58 ms·

India's richest man pouring $80B into green energy, including new ventures

274 points by alok-g 5y ago

drenvuk 5y ago
that's enough for 10 or more nuclear plants or at least a lot of research into them. Why solar and hydrogen? Is it the fact that they're already in hydrocarbons?
- throw8932894 5y ago
  Solar actually makes sense in India, it does not snow there :) I seen documentary where they covered river with solar panels. It reduced evaporation of water by significant amount. And it did not occupy any arable land. And big parts of India have underdeveloped electricity grid. Solar is easiest way to bring electric infrastructure there.
  - dubcanada 5y ago
    That will destroy the river ecosystem, while providing little to nothing for power, since rivers are often shaded. That's a terrible idea, unless I am missing something. Why not cover the vast amount of uninhabitable land in solar panels, rather then what small amount of precious resource land that exists.
    - nindalf 5y ago
      Rivers are shaded? What kind of rivers are you thinking of? Are you talking about a flowing river, several hundred feet in width having shade in the middle of it?
      - dubcanada 5y ago
        At that size probably not. But I still cannot wrap my head around this being a good idea, destroy the ecosystem of rivers, provide next to zero power (compared to resources required to build and maintain), require a HUGE investment as it's fast moving water and everyone knows fast moving water destroys material, have to deal with overflowing from rain, drought, etc. Way too many factors for this to be a good idea. It could probably if it was a man made canal or something with a set amount of water, but that still destroys any chance of an ecosystem.
      - YXNjaGVyZWdlbgo 5y ago
        he thinks because America has the tendency to put their city rivers underground its a world wide thing.
        dubcanada 5y ago
        I have no idea what you are even talking about? Underground?
        YXNjaGVyZWdlbgo 5y ago
        Sunswick Creek, Tibbets Brook, Sawmill River, Park River, Bluespring Caverns, Arroyo de las Pasa, Arroyo de la Sacatela...
    - foolinaround 5y ago
      these are not rivers, they are canals
      - dubcanada 5y ago
        I’m fine with canals, but there must be easier places to put them then on moving water.
        throw8932894 5y ago
        Yes, canals. Not every country has infinitive supply of land. It is very difficult to find free land in India.
    - LightG 5y ago
      Irrigation channels ... eco systemic rivers.
    - kumarvvr 5y ago
      Actually, these panels are placed on irrigation canals, where concrete embankment alreadyy exists.
  - KrishnaShripad 5y ago
    > Solar actually makes sense in India Only in arid regions. Specifically Thar desert of Rajasthan and Gujarat. Doesn't make any sense in other places. > it does not snow there Oh it does! Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Arunachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, Ladakh come to mind [1]. India has all seasons and all types of weather. > big parts of India have underdeveloped electricity grid What do you mean by an "underdeveloped" electricity grid? India recently achieved 99% electrification target. Only 31 million out of 1.3 billion people have no/non-continuous electricity. I wouldn't label it "big parts of India". [1]: https://www.happyeasygo.com/travel-blog/travel-tips/best-places-to-experience-snowfall-in-india/ https://www.happyeasygo.com/travel-blog/travel-tips/best-pla...
- _fizz_buzz_ 5y ago
  Solar is cheaper than nuclear power, faster to build, easier to deploy, easier to scale up and extend. Downside is obviously that one needs storage. But nuclear power is also not really suited for load following.
  - piokoch 5y ago
    And how much ground you need to cover to have equivalent of an average nuclear power plant? And yes, one needs storage, and viable storage technology is not even on the horizon. It is so sad and so bad for our planet that for instance Germany decided to spend billions of billions on renewable energy plants while spending the same amount on nuclear power plant would made Germany zero emission economy.
    - marmarama 5y ago
      Viable storage is already here. It's called green hydrogen or hydrogen-from-seawater, and pilot plants are coming online or being built right now. The storage is limited only by tank size, and we already know how to store and use large quantities of hydrogen. The hydrogen produced from the process can be pumped elsewhere by pipeline and used as fuel for gas turbines to balance the grid, or combined with carbon dioxide or nitrogen from the atmosphere to produce zero net carbon methane and ammonia for use as denser fuel sources, or feedstock for industrial processes. You can even make zero net carbon synthetic jet fuel this way.
      - oneoff786 5y ago
        If pilot plants are coming online now, it isn’t here.
      - mrpopo 5y ago
        Hydrogen is an extremely inefficient energy storage medium. We don't have massive amounts of energy to just waste away in an inefficient system. If we did, green hydrogen would have been chewing away at current hydrogen production for industrial usage (95% gray hydrogen). You're of course free to believe that countries will build 3 times the capacity of their energy production to compensate for that inefficiency.
- dghughes 5y ago
  India has a lot of thorium my guess is any nuclear power plant will be thorium-based.
  - oneoff786 5y ago
    We don’t have this technology to do this reliably and economically.
  - VaxWithSex 5y ago
    While my home is powered by solar, there is not a single commercially run Thorium reactor on the planet. Go figure.
- option_greek 5y ago
