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India is now producing the world’s cheapest solar power

176 points by ljf 7y ago

lota-putty 7y ago
Article says "low-priced panel imports from China". There is ~30% Govt. subsidy in costs for residential installations. Also, https://solarrooftop.gov.in/rooftop_calculator https://solarrooftop.gov.in/rooftop_calculator Does anybody here know the percentage of panels actually produced in India and major solar cell(mono/poly) manufacturing(not assembly) plants in India? Edit: (old data) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_photovoltaics_companies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_photovoltaics_companie...
pkaye 7y ago
I'm guessing due to lower labor costs and permitting costs.
chime 7y ago
At $793/KW, a 10KW system means no electric bill after 3 years. If the lifetime of the system is 20 years, that's at least 15 years of free electricity.
- reitzensteinm 7y ago
  Only when someone else is subsiding the grid, which under net metering acts as a battery for free. That's not sustainable, especially as the price of solar drops making it a no brainier. The true cost of solar includes enough batteries to cut the grid connection, or buying and selling energy at market rates, which will involve generating many more kWhs than you consume. That said, we desperately need a carbon tax which would help swing the pendulum back even without net metering.
  - chvid 7y ago
    Maybe they should buy some cheap electrical scooters as well ...
  - chii 7y ago
    at 10kwh system means it basically falls in line with the average usage per household in the US (source https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=97&t=3 https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=97&t=3) Therefore, this ought to be self-sufficient, if there's storage. Batteries cost extra, no doubt, so it's not "free" after 3 years, but would be pretty cheap if batteries can be amortized over their expected 25yr lifespan (assuming same batteries as telsa's).
    - reitzensteinm 7y ago
      You'd need to size the generation for your worst days, not the average over the year; if you're using any kind of electric heating (e.g. reverse cycle air con), and your generation is lower in the winter months, you'll drain your battery each day, and the overabundance in the summer months doesn't help you. Add in more solar panels for this, as well as the cost of a battery that can store a few days worth of power, and you're talking a substantially larger expense to cut the grid tie. However, the days of 100 year paybacks are clearly behind us if we're seriously doing back of the napkin math here. The progress in the field is impressive.
      - richardw 7y ago
        It might be cheaper to add a generator for exceptional days. Build the rest of the system for efficiency.
      - mattlondon 7y ago
        > your generation is lower in the winter months, you'll drain your battery each day, and the overabundance in the summer months doesn't help you. Certainly in the UK, you sell your over-generation back to the grid. This will offset the cost of buying from the grid on the days when your generation is lower than consumption. Certainly in the UK you may never get 100% net zero cost (not enough winter sunshine hours I suspect), but will help since most homes in the UK are heated via gas (as in gas, not petroleum)
  - benj111 7y ago
    It depends where the 10kw figure comes from. If its been sized to sell enough power back to the grid to cover the grid tie then there's no subsidy. 10kw does sound high for the average Indian family.
    - reitzensteinm 7y ago
      I assumed parent was talking about the States, given both the size of the system and the electricity bill amount used for the payback calculation. If it's an overprovisioned system for India, then what I wrote should be disregarded.
  - tomglynch 7y ago
    In Varanasi in India, many businesses have their own batteries as power cuts happen often enough that it's a necessity. I am using just a single city as an example, but potentially India already has much more battery installations than you expect (and than other countries with more reliable power sources).
    - 2sk21 7y ago
      And many homes have battery backup systems as well. However, they all use lead-acid batteries. There is a real opportunity for better battery technologies to be deployed in India.
      - ljf 7y ago
        My understanding (as limited as it is!) is that if space and weight are not an issue, then lead batteries provide a great deal of benefits today, especially when you can add to your system with 'dead' car batteries and the like. It is only where space and weight are an issue that you need to move to newer tech. I am fully prepared to be incorrect here though!
  - blargmaster33 7y ago
    We need tax like we need cocaine injected into our eyeballs.
  - jabl 7y ago
    This. Net metering is cool and all, but with the wrong grid fee structure it ends up as a subsidy to the already well off.
  - ZeroGravitas 7y ago
    Most full accountings of solar's value to the grid show that homeowners with solar are subsidizing the grid (not the other way round) and other customers by providing power at peak usage times and being paid at rates that are averages and therefore below peak, and not accounting for wider costs/benefits: https://www.utilitydive.com/news/how-two-value-of-solar-studies-add-up-to-no-clear-value-of-solar/522892/ https://www.utilitydive.com/news/how-two-value-of-solar-stud...
