographically speaking it has almost everything, from sand desert to skiing stations. This is personal publicity for the King himself.
    - groby_b 11y ago
      Not sure why you're downvoted - that certainly seems like another likely candidate for why this is happening. The moment you read the quote “At around 2pm, the king will press a button, the parabolic mirrors will start turning, the heat will begin to turn the turbines and the plant will come to life,” - you have to wonder how much of this is a vanity project.
      - IkmoIkmo 11y ago
        Not at all. The country is deeply dependant on imports of fossil fuels for its energy, something around 96%. In the case of electricity it's mostly coal from South Africa. If you're familiar with hard currency scarcity issues, I need not say more. Morocco consistently struggles with that every year, and the economy has been pretty deeply affected by energy price swings in the past. The past years it received various precautionary loans to deal with this, which needn't be exercised due to favourable oil prices. Anyway, energy import dependency is a huge issue for Morocco, more so than for a country with a hard currency, say the US, any country in Europe, Japan etc. It's a burden on the economy, and moving towards self-sufficiency has benefits beyond the basic economics of typical energy infrastructure. As for why solar? Well it's a country with some of the largest solar potential resources in the world, and on a relative scale it's off the charts. Morocco has several hydro projects, but they have mostly utilised their hydro capacity and in fact need to do some repairs on existing ones. There's very little potential for massively scaling that up. Pumped hydro is an option into the future, but it's a storage solution, not a source of renewable energy in and of itself. Wind, also, can't beat solar in Moroccan conditions. And again, Morocco has few fossil fuels. It has some oil reserves but they're not exploited because they're not economically viable and no exploration company really wants to get in there, not 10 years ago and definitely not today, and even then the reserves are small fry compared to say Algeria let alone elsewhere. Short story is, Morocco needs energy independence badly, not 100% but it needs to start moving towards it. And relatively the best resource to do that is solar. You need projects to get started, build an industry, build expertise and expand it out, this is step one and it's certainly not a vanity project. Btw it is relatively expensive for a solar project, which is a bit disappointing, but it must also be noted that it can generate energy even when the sun is down as it includes a storage solution which is priced in, so it can't be compared 1 on 1 vs a regular solar installation that doesn't have one.
0xffff2 11y ago
I'm surprised to see that this project uses wet cooling. Wikipedia claims it uses at least twice as much water as a coal power plant of similar capacity. Is water surprisingly abundant in this part of the Sahara?
- groby_b 11y ago
  Next to a sizeable lake: https://www.google.com/maps/place/Ouarzazate+45000,+Morocco/@30.9189624,-6.9769893,12.89z/data=!4m2!3m1!1s0xdbb104077422057:0x26b3cb529b37ab00 https://www.google.com/maps/place/Ouarzazate+45000,+Morocco/... Out of curiosity - what are the options outside of wet cooling?
  - _-__--- 11y ago
    also, what can be done with the hot water coming out of the system?
    - semi-extrinsic 11y ago