  Because its not easy to get fuel for nuclear reactors as there is an ever lasting cloud on India's nuclear status. Existing reactors also run on partial capacity due to lack of fuel. What little is produced in the country has to be rationed between defence and electricity generation.
- locallost 5y ago
  It's nowhere near enough for 10 nuclear plants. The best comparison is probably Bangladesh, their plant will cost $13B. And it's of course really slow to build them. Renewables are both cheaper and way way faster to build.
- kumarvvr 5y ago
  Solar is dead easy, dead simple, dead safe, dead everything. The next decade may see rise of distributed solar based base load plants, where we have 3x capacity panels and 2x storage, delivering constant 1x power, all year round. We need efficient panels, lower infra costs, etc
  - simiones 5y ago
    Solar is also dead dead for more than half of the day most of the year, and working at much lower capacity during the monsoon season. At the very least, you would need somewhat more than 2x storage. And, 2x storage is NOT dead easy or dead simple, especially with only 3x capacity, since storing the electricity will not happen with 100% efficiency, or anything close to that.
    - credit_guy 5y ago
      That's not really the problem with solar. Storing energy in batteries from day to night is a solved problem, it doesn't even double the price of electricity. The round trip efficiency is about 80%. The big problem is storing electricity from summer to winter at higher latitudes; it's difficult because the day is much longer during the summer than the winter, the incidence angle higher, so you may end up producing as much as 10 times less energy in the winter, while the energy demand is actually higher; storage losses over 6 months are very high, but that's not the really big problem. The big problem is that you are not getting the bang for the buck. For batteries used from day to night, you get MWh of energy into and out of them every day, and you can charge for that, so you can get a decent ROI. For batteries used from summer to winter, you'll charge for the energy once a year; you need to charge much, much more, and this becomes uneconomical by a huge distance. There's an alternative to storing energy from summer to winter: you simply overbuild solar capacity so that even in the winter you can produce enough during the day to last you through the night. At high latitudes, you need to overbuild by a factor of 10, and solar may be cheap, but not 10 times cheaper than other sources of electricity. However, if you find something to do with the excess summer energy, you may end up being profitable. India, being at a lower latitude, has a much easier problem. First, it's very likely the demand during "winter" months is not much higher than during "summer" months if at all. Then the day length during winter is not that short. So the overcapacity that you need may be only a factor of 3x. This guy wants to manufacture green hydrogen. Even if he sells it at a loss, the overall venture may still be profitable.
- stubish 5y ago
  Nuclear plants take decades to build and require a good power grid to distribute power to remote regions. Even longer if you want one of the safer types like Thorium, since you also need to wait for someone to work out how to build and run them at scale. This is kind of important if you are interested in making money now, rather than that getting money from investors in exchange for the promise of profits in 20 years time. Oh, and a lot of people also think climate change should be tackled now rather than in a decade or two. Solar and wind you can start building straight away and can build small local plants that don't rely on long distance links of sufficient quality and reliability. Hydrogen is trickier since you still need solar or wind and a production facility to make it and logistics to distribute it. Hydrogen seems a side show at the moment, since lots of people seem interested in generating Green hydrogen it but I don't see anyone actually wanting to make use of it. Maybe it is a good way of getting governments to kick in money.
ngcc_hk 5y ago
Just hope the weight is not too much and misguided the market. He is not doing it by idea and building then it is bad. Just throwing money or power or … is bad.
dirtyid 5y ago
If we're going to have billionaires, might as well as incentivize them to invest the money in useful things. Elites during gilded age built many institutions, funded museums. I remember anecdote about gilded rich buying a town to redirect railway too close their manor with caveat that they paid everyone involved over market value for relocation. Is Zuckerburg doing the same in Hawaii? What are tech bros doing with their money apart from building fallout shelters in NZ. Bezos goes to space but can't fund Expanse season 6 with full episodes :-/.
sidcool 5y ago
If Mukesh Abmani ties up with Elon Musk for Tesla's India expansion, it will be done faster than it was done in China. But may be wishful thinking.
- JoelJacobson 5y ago
  Not so sure about the "faster" part in that sentence. I think Tesla could possibly have too many parallel projects in the pipe already.
  - pas 5y ago
    Isn't Tesla mostly bottlenecked by its vendors and regulatory approval? (For example each aluminium die casting machine - called a "Giga Press" and supplied by an Italian company - probably takes some time to get built. Just like with the semiconductor industry where ASML builds a few steppers per year.)
    - JoelJacobson 5y ago
      I have no idea. I was thinking about the Tesla Roadster and Tesla Semi, two products delayed with years and counting. I pre-paid the Tesla Roadster in full 2018-06-14 and was expecting it to be delivered in 2020, so every new Tesla project I hear about makes me a little nervous the Roadster will be postponed even further into the future.
- ir123 5y ago