    - reitzensteinm 7y ago
      Yeah, I've read a handful of studies that claim to show something like that, but every time you dig down in to the numbers there are glaring errors. Given that the Maryland study accounts for the benefit to the local economy (??), I'm not going to bother spending an hour on that. They've left their thumb on the scale. Typically solar does not provide much power at all during peak use, which is why the duck curve was coined. You can clearly see that homeowners with solar aren't subsidizing the grid, because laws needed to be passed in order to force utilities to accept the power. If someone hands you free money, you don't turn it down. Net metering was a handy subsidy to get solar started, but it's an obscene transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich in the long run. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duck_curve https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duck_curve
      - ZeroGravitas 7y ago
        Many utilities are run on a cost plus basis which means they would be entirely economically rational to literally turn down free money, because it would reduce the amount of profit they could make. Also, the duck curve doesn't show peak use. The duck curve shows the peaks that are left after solar has been subtracted. Go find a duck curve, note that it will almost certainly be in springtime when overall demand is low. Then look up the yearly demand peak for that region. It will almost certainly be in the afternoon in the summer and will dwarf the duck curve peaks. So solar will be directly reducing the requirement to build out capacity (and further reducing utility profit potential/ saving everyone lots of money). Worst case scenario for the duck is to throw away a bit of solar power sometimes because other parts of the system need time to ramp. People clutch their pearls at this, just like they do at negative prices, but it's just nonsense with no logical basis. It's like complaining that buying a dozen eggs is wasteful if you only need 11. Yeah, but it's cheaper than buying 11 individual eggs so maybe just think of something to do with your "free" egg instead of complaining about a non-issue.
zuron7 7y ago
From the graph in the article it is pretty evident that the margins are very low compared to other countries. This is a case of the government doing something that makes sense for the growth of the country rather than letting privately run companies make large profits.
- mmsimanga 7y ago
  We are also benefiting here in Africa. I have begun to see Indian solar panels being sold here and they tend to be the cheapest at my preferred online retailer.
  - iagovar 7y ago
    Have you seen Atersa panels over there? It's a Spanish brand, someone told me that they were selling a lot of them in África, but didn't mention exactly where.
    - mmsimanga 7y ago
      No I have not seen any Atersa panels in my neck of the woods. I do know there is Spanish involvement in a few solar farms being implemented in SA. I build the initial web site for this particular one[0]. There many solar panel retailers my goto one is this one[1] [0]https://www.solarcapital.co.za/our-projects/de-aar-project-1/ https://www.solarcapital.co.za/our-projects/de-aar-project-1... [1]https://www.sustainable.co.za/solar-power/solar-panels.html https://www.sustainable.co.za/solar-power/solar-panels.html
      - iagovar 7y ago
        Hmm, you're right, the indian ones seem to be the cheapest, even more than Jinko. IDK about Enersol, it looks like a spanish-made name but I can't find any info about it. I asked you this because the spanish solar industry suffered a lot because of the Chinese competition. AFAIK Atersa was the only brand that remained producing in Spain, everyone else moved production to china.
  - 7y ago
jl6 7y ago
> Renewable energy now generates a third of global power capacity. I find this remarkable and uplifting, because if I ask myself whether I could live using only 1/3 of my current electricity consumption, my answer is that I would have to make sacrifices, but relatively painless ones. And this is the baseline - renewable capacity is only going to grow.
- ehsankia 7y ago
  And this is with old industries dragging their feet for so long. Imagine how far we could've been if lobbying wasn't so bad and the US had lead the way with renewable energy a decade a ago. We'd be way past 50%, probably closer to 2/3 by now.
- pjc50 7y ago
  Really? You already know you're wasting two thirds of your electricity? If I had to cut consumption by two thirds I'd be sitting in the dark a lot. Do you have an example of what you'd cut?
  - lixtra 7y ago
    More likely you would be sitting in the hot. Cooling is the main electrical energy consumer in the not so hot uk [1]. [1] https://www.ovoenergy.com/guides/energy-guides/how-much-electricity-does-a-home-use.html https://www.ovoenergy.com/guides/energy-guides/how-much-elec...
    - NeedMoreTea 7y ago