      By definition this is low grade heat. In cold climates that can be used for stuff like heating nearby homes. In hot climates you're basically limited to running it through a bottoming cycle [1]. But that needs a delta T between the hot water coming out of your cooling system and ambient temperature of probably about 40 K, which probably requires a bigger cooling system than otherwise. So you have the added investment cost of a bigger cooling system plus the bottoming cycle, but you've gained some more energy output. Is it worth it? Impossible to say without crunching the specific numbers. But my first guess is "no" in this case. It is usually worth it for gas fired powerplants though. [1] Covered in https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combined_cycle https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combined_cycle
      - david-given 11y ago
        If your ambient temperature is 40 K, I submit that you are not human and are, in fact, living on Pluto. Did you mean Fahrenheit?
xyzzy4 11y ago
The market cap of all the solar stocks in the industry ($14 billion or so) is about the same as the market cap of Twitter. Pretty baffling to me. If you're a billionaire and want to be a trillionaire, all you'd have to do is buy every solar company and wait a few decades I bet.
- cjensen 11y ago
  There's no barrier to entry on anything solar-related. A wise investor would assume that serious competition will occur prior to reaching a trillion-dollar jackpot.
  - xyzzy4 11y ago
    You could buy every solar startup as soon as they get to X size. Also hardware startups do have significant barriers of entry.
    - rhino369 11y ago
      Then you'd get stuck buying half assed divisions of a bunch of F500 companies who get into the market just to profit off you. Plus you'd need unlimited capital for this plan. And current solar companies might go bankrupt before solar hits the scale needed to compete with fossil fuels. And the DOJ would sue you for antitrust violations. Standard Oil did your plan. That sort of thing won't be allowed again.
      - xyzzy4 11y ago
        Many solar companies are international. They have highly optimized technology for reducing $/watt that can't be half-assed by Fortune 500 companies. Customer acquisition takes a while.
    - BurningFrog 11y ago
      This provides a huge incentive to start and finance new solar startups, and gets very expensive for this presumptive monopolist.
diffraction 11y ago
If they only switch in one phase won't that cause imbalances on their power grid? Hyuk.
sandworm101 11y ago
There is a rule for calling yourself the "tallest building" that is relevant here. You aren't the tallest building until you have topped out. Before that, you are just a construction site. This is important because it means you cannot be "tallest" while still under construction. The title belongs to the tallest current building until such time as you stop building. This "worlds biggest" solar plant therefore isn't. It isn't yet biggest. It may never be biggest. It may be passed over by some other plant started tomorrow. Or it could stop expanding before ever reaching its designed size.
woodandsteel 11y ago
It occurs to me that the Middle East is very well endowed with both petroleum and sunshine, but the latter is far more evenly distributed.
dharma1 11y ago
a bit OT, but I have about 70m2 south facing roof space (UK) where I'd like to install solar panels at some point. How are panel prices likely to develop over the next 5 years? Should I wait, will panels become ridiculously cheap in the near future?
- blacksmith_tb 11y ago
  I can't speak to the UK specifically, but I have 4.8kW system on my south-facing roof in similarly-cloud Oregon. Panels will continue to get cheaper, but likely the largest part of the cost will be the installation, and that is not likely to become cheaper nearly as soon (though it should gradually, as it's more and more common).