  We don't want Tesla. We already see what car lobbies do to cities like Pune with a terrible public transport infra. We want a more reliable rail network and a useable metro for all important cities. And no, we can't have both, I don't want the car lobby to get stronger that it is.
  - supperburg 5y ago
    You want to address your countries lobbying problem by killing business rather than using legislation or political action to prevent lobbying. That is decidedly unwise.
keewee7 5y ago
Why is wind not getting the same love as solar? Wind has a more proven track record than solar. Entire modern industrialized European countries have run on pure wind energy for several days at a time. If we could store and share that energy across borders we probably have the answer to most of our energy problems. In the 2010s the efficiency of solar cells have been so exaggerated that some scientific journals felt it was necessary to enforce rigorous checklists and guidelines on that topic: https://www.nature.com/articles/nphoton.2015.233 https://www.nature.com/articles/nphoton.2015.233
- jopsen 5y ago
  Do we really need to store wind energy? Why not just have more capacity than we need, and a grid to redistribute it.
  - the_gastropod 5y ago
    One of these things is orders of magnitude more complicated than the other.
  - simon1573 5y ago
    We have that in Sweden. The problem is distributing it. Most energy in Sweden is produced up north, but the infrastructure to transfer it south is lacking which (especially this winter) is resulting in ridiculously uneven kW/h prices in our country.
    - jopsen 5y ago
      But building put transfer capacity is a known quantity. I would think energy storage is harder to solve than building more transfer capacity?
    - cinntaile 5y ago
      Just to clarify. This is pretty much all hydro and not wind, big wind parks in northern Sweden will be built though.
  - 5y ago
Tade0 5y ago
> The bulk of that money — about $67.7 billion — will go toward a new power plant and hydrogen system, the company said in a stock exchange filing. Reliance plans to make the massive investment over a 10-to-15-year period, and has already begun scouting for land for the 100-gigawatt capacity site. If I'm reading this correctly they want to build 100GW worth of solar capacity and a hydrogen plant for $67.7bln. That's actually pretty cheap.
- h0l0cube 5y ago
  A bit of a tangent here, but does anyone have a grasp on whether using electrolysis to store and transport excess solar/wind is a feasible thing? Could hydrogen behave as a on-demand scalable (if inefficient) store of unused power?
  - dvdkhlng 5y ago
    I think this is called "green hydrogen" [1] which has application as an energy storage medium, but also more. Energy storage also does not imply, that that hydrogen needs to be turned back into grid electricity, but could be used for heating or for hydrogen cars. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_hydrogen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_hydrogen
    - h0l0cube 5y ago
      > I think this is called "green hydrogen" I'm aware of the term, 'green hydrogen', which is in contrast to 'blue hydrogen' (or as I prefer to call it 'dirty hydrogen') which is a product of methane gas extraction and allows some of that methane to escape. > but could be used for heating or for hydrogen cars. I'm under the impression that hydrogen ICE vehicles at scale is impractical due to lack of infrastructure, safety issues etc, at least compared to batteries
      - maxerickson 5y ago
        Methane synthesis is a potential solution. Simpler infrastructure/reuse of existing infrastructure. Or potentially methanol (and better yet, butanol, which is easier to deal with than methanol, less corrosive, less hydroscopic).
bwood 5y ago
While on the topic of green energy, I recently started reading Electrify by Saul Griffith [0] which outlines a pretty comprehensive plan for addressing climate change with a broad shift to "electric everything". The summary is that by investing massively in renewables and electrification NOW, it we can solve climate change and also reduce the cost of living for everyone everywhere (not to mention the bonus of not irreversibly altering the climate). If you are at all concerned about the future of our planet, IMO this is required reading! [0] https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/electrify https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/electrify
- beaconstudios 5y ago
  That seems like just a different way of saying to stop using fossil fuels, which is true but hard to achieve when the vast majority of our transport is done using them. Electrified public transport taking precedence over cars would accelerate the process but so many people are opposed to public transit.
  - onion2k 5y ago
    which is true but hard to achieve when the vast majority of our transport is done using them Many countries have passed laws to make selling new fossil fuel powered cars illegal within the next couple of decades. You might argue that's too slow, or even not possible, but the intent to reduce reliance on ICE transport and move to electric vehicles is definitely there.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - beaconstudios 5y ago
      We'll have to see how that pans out - I don't weigh intent very strongly when it comes to averting climate disaster.
  - Retric 5y ago
    Most fossil fuel use is outside of transportation, and within transportation cars and trains are a fairly easy transition. Electrified highways solve the issue for Trucks. Boats and aircraft are more difficult, but there are a range of viable options for each. For example the US uses a little over 18 billion gallons of aviation fuel a year and produces 17 billion gallons of ethanol per year. It’s not a drop in replacement, but it is much easier than hydrogen or batteries.
Proven 5y ago