      Yes, cooling the milk, meat, frozen pizza and ice cream according to that chart. I'm very surprised by and suspicious of lighting being 600 kWh/year, so I question their sources or analysis. They note themselves LED lights are around 6 kWh/year. Edit: Their source appears to be a 10 year old survey from before LEDs being generally available in shops, and before tungsten was banned from general sale. No wonder the numbers are off.
  - jl6 7y ago
simula67 7y ago
This is great news! India is extremely energy deficient and imports a large quantity of oil. Reducing petroleum dependency can help reduce poverty in India as more production can be consumed domestically and not sent abroad.
- vmurthy 7y ago
  That’s one way to look at it. Unfortunately, Indian banks have been granting billions of dollars of loans to the coal sector[1] and if solar power cost drops and we can’t export excess power, we’re in for trouble . Talk of second order effects .. [1] https://mercomindia.com/public-sector-banks-loans-coal/ https://mercomindia.com/public-sector-banks-loans-coal/
piyushpr134 7y ago
The current largest solar park in India and possibly the world, on google maps here https://www.google.com/maps/place/Thirumani,+Karnataka+572136/@14.2417003,77.4657737,618m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m12!1m6!3m5!1s0x3bb1112c75a4dd9b:0x5f29eec6b8f7ec6c!2sPavagada+Solar+Park!8m2!3d14.2379672!4d77.4372877!3m4!1s0x3bb1114cbc9bc231:0x1657630d81a440b8!8m2!3d14.2376735!4d77.4529868 https://www.google.com/maps/place/Thirumani,+Karnataka+57213...
- ehnto 7y ago
  Wow. I kept zooming out and there was more and more. That is incredible. Do you know how much power it produces?
  - hjnilsson 7y ago
    Just eyeballing it there seems to be 1 square kilometer of panels total. At regular solar panel efficiency, output would be 1000-2000MW total. So the same order of magnitude as one nuclear reactor.
    - ben_w 7y ago
      I think you’re off by a factor of ten. Sunlight is about 1 kW/m^2, so 1 km^2 (=1e6 m^2) would only be 1000 MW at 100% efficiency, 100-200 MW at 10-20%. That said, the plant looks bigger than 1 km^2 to me.
      - celrod 7y ago
        The wikipedia link shared above by aunty_helen ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pavagada_Solar_Park https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pavagada_Solar_Park ), which matches the name in the google maps link, says 53 km^2. It also says that it could produce 600MW by the end of January 2018, can produce 1400MW now, with 650MW more under construction. It also says 2000MW capacity being planned for by the end of 2019. I'm not sure how much of the 53 km has active solar panels, but they'd only need 3.8% efficiency to hit 2000MW with that much area.
Heliosmaster 7y ago
What's more suprising is Italy 2nd place, which is a great thing. IMHO we need to transition our energy generation even more into solar, but also changing our habits to reflect that (do laundry during the day vs the night, cool down things during the day, etc.)
- lake99 7y ago
  I think that will happen when the power companies develop and deploy "smart meters", i.e. make pricing transient, and inform users of predicted and live prices.
- JeanMarcS 7y ago
  Why do you do laundry at night ? Is it like in France where you can have different prices during day and during night ? The night price being the lower ?
  - addicted 7y ago
    Largely because people are at work during the day.
- bufferoverflow 7y ago
  Strangely enough, Italy has one of the highest electricity prices in the EU. 20-30 cents/kWh. Though a lot of it is taxes (besides VAT). https://www.energycouncil.com.au/media/5126/2016-04-27-figure-1-electricity-prices.jpg https://www.energycouncil.com.au/media/5126/2016-04-27-figur...
paulcarroty 7y ago
Australia has also huge potential in solar power and big problems with electricily, I wonder why they didn't invested serious money yet.
- michelb 7y ago
  It's a growing industry though. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_in_Australia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_in_Australia As for increased investing, there's probably politics at play.
  - redact207 7y ago
    Our coal industry in Australia has the government in their pocket. Despite coal power globally in the decline, the government has agreed to open and subsidise new coal plants. It's all socializing the costs and privitizing the profits.
    - paulcarroty 7y ago
      Ah yeah, coal lobby.. Thanks Heaven, they aren't too strong in USA/EU.
Proven 7y ago
Clearly it would make sense to cease all solar power subsidies in developed word, allow private sectory to buy whatever cheapest energy there is, and let India build their cheap solar power.
clmul 7y ago
Looking at all the new coal power plants being built / planned in India is really disheartening though: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra_Mega_Power_Projects https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra_Mega_Power_Projects
gingabriska 7y ago
I am East Asian in India, where are cheap solar panels being sold in India? I tried looking for them and everyone told me you need to import Chinese panels on which government has imposed massive duty. So which company is offering cheap panels in India?
- PhantomBKB 7y ago
  I'm not 100% sure, but my Dad had brought a solar panel from some exhibition a couple of years ago and I believe it was from BHEL.