175 points by jaoued 11y ago

dools 11y ago

This is a great project, the only thing that concerns me about it is the very large loan from the IMF denominated in USD they took out in order to build it. Could well have been the work of EHMs [1] http://www.amazon.com/Confessions-Economic-Hit-John-Perkins/dp/0452287081 http://www.amazon.com/Confessions-Economic-Hit-John-Perkins/...

IkmoIkmo 11y ago
Could you refer me to the IMF loan, I can't find it? I do know Morocco took our a precautionary loan, iirc with the IMF, in the past few years which was renewed not so long ago. But it was renewed because it was not exercised, it's more of a free loan option they had secured to protect against the very swings in fossil fuel prices that a project like this diminishes due to increased energy independence. Perhaps that's the loan you're referring to? In that case, note that Morocco didn't actually lend the money, it only secured the option to borrow in case shit hits the fan. (oil goes to $100, which is a disaster for Morocco, but no sign of that anytime soon).
- dools 11y ago
  The article I read that in originally references a mixture of private and "IFI funding"[1] which I took to mean International Financial Institutions (which includes IMF/WorldBank etc. who make loans denominated in USD)[2]. The book I referenced above is by John Perkins who worked as a consultant for a company who would justify huge loans denominated in USD for power infrastructure to developing nations, but a significant majority of the work and materials would come from US companies. So the World Bank or the IMF would loan tonnes of money to someone in USD, much of it being transferred directly to companies in the US anyway, and leaving the nation with a large debt to service in a currency they do not issue (leaving them vulnerable to pressure from the US to export goods, for example, even though people require them locally, to liberalised trade agreements, or even to be allies in conflict etc. all sorts of sordid shit; the John Perkins stuff is well worth reading). When governments take on large debts denominated in a currency they do not issue, it's always a cause for concern. That's why MMT academics were against the Euro[3], and why so many developing nations are now locked into crippling debt service that they cannot possibly keep up with. Countries like the US, UK, Australia and Japan who only issue debt (ie. all currency or treasury securities) denominated in their own currency, have no risk of insolvency and no trouble servicing the debt[4] -- they can choose to stop paying interest any time they want and indeed the "debt" people refer to in those economies is really a "buffer stock" rather than a "bond market"[5] When a nation that does not issue USD (ie. any nation other than the US) takes on USD denominated debt, with interest payments denominated in USD, they're up shit creek without a paddle. [1] http://www.worldfinance.com/infrastructure-investment/project-finance/moatize-ipp-noor-1-csp http://www.worldfinance.com/infrastructure-investment/projec... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_financial_institutions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_financial_instit... [3] http://www.amazon.com/Eurozone-Dystopia-Groupthink-Denial-Grand/dp/1784716650 http://www.amazon.com/Eurozone-Dystopia-Groupthink-Denial-Gr... [4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i35uBVeNp6c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i35uBVeNp6c [5] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=soVyyyXrcwo&index=6&list=PLoGqI16J4bCtzP8aN3sQcZd8xcGrkXmHA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=soVyyyXrcwo&index=6&list=PLo...
  - IkmoIkmo 11y ago
    Ah I see, no I wouldn't mean to take it as the IMF although they may have been part of the loan. A big chunk of the money is from climate investment funds (CIFs), which come from IFIs, of which in particular the regional IFI, the African Development Bank, in addition to private loans from Saudi Arabia and Germany. In fact it's co-owned by some of those companies, e.g. the saudi ACWA Power, the Spanish TSK etc. Anyway, it doesn't matter as indeed all of those could be dollar denominated. I don't know if they are. It's extremely common for, particularly in english/international reporting, numbers to be reported in dollar equivalents. Whether that's the actual denomination of the loan I don't know. I do know Morocco struggles deeply with hard currency scarcity, particularly in the realm of necessary energy imports every year, so they're well aware of the issues surrounding obligations in foreign currency denominations. There's a lot of fluff pieces on this project but sadly little deep insight in how it's all structured. Thanks for the book reference. I'd not read it but I've been introduced to the issue in college classes many times, it features heavily in international political economy classes for example of which I took a few. I hope to find some time this semester to look into all the resources you linked me, thanks for that!
- aedron 11y ago
  Not IMF, World Bank: http://www.worldbank.org/projects/P131256?lang=en http://www.worldbank.org/projects/P131256?lang=en
xadhominemx 11y ago
Ya, I don't think "EHM" is a real acronym that people actually use
- dools 11y ago
  It's used in the book I linked to above (and stands for "economic hitman", an industry insider term; or so claims John Perkins who used to be one -- interesting book and worth a read)

strommen 11y ago

$9B for a 580MW plant is _expensive_. For reference, most photovoltaic plants cost less than $3/W. Of course, PV stops working as soon as the sun goes down. I'm curious how much additional capacity this thing gets by using solar heat instead.