reacharavindh 5y ago
Rich men throwing their weight behind renewable power to make money. Good. Public infra wise, it would be great if the government spends money in several directions 1. Setting up solar farms in the deserts of North west - Gujurat, Rajasthan where the land is obviously not being used for agriculture or industrial buildings. The industrial footprint of Gujurat will no doubt be thankful for the renewable power during the operational hours of the day coinciding with solar power generation. 2. Set up solar panels atop irrigation canals which not only generate power for agriculture, but also reduce fresh water evaporation. 3. Strengthen the power grid in populated areas to handle power generation from roof tops and let people make money by sending solar power into their grid. The Indian entrepreneurial public will find creative ways to generate power and make some money for themselves. 4. Add buffers that can absorb bursts in power production that can be used for later(or would have used peak power unnecessarily). Example - run drinking water pumping and filtration systems, sewage treatment systems, seawater desalination plants etc during peak solar production times of the day. Easier said than done I know. But that’s what leadership should look like. Not triggering political divisions and trying to exploit emotions to stay in power.
- prashantsengar 5y ago
  Interestingly, current PM said in one of his election speeches in 2014 (when he was the CM of Gujarat) what you mentioned in point 1 (not exactly the same). I don't think there has been any progress there. Otherwise, a lot of focus has been put by the current government towards renewal energy.
- eldaisfish 5y ago
  there's an important element of this that rarely gets mentioned - demand growth in India. At the moment, the per capita electrical energy consumption of India is between 20% - 25% that of China. What this means is that if India is to continue to grow, this energy must come from somewhere. Bear in mind, this is 4x - 5x as much energy as is delivered today to get to where China is today. While more renewable energy is a good thing, the fact is that no gigawatt scale power grid anywhere has managed to do this i.e. meet demand growth solely through renewable energy. You mention strengthening the power grid - this is one of India's biggest choke points to domestic energy generation. their transmission grid is truly world-class but their distribution grid is regularly on the verge of collapse and power cuts are frequent. Before someone chimes in with "batteries" those are expensive and the Indian government already subsidises fuel - something that already works well. Batteries are not a solution to rickety distribution infrastructure in the developing world.
known 5y ago
johnmato 5y ago
That's great initiative in which can definitely help the world in a positive light.
visava 5y ago
While california and Florida are going against green energy https://engage.tesla.com/articles/1105-california-stop-solar-tax https://engage.tesla.com/articles/1105-california-stop-solar... https://www.ecowatch.com/rooftop-solar-florida-2656084105.html https://www.ecowatch.com/rooftop-solar-florida-2656084105.ht...
sproketboy 5y ago
boringg 5y ago
Now this is a statement!! At least compared to all the other wealthy philanthropists funds dipping their toes (see Breakthrough Energy Ventures - $1B who include Gates, Bezos, Benioff, Bloomberg, Branson, Ma, Hoffman, Soros, Steyer, Whitman, Zuckerberg, Lutke, Muskovitz). To be fair Mukesh (Chairman of Reliance) is also in on BEV. I hope this is the beginning of a major transformation for India and continued global progress!
- cinntaile 5y ago
  It's a bit much to call them wealthy philanthropists. They're all businessmen.
  - boringg 5y ago
    Fair enough - I believe philanthropists is what they call themselves. I think I used it slightly pejoratively. They are indeed businessmen who made enough money to then donate a portion of it to philanthropy (both good and some bad) after they made their billions and rebranded themselves as philanthropists.
bhupy 5y ago
An excerpt from a 2020 Stratechery article (https://stratechery.com/2020/facebook-invests-in-jio-platforms-the-building-of-jio-understanding-the-deal https://stratechery.com/2020/facebook-invests-in-jio-platfor...): “Over the past two years, more than 200m Indian phone users have flocked to take advantage of arguably the greatest corporate gamble in the country’s history. Mukesh Ambani, India’s richest man, has spent $32bn building up his telecoms company Reliance Jio — the biggest private sector investment in India’s history — as he fights for dominance in the world’s second-biggest telecoms market by user numbers. Much of that money has been spent giving away free access to what Jio says is now the world’s largest mobile data network, with its clients consuming about three times the amount of data of an average European customer. The launch of Jio has helped to engineer a socio-economic revolution in India. For the first time, millions of Indians are able to access the internet to register for benefit payments, download school textbooks or simply watch India beat Pakistan at cricket. The rapid growth in the telecoms network has encouraged some of the world’s biggest retail and technology companies to plough money into the country. Walmart this year announced the world’s largest ecommerce deal by buying 77 per cent of Indian online retailer Flipkart for $16bn. Google is beefing up its India team, while Netflix says it hopes to add 100m customers from the country.” Hell of a legacy.
- kylehotchkiss 5y ago
  For real. Traveling there and having 4 bars of fast 4g almost anywhere you stand in cities and on the road is remarkable for such a large country
Shadonototra 5y ago
one person shouldn't be able to hold this much power