176 points by ljf 7y ago

Article says "low-priced panel imports from China". There is ~30% Govt. subsidy in costs for residential installations. Also, https://solarrooftop.gov.in/rooftop_calculator https://solarrooftop.gov.in/rooftop_calculator Does anybody here know the percentage of panels actually produced in India and major solar cell(mono/poly) manufacturing(not assembly) plants in India? Edit: (old data) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_photovoltaics_companies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_photovoltaics_companie...

pkaye 7y ago

I'm guessing due to lower labor costs and permitting costs.

chime 7y ago

At $793/KW, a 10KW system means no electric bill after 3 years. If the lifetime of the system is 20 years, that's at least 15 years of free electricity.

reitzensteinm 7y ago
Only when someone else is subsiding the grid, which under net metering acts as a battery for free. That's not sustainable, especially as the price of solar drops making it a no brainier. The true cost of solar includes enough batteries to cut the grid connection, or buying and selling energy at market rates, which will involve generating many more kWhs than you consume. That said, we desperately need a carbon tax which would help swing the pendulum back even without net metering.
- chvid 7y ago
  Maybe they should buy some cheap electrical scooters as well ...
- chii 7y ago
  at 10kwh system means it basically falls in line with the average usage per household in the US (source https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=97&t=3 https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=97&t=3) Therefore, this ought to be self-sufficient, if there's storage. Batteries cost extra, no doubt, so it's not "free" after 3 years, but would be pretty cheap if batteries can be amortized over their expected 25yr lifespan (assuming same batteries as telsa's).
  - reitzensteinm 7y ago
    You'd need to size the generation for your worst days, not the average over the year; if you're using any kind of electric heating (e.g. reverse cycle air con), and your generation is lower in the winter months, you'll drain your battery each day, and the overabundance in the summer months doesn't help you. Add in more solar panels for this, as well as the cost of a battery that can store a few days worth of power, and you're talking a substantially larger expense to cut the grid tie. However, the days of 100 year paybacks are clearly behind us if we're seriously doing back of the napkin math here. The progress in the field is impressive.
    - richardw 7y ago
      It might be cheaper to add a generator for exceptional days. Build the rest of the system for efficiency.
    - mattlondon 7y ago
      > your generation is lower in the winter months, you'll drain your battery each day, and the overabundance in the summer months doesn't help you. Certainly in the UK, you sell your over-generation back to the grid. This will offset the cost of buying from the grid on the days when your generation is lower than consumption. Certainly in the UK you may never get 100% net zero cost (not enough winter sunshine hours I suspect), but will help since most homes in the UK are heated via gas (as in gas, not petroleum)
- benj111 7y ago
  It depends where the 10kw figure comes from. If its been sized to sell enough power back to the grid to cover the grid tie then there's no subsidy. 10kw does sound high for the average Indian family.
  - reitzensteinm 7y ago
    I assumed parent was talking about the States, given both the size of the system and the electricity bill amount used for the payback calculation. If it's an overprovisioned system for India, then what I wrote should be disregarded.
- tomglynch 7y ago
  In Varanasi in India, many businesses have their own batteries as power cuts happen often enough that it's a necessity. I am using just a single city as an example, but potentially India already has much more battery installations than you expect (and than other countries with more reliable power sources).
  - 2sk21 7y ago
    And many homes have battery backup systems as well. However, they all use lead-acid batteries. There is a real opportunity for better battery technologies to be deployed in India.
    - ljf 7y ago
      My understanding (as limited as it is!) is that if space and weight are not an issue, then lead batteries provide a great deal of benefits today, especially when you can add to your system with 'dead' car batteries and the like. It is only where space and weight are an issue that you need to move to newer tech. I am fully prepared to be incorrect here though!
- blargmaster33 7y ago
  We need tax like we need cocaine injected into our eyeballs.
- jabl 7y ago
  This. Net metering is cool and all, but with the wrong grid fee structure it ends up as a subsidy to the already well off.
- ZeroGravitas 7y ago
  Most full accountings of solar's value to the grid show that homeowners with solar are subsidizing the grid (not the other way round) and other customers by providing power at peak usage times and being paid at rates that are averages and therefore below peak, and not accounting for wider costs/benefits: https://www.utilitydive.com/news/how-two-value-of-solar-studies-add-up-to-no-clear-value-of-solar/522892/ https://www.utilitydive.com/news/how-two-value-of-solar-stud...
  - reitzensteinm 7y ago
    Yeah, I've read a handful of studies that claim to show something like that, but every time you dig down in to the numbers there are glaring errors. Given that the Maryland study accounts for the benefit to the local economy (??), I'm not going to bother spending an hour on that. They've left their thumb on the scale. Typically solar does not provide much power at all during peak use, which is why the duck curve was coined. You can clearly see that homeowners with solar aren't subsidizing the grid, because laws needed to be passed in order to force utilities to accept the power. If someone hands you free money, you don't turn it down. Net metering was a handy subsidy to get solar started, but it's an obscene transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich in the long run. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duck_curve https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duck_curve
    - ZeroGravitas 7y ago
      Many utilities are run on a cost plus basis which means they would be entirely economically rational to literally turn down free money, because it would reduce the amount of profit they could make. Also, the duck curve doesn't show peak use. The duck curve shows the peaks that are left after solar has been subtracted. Go find a duck curve, note that it will almost certainly be in springtime when overall demand is low. Then look up the yearly demand peak for that region. It will almost certainly be in the afternoon in the summer and will dwarf the duck curve peaks. So solar will be directly reducing the requirement to build out capacity (and further reducing utility profit potential/ saving everyone lots of money). Worst case scenario for the duck is to throw away a bit of solar power sometimes because other parts of the system need time to ramp. People clutch their pearls at this, just like they do at negative prices, but it's just nonsense with no logical basis. It's like complaining that buying a dozen eggs is wasteful if you only need 11. Yeah, but it's cheaper than buying 11 individual eggs so maybe just think of something to do with your "free" egg instead of complaining about a non-issue.