strommen 11y ago
As always, Wikipedia is informative: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ouarzazate_solar_power_station https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ouarzazate_solar_power_stati.... The numbers there suggest a capacity factor of 26%...PV at that latitude might get about 2/3 of that. Also from Wikipedia: they have a contract to sell the power at 19¢/kWh. For reference, coal and wind in the U.S. sell for more like 3¢. It's great to see the world embrace clean energy, but the money in this project seems nuts to me.
- groby_b 11y ago
  Wild guess - it's a strategic thing for Europe. 1) They're very leery of whatever's Russia up to, and much of their NatGas comes from there. Any alternative energy is good energy. 2) It shores up the economy in a relatively stable part of northern Africa that'd be a prime location for people wanting to immigrate to spain. More refugees are not a good plan. 3) It helps Europe to hit Carbon reduction targets without having to deal with the NIMBY population. Or at least it was a strategic thing. Reading some more, European investors pulled out, and it's the Africa Development Bank now. Maybe the money is too nuts even with strategic goals in mind.
  - ethagknight 11y ago
    Last paragraph in the article: “They had a vision to promote renewables at a time when oil prices were high" Guessing that's why Europe backed out.
  - melling 11y ago
    It doesn't seem like it's big enough to matter on a global scale. A million people is a rounding error. We're never going to succeed if we can't get the cost close to fossil fuels.

waiseristy 11y ago

This whole project just seems so insane to me. A medium sized damn in my area was built for a bit less than $10 million back in the 50's and has a capacity hitting around 1,000 Mw. Obviously dams are highly location dependent, and are somewhat on the shadier side of environmental impact. But 900 times the cost for half the power output is just crazy. Is there really no better way to get power into the country? Or is this just some publicity / money burning stunt?

jordanlev 11y ago
Just guessing, since I have no specific knowledge about this area... but perhaps Morocco doesn't have a river they can dam? Also, perhaps it is an investment in the technology and skills required to build solar power plants, so that as things become less expensive and more efficient in the future they are poised to be experts or leaders in the field? (So it's an "R&D" investment of sorts).
- m0skit0 11y ago
  Morocco has rivers and dams already. Geographically speaking it has almost everything, from sand desert to skiing stations. This is personal publicity for the King himself.
  - groby_b 11y ago
    Not sure why you're downvoted - that certainly seems like another likely candidate for why this is happening. The moment you read the quote “At around 2pm, the king will press a button, the parabolic mirrors will start turning, the heat will begin to turn the turbines and the plant will come to life,” - you have to wonder how much of this is a vanity project.
    - IkmoIkmo 11y ago
      Not at all. The country is deeply dependant on imports of fossil fuels for its energy, something around 96%. In the case of electricity it's mostly coal from South Africa. If you're familiar with hard currency scarcity issues, I need not say more. Morocco consistently struggles with that every year, and the economy has been pretty deeply affected by energy price swings in the past. The past years it received various precautionary loans to deal with this, which needn't be exercised due to favourable oil prices. Anyway, energy import dependency is a huge issue for Morocco, more so than for a country with a hard currency, say the US, any country in Europe, Japan etc. It's a burden on the economy, and moving towards self-sufficiency has benefits beyond the basic economics of typical energy infrastructure. As for why solar? Well it's a country with some of the largest solar potential resources in the world, and on a relative scale it's off the charts. Morocco has several hydro projects, but they have mostly utilised their hydro capacity and in fact need to do some repairs on existing ones. There's very little potential for massively scaling that up. Pumped hydro is an option into the future, but it's a storage solution, not a source of renewable energy in and of itself. Wind, also, can't beat solar in Moroccan conditions. And again, Morocco has few fossil fuels. It has some oil reserves but they're not exploited because they're not economically viable and no exploration company really wants to get in there, not 10 years ago and definitely not today, and even then the reserves are small fry compared to say Algeria let alone elsewhere. Short story is, Morocco needs energy independence badly, not 100% but it needs to start moving towards it. And relatively the best resource to do that is solar. You need projects to get started, build an industry, build expertise and expand it out, this is step one and it's certainly not a vanity project. Btw it is relatively expensive for a solar project, which is a bit disappointing, but it must also be noted that it can generate energy even when the sun is down as it includes a storage solution which is priced in, so it can't be compared 1 on 1 vs a regular solar installation that doesn't have one.