274 points by alok-g 5y ago

that's enough for 10 or more nuclear plants or at least a lot of research into them. Why solar and hydrogen? Is it the fact that they're already in hydrocarbons?

throw8932894 5y ago
Solar actually makes sense in India, it does not snow there :) I seen documentary where they covered river with solar panels. It reduced evaporation of water by significant amount. And it did not occupy any arable land. And big parts of India have underdeveloped electricity grid. Solar is easiest way to bring electric infrastructure there.
- dubcanada 5y ago
  That will destroy the river ecosystem, while providing little to nothing for power, since rivers are often shaded. That's a terrible idea, unless I am missing something. Why not cover the vast amount of uninhabitable land in solar panels, rather then what small amount of precious resource land that exists.
  - nindalf 5y ago
    Rivers are shaded? What kind of rivers are you thinking of? Are you talking about a flowing river, several hundred feet in width having shade in the middle of it?
    - dubcanada 5y ago
      At that size probably not. But I still cannot wrap my head around this being a good idea, destroy the ecosystem of rivers, provide next to zero power (compared to resources required to build and maintain), require a HUGE investment as it's fast moving water and everyone knows fast moving water destroys material, have to deal with overflowing from rain, drought, etc. Way too many factors for this to be a good idea. It could probably if it was a man made canal or something with a set amount of water, but that still destroys any chance of an ecosystem.
    - YXNjaGVyZWdlbgo 5y ago
      he thinks because America has the tendency to put their city rivers underground its a world wide thing.
      - dubcanada 5y ago
        I have no idea what you are even talking about? Underground?
        YXNjaGVyZWdlbgo 5y ago
        Sunswick Creek, Tibbets Brook, Sawmill River, Park River, Bluespring Caverns, Arroyo de las Pasa, Arroyo de la Sacatela...
  - foolinaround 5y ago
    these are not rivers, they are canals
    - dubcanada 5y ago
      I’m fine with canals, but there must be easier places to put them then on moving water.
      - throw8932894 5y ago
        Yes, canals. Not every country has infinitive supply of land. It is very difficult to find free land in India.
  - LightG 5y ago
    Irrigation channels ... eco systemic rivers.
  - kumarvvr 5y ago
    Actually, these panels are placed on irrigation canals, where concrete embankment alreadyy exists.
- KrishnaShripad 5y ago
  > Solar actually makes sense in India Only in arid regions. Specifically Thar desert of Rajasthan and Gujarat. Doesn't make any sense in other places. > it does not snow there Oh it does! Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Arunachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, Ladakh come to mind [1]. India has all seasons and all types of weather. > big parts of India have underdeveloped electricity grid What do you mean by an "underdeveloped" electricity grid? India recently achieved 99% electrification target. Only 31 million out of 1.3 billion people have no/non-continuous electricity. I wouldn't label it "big parts of India". [1]: https://www.happyeasygo.com/travel-blog/travel-tips/best-places-to-experience-snowfall-in-india/ https://www.happyeasygo.com/travel-blog/travel-tips/best-pla...
_fizz_buzz_ 5y ago
Solar is cheaper than nuclear power, faster to build, easier to deploy, easier to scale up and extend. Downside is obviously that one needs storage. But nuclear power is also not really suited for load following.
- piokoch 5y ago
  And how much ground you need to cover to have equivalent of an average nuclear power plant? And yes, one needs storage, and viable storage technology is not even on the horizon. It is so sad and so bad for our planet that for instance Germany decided to spend billions of billions on renewable energy plants while spending the same amount on nuclear power plant would made Germany zero emission economy.
  - marmarama 5y ago
    Viable storage is already here. It's called green hydrogen or hydrogen-from-seawater, and pilot plants are coming online or being built right now. The storage is limited only by tank size, and we already know how to store and use large quantities of hydrogen. The hydrogen produced from the process can be pumped elsewhere by pipeline and used as fuel for gas turbines to balance the grid, or combined with carbon dioxide or nitrogen from the atmosphere to produce zero net carbon methane and ammonia for use as denser fuel sources, or feedstock for industrial processes. You can even make zero net carbon synthetic jet fuel this way.
    - oneoff786 5y ago
      If pilot plants are coming online now, it isn’t here.
    - mrpopo 5y ago
      Hydrogen is an extremely inefficient energy storage medium. We don't have massive amounts of energy to just waste away in an inefficient system. If we did, green hydrogen would have been chewing away at current hydrogen production for industrial usage (95% gray hydrogen). You're of course free to believe that countries will build 3 times the capacity of their energy production to compensate for that inefficiency.
dghughes 5y ago
India has a lot of thorium my guess is any nuclear power plant will be thorium-based.
- oneoff786 5y ago
  We don’t have this technology to do this reliably and economically.
- VaxWithSex 5y ago
  While my home is powered by solar, there is not a single commercially run Thorium reactor on the planet. Go figure.
option_greek 5y ago
Because its not easy to get fuel for nuclear reactors as there is an ever lasting cloud on India's nuclear status. Existing reactors also run on partial capacity due to lack of fuel. What little is produced in the country has to be rationed between defence and electricity generation.
locallost 5y ago
It's nowhere near enough for 10 nuclear plants. The best comparison is probably Bangladesh, their plant will cost $13B. And it's of course really slow to build them. Renewables are both cheaper and way way faster to build.
kumarvvr 5y ago
Solar is dead easy, dead simple, dead safe, dead everything. The next decade may see rise of distributed solar based base load plants, where we have 3x capacity panels and 2x storage, delivering constant 1x power, all year round. We need efficient panels, lower infra costs, etc
- simiones 5y ago
  Solar is also dead dead for more than half of the day most of the year, and working at much lower capacity during the monsoon season. At the very least, you would need somewhat more than 2x storage. And, 2x storage is NOT dead easy or dead simple, especially with only 3x capacity, since storing the electricity will not happen with 100% efficiency, or anything close to that.
  - credit_guy 5y ago
    That's not really the problem with solar. Storing energy in batteries from day to night is a solved problem, it doesn't even double the price of electricity. The round trip efficiency is about 80%. The big problem is storing electricity from summer to winter at higher latitudes; it's difficult because the day is much longer during the summer than the winter, the incidence angle higher, so you may end up producing as much as 10 times less energy in the winter, while the energy demand is actually higher; storage losses over 6 months are very high, but that's not the really big problem. The big problem is that you are not getting the bang for the buck. For batteries used from day to night, you get MWh of energy into and out of them every day, and you can charge for that, so you can get a decent ROI. For batteries used from summer to winter, you'll charge for the energy once a year; you need to charge much, much more, and this becomes uneconomical by a huge distance. There's an alternative to storing energy from summer to winter: you simply overbuild solar capacity so that even in the winter you can produce enough during the day to last you through the night. At high latitudes, you need to overbuild by a factor of 10, and solar may be cheap, but not 10 times cheaper than other sources of electricity. However, if you find something to do with the excess summer energy, you may end up being profitable. India, being at a lower latitude, has a much easier problem. First, it's very likely the demand during "winter" months is not much higher than during "summer" months if at all. Then the day length during winter is not that short. So the overcapacity that you need may be only a factor of 3x. This guy wants to manufacture green hydrogen. Even if he sells it at a loss, the overall venture may still be profitable.
stubish 5y ago
Nuclear plants take decades to build and require a good power grid to distribute power to remote regions. Even longer if you want one of the safer types like Thorium, since you also need to wait for someone to work out how to build and run them at scale. This is kind of important if you are interested in making money now, rather than that getting money from investors in exchange for the promise of profits in 20 years time. Oh, and a lot of people also think climate change should be tackled now rather than in a decade or two. Solar and wind you can start building straight away and can build small local plants that don't rely on long distance links of sufficient quality and reliability. Hydrogen is trickier since you still need solar or wind and a production facility to make it and logistics to distribute it. Hydrogen seems a side show at the moment, since lots of people seem interested in generating Green hydrogen it but I don't see anyone actually wanting to make use of it. Maybe it is a good way of getting governments to kick in money.

ngcc_hk 5y ago

Just hope the weight is not too much and misguided the market. He is not doing it by idea and building then it is bad. Just throwing money or power or … is bad.

dirtyid 5y ago

If we're going to have billionaires, might as well as incentivize them to invest the money in useful things. Elites during gilded age built many institutions, funded museums. I remember anecdote about gilded rich buying a town to redirect railway too close their manor with caveat that they paid everyone involved over market value for relocation. Is Zuckerburg doing the same in Hawaii? What are tech bros doing with their money apart from building fallout shelters in NZ. Bezos goes to space but can't fund Expanse season 6 with full episodes :-/.

sidcool 5y ago

If Mukesh Abmani ties up with Elon Musk for Tesla's India expansion, it will be done faster than it was done in China. But may be wishful thinking.

JoelJacobson 5y ago
Not so sure about the "faster" part in that sentence. I think Tesla could possibly have too many parallel projects in the pipe already.
- pas 5y ago
  Isn't Tesla mostly bottlenecked by its vendors and regulatory approval? (For example each aluminium die casting machine - called a "Giga Press" and supplied by an Italian company - probably takes some time to get built. Just like with the semiconductor industry where ASML builds a few steppers per year.)
  - JoelJacobson 5y ago
    I have no idea. I was thinking about the Tesla Roadster and Tesla Semi, two products delayed with years and counting. I pre-paid the Tesla Roadster in full 2018-06-14 and was expecting it to be delivered in 2020, so every new Tesla project I hear about makes me a little nervous the Roadster will be postponed even further into the future.
ir123 5y ago
We don't want Tesla. We already see what car lobbies do to cities like Pune with a terrible public transport infra. We want a more reliable rail network and a useable metro for all important cities. And no, we can't have both, I don't want the car lobby to get stronger that it is.
- supperburg 5y ago
  You want to address your countries lobbying problem by killing business rather than using legislation or political action to prevent lobbying. That is decidedly unwise.

keewee7 5y ago

Why is wind not getting the same love as solar? Wind has a more proven track record than solar. Entire modern industrialized European countries have run on pure wind energy for several days at a time. If we could store and share that energy across borders we probably have the answer to most of our energy problems. In the 2010s the efficiency of solar cells have been so exaggerated that some scientific journals felt it was necessary to enforce rigorous checklists and guidelines on that topic: https://www.nature.com/articles/nphoton.2015.233 https://www.nature.com/articles/nphoton.2015.233

jopsen 5y ago
Do we really need to store wind energy? Why not just have more capacity than we need, and a grid to redistribute it.
- the_gastropod 5y ago
  One of these things is orders of magnitude more complicated than the other.
- simon1573 5y ago
  We have that in Sweden. The problem is distributing it. Most energy in Sweden is produced up north, but the infrastructure to transfer it south is lacking which (especially this winter) is resulting in ridiculously uneven kW/h prices in our country.
  - jopsen 5y ago
    But building put transfer capacity is a known quantity. I would think energy storage is harder to solve than building more transfer capacity?
  - cinntaile 5y ago
    Just to clarify. This is pretty much all hydro and not wind, big wind parks in northern Sweden will be built though.
- 5y ago

Tade0 5y ago

> The bulk of that money — about $67.7 billion — will go toward a new power plant and hydrogen system, the company said in a stock exchange filing. Reliance plans to make the massive investment over a 10-to-15-year period, and has already begun scouting for land for the 100-gigawatt capacity site. If I'm reading this correctly they want to build 100GW worth of solar capacity and a hydrogen plant for $67.7bln. That's actually pretty cheap.

h0l0cube 5y ago
A bit of a tangent here, but does anyone have a grasp on whether using electrolysis to store and transport excess solar/wind is a feasible thing? Could hydrogen behave as a on-demand scalable (if inefficient) store of unused power?
- dvdkhlng 5y ago
  I think this is called "green hydrogen" [1] which has application as an energy storage medium, but also more. Energy storage also does not imply, that that hydrogen needs to be turned back into grid electricity, but could be used for heating or for hydrogen cars. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_hydrogen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_hydrogen
  - h0l0cube 5y ago
    > I think this is called "green hydrogen" I'm aware of the term, 'green hydrogen', which is in contrast to 'blue hydrogen' (or as I prefer to call it 'dirty hydrogen') which is a product of methane gas extraction and allows some of that methane to escape. > but could be used for heating or for hydrogen cars. I'm under the impression that hydrogen ICE vehicles at scale is impractical due to lack of infrastructure, safety issues etc, at least compared to batteries
    - maxerickson 5y ago
      Methane synthesis is a potential solution. Simpler infrastructure/reuse of existing infrastructure. Or potentially methanol (and better yet, butanol, which is easier to deal with than methanol, less corrosive, less hydroscopic).

bwood 5y ago

While on the topic of green energy, I recently started reading Electrify by Saul Griffith [0] which outlines a pretty comprehensive plan for addressing climate change with a broad shift to "electric everything". The summary is that by investing massively in renewables and electrification NOW, it we can solve climate change and also reduce the cost of living for everyone everywhere (not to mention the bonus of not irreversibly altering the climate). If you are at all concerned about the future of our planet, IMO this is required reading! [0] https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/electrify https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/electrify

beaconstudios 5y ago
That seems like just a different way of saying to stop using fossil fuels, which is true but hard to achieve when the vast majority of our transport is done using them. Electrified public transport taking precedence over cars would accelerate the process but so many people are opposed to public transit.
- onion2k 5y ago
  which is true but hard to achieve when the vast majority of our transport is done using them Many countries have passed laws to make selling new fossil fuel powered cars illegal within the next couple of decades. You might argue that's too slow, or even not possible, but the intent to reduce reliance on ICE transport and move to electric vehicles is definitely there.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - beaconstudios 5y ago
    We'll have to see how that pans out - I don't weigh intent very strongly when it comes to averting climate disaster.
- Retric 5y ago
  Most fossil fuel use is outside of transportation, and within transportation cars and trains are a fairly easy transition. Electrified highways solve the issue for Trucks. Boats and aircraft are more difficult, but there are a range of viable options for each. For example the US uses a little over 18 billion gallons of aviation fuel a year and produces 17 billion gallons of ethanol per year. It’s not a drop in replacement, but it is much easier than hydrogen or batteries.

Proven 5y ago

reacharavindh 5y ago

Rich men throwing their weight behind renewable power to make money. Good. Public infra wise, it would be great if the government spends money in several directions 1. Setting up solar farms in the deserts of North west - Gujurat, Rajasthan where the land is obviously not being used for agriculture or industrial buildings. The industrial footprint of Gujurat will no doubt be thankful for the renewable power during the operational hours of the day coinciding with solar power generation. 2. Set up solar panels atop irrigation canals which not only generate power for agriculture, but also reduce fresh water evaporation. 3. Strengthen the power grid in populated areas to handle power generation from roof tops and let people make money by sending solar power into their grid. The Indian entrepreneurial public will find creative ways to generate power and make some money for themselves. 4. Add buffers that can absorb bursts in power production that can be used for later(or would have used peak power unnecessarily). Example - run drinking water pumping and filtration systems, sewage treatment systems, seawater desalination plants etc during peak solar production times of the day. Easier said than done I know. But that’s what leadership should look like. Not triggering political divisions and trying to exploit emotions to stay in power.

prashantsengar 5y ago
Interestingly, current PM said in one of his election speeches in 2014 (when he was the CM of Gujarat) what you mentioned in point 1 (not exactly the same). I don't think there has been any progress there. Otherwise, a lot of focus has been put by the current government towards renewal energy.
eldaisfish 5y ago
there's an important element of this that rarely gets mentioned - demand growth in India. At the moment, the per capita electrical energy consumption of India is between 20% - 25% that of China. What this means is that if India is to continue to grow, this energy must come from somewhere. Bear in mind, this is 4x - 5x as much energy as is delivered today to get to where China is today. While more renewable energy is a good thing, the fact is that no gigawatt scale power grid anywhere has managed to do this i.e. meet demand growth solely through renewable energy. You mention strengthening the power grid - this is one of India's biggest choke points to domestic energy generation. their transmission grid is truly world-class but their distribution grid is regularly on the verge of collapse and power cuts are frequent. Before someone chimes in with "batteries