zuron7 7y ago

From the graph in the article it is pretty evident that the margins are very low compared to other countries. This is a case of the government doing something that makes sense for the growth of the country rather than letting privately run companies make large profits.

mmsimanga 7y ago
We are also benefiting here in Africa. I have begun to see Indian solar panels being sold here and they tend to be the cheapest at my preferred online retailer.
- iagovar 7y ago
  Have you seen Atersa panels over there? It's a Spanish brand, someone told me that they were selling a lot of them in África, but didn't mention exactly where.
  - mmsimanga 7y ago
    No I have not seen any Atersa panels in my neck of the woods. I do know there is Spanish involvement in a few solar farms being implemented in SA. I build the initial web site for this particular one[0]. There many solar panel retailers my goto one is this one[1] [0]https://www.solarcapital.co.za/our-projects/de-aar-project-1/ https://www.solarcapital.co.za/our-projects/de-aar-project-1... [1]https://www.sustainable.co.za/solar-power/solar-panels.html https://www.sustainable.co.za/solar-power/solar-panels.html
    - iagovar 7y ago
      Hmm, you're right, the indian ones seem to be the cheapest, even more than Jinko. IDK about Enersol, it looks like a spanish-made name but I can't find any info about it. I asked you this because the spanish solar industry suffered a lot because of the Chinese competition. AFAIK Atersa was the only brand that remained producing in Spain, everyone else moved production to china.
- 7y ago

jl6 7y ago

> Renewable energy now generates a third of global power capacity. I find this remarkable and uplifting, because if I ask myself whether I could live using only 1/3 of my current electricity consumption, my answer is that I would have to make sacrifices, but relatively painless ones. And this is the baseline - renewable capacity is only going to grow.

ehsankia 7y ago
And this is with old industries dragging their feet for so long. Imagine how far we could've been if lobbying wasn't so bad and the US had lead the way with renewable energy a decade a ago. We'd be way past 50%, probably closer to 2/3 by now.
pjc50 7y ago
Really? You already know you're wasting two thirds of your electricity? If I had to cut consumption by two thirds I'd be sitting in the dark a lot. Do you have an example of what you'd cut?
- lixtra 7y ago
  More likely you would be sitting in the hot. Cooling is the main electrical energy consumer in the not so hot uk [1]. [1] https://www.ovoenergy.com/guides/energy-guides/how-much-electricity-does-a-home-use.html https://www.ovoenergy.com/guides/energy-guides/how-much-elec...
  - NeedMoreTea 7y ago
    Yes, cooling the milk, meat, frozen pizza and ice cream according to that chart. I'm very surprised by and suspicious of lighting being 600 kWh/year, so I question their sources or analysis. They note themselves LED lights are around 6 kWh/year. Edit: Their source appears to be a 10 year old survey from before LEDs being generally available in shops, and before tungsten was banned from general sale. No wonder the numbers are off.
- jl6 7y ago

simula67 7y ago

This is great news! India is extremely energy deficient and imports a large quantity of oil. Reducing petroleum dependency can help reduce poverty in India as more production can be consumed domestically and not sent abroad.

vmurthy 7y ago
That’s one way to look at it. Unfortunately, Indian banks have been granting billions of dollars of loans to the coal sector[1] and if solar power cost drops and we can’t export excess power, we’re in for trouble . Talk of second order effects .. [1] https://mercomindia.com/public-sector-banks-loans-coal/ https://mercomindia.com/public-sector-banks-loans-coal/

piyushpr134 7y ago

The current largest solar park in India and possibly the world, on google maps here https://www.google.com/maps/place/Thirumani,+Karnataka+572136/@14.2417003,77.4657737,618m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m12!1m6!3m5!1s0x3bb1112c75a4dd9b:0x5f29eec6b8f7ec6c!2sPavagada+Solar+Park!8m2!3d14.2379672!4d77.4372877!3m4!1s0x3bb1114cbc9bc231:0x1657630d81a440b8!8m2!3d14.2376735!4d77.4529868 https://www.google.com/maps/place/Thirumani,+Karnataka+57213...

ehnto 7y ago
Wow. I kept zooming out and there was more and more. That is incredible. Do you know how much power it produces?
- hjnilsson 7y ago
  Just eyeballing it there seems to be 1 square kilometer of panels total. At regular solar panel efficiency, output would be 1000-2000MW total. So the same order of magnitude as one nuclear reactor.
  - ben_w 7y ago
    I think you’re off by a factor of ten. Sunlight is about 1 kW/m^2, so 1 km^2 (=1e6 m^2) would only be 1000 MW at 100% efficiency, 100-200 MW at 10-20%. That said, the plant looks bigger than 1 km^2 to me.
    - celrod 7y ago
      The wikipedia link shared above by aunty_helen ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pavagada_Solar_Park https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pavagada_Solar_Park ), which matches the name in the google maps link, says 53 km^2. It also says that it could produce 600MW by the end of January 2018, can produce 1400MW now, with 650MW more under construction. It also says 2000MW capacity being planned for by the end of 2019. I'm not sure how much of the 53 km has active solar panels, but they'd only need 3.8% efficiency to hit 2000MW with that much area.

Heliosmaster 7y ago

What's more suprising is Italy 2nd place, which is a great thing. IMHO we need to transition our energy generation even more into solar, but also changing our habits to reflect that (do laundry during the day vs the night, cool down things during the day, etc.)

lake99 7y ago
I think that will happen when the power companies develop and deploy "smart meters", i.e. make pricing transient, and inform users of predicted and live prices.
JeanMarcS 7y ago
Why do you do laundry at night ? Is it like in France where you can have different prices during day and during night ? The night price being the lower ?
- addicted 7y ago
  Largely because people are at work during the day.
bufferoverflow 7y ago
Strangely enough, Italy has one of the highest electricity prices in the EU. 20-30 cents/kWh. Though a lot of it is taxes (besides VAT). https://www.energycouncil.com.au/media/5126/2016-04-27-figure-1-electricity-prices.jpg https://www.energycouncil.com.au/media/5126/2016-04-27-figur...

paulcarroty 7y ago

Australia has also huge potential in solar power and big problems with electricily, I wonder why they didn't invested serious money yet.

michelb 7y ago
It's a growing industry though. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_in_Australia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_in_Australia As for increased investing, there's probably politics at play.
- redact207 7y ago
  Our coal industry in Australia has the government in their pocket. Despite coal power globally in the decline, the government has agreed to open and subsidise new coal plants. It's all socializing the costs and privitizing the profits.
  - paulcarroty 7y ago
    Ah yeah, coal lobby.. Thanks Heaven, they aren't too strong in USA/EU.

Proven 7y ago

Clearly it would make sense to cease all solar power subsidies in developed word, allow private sectory to buy whatever cheapest energy there is, and let India build their cheap solar power.

clmul 7y ago

Looking at all the new coal power plants being built / planned in India is really disheartening though: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra_Mega_Power_Projects https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra_Mega_Power_Projects

gingabriska 7y ago

I am East Asian in India, where are cheap solar panels being sold in India? I tried looking for them and everyone told me you need to import Chinese panels on which government has imposed massive duty. So which company is offering cheap panels in India?

PhantomBKB 7y ago
I'm not 100% sure, but my Dad had brought a solar panel from some exhibition a couple of years ago and I believe it was from BHEL.