0xffff2 11y ago

I'm surprised to see that this project uses wet cooling. Wikipedia claims it uses at least twice as much water as a coal power plant of similar capacity. Is water surprisingly abundant in this part of the Sahara?

groby_b 11y ago
Next to a sizeable lake: https://www.google.com/maps/place/Ouarzazate+45000,+Morocco/@30.9189624,-6.9769893,12.89z/data=!4m2!3m1!1s0xdbb104077422057:0x26b3cb529b37ab00 https://www.google.com/maps/place/Ouarzazate+45000,+Morocco/... Out of curiosity - what are the options outside of wet cooling?
- _-__--- 11y ago
  also, what can be done with the hot water coming out of the system?
  - semi-extrinsic 11y ago
    By definition this is low grade heat. In cold climates that can be used for stuff like heating nearby homes. In hot climates you're basically limited to running it through a bottoming cycle [1]. But that needs a delta T between the hot water coming out of your cooling system and ambient temperature of probably about 40 K, which probably requires a bigger cooling system than otherwise. So you have the added investment cost of a bigger cooling system plus the bottoming cycle, but you've gained some more energy output. Is it worth it? Impossible to say without crunching the specific numbers. But my first guess is "no" in this case. It is usually worth it for gas fired powerplants though. [1] Covered in https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combined_cycle https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combined_cycle
    - david-given 11y ago
      If your ambient temperature is 40 K, I submit that you are not human and are, in fact, living on Pluto. Did you mean Fahrenheit?

xyzzy4 11y ago

The market cap of all the solar stocks in the industry ($14 billion or so) is about the same as the market cap of Twitter. Pretty baffling to me. If you're a billionaire and want to be a trillionaire, all you'd have to do is buy every solar company and wait a few decades I bet.

cjensen 11y ago
There's no barrier to entry on anything solar-related. A wise investor would assume that serious competition will occur prior to reaching a trillion-dollar jackpot.
- xyzzy4 11y ago
  You could buy every solar startup as soon as they get to X size. Also hardware startups do have significant barriers of entry.
  - rhino369 11y ago
    Then you'd get stuck buying half assed divisions of a bunch of F500 companies who get into the market just to profit off you. Plus you'd need unlimited capital for this plan. And current solar companies might go bankrupt before solar hits the scale needed to compete with fossil fuels. And the DOJ would sue you for antitrust violations. Standard Oil did your plan. That sort of thing won't be allowed again.
    - xyzzy4 11y ago
      Many solar companies are international. They have highly optimized technology for reducing $/watt that can't be half-assed by Fortune 500 companies. Customer acquisition takes a while.
  - BurningFrog 11y ago
    This provides a huge incentive to start and finance new solar startups, and gets very expensive for this presumptive monopolist.

diffraction 11y ago

If they only switch in one phase won't that cause imbalances on their power grid? Hyuk.

sandworm101 11y ago

There is a rule for calling yourself the "tallest building" that is relevant here. You aren't the tallest building until you have topped out. Before that, you are just a construction site. This is important because it means you cannot be "tallest" while still under construction. The title belongs to the tallest current building until such time as you stop building. This "worlds biggest" solar plant therefore isn't. It isn't yet biggest. It may never be biggest. It may be passed over by some other plant started tomorrow. Or it could stop expanding before ever reaching its designed size.

woodandsteel 11y ago

It occurs to me that the Middle East is very well endowed with both petroleum and sunshine, but the latter is far more evenly distributed.

dharma1 11y ago

a bit OT, but I have about 70m2 south facing roof space (UK) where I'd like to install solar panels at some point. How are panel prices likely to develop over the next 5 years? Should I wait, will panels become ridiculously cheap in the near future?

blacksmith_tb 11y ago
I can't speak to the UK specifically, but I have 4.8kW system on my south-facing roof in similarly-cloud Oregon. Panels will continue to get cheaper, but likely the largest part of the cost will be the installation, and that is not likely to become cheaper nearly as soon (though it should gradually, as it's more and more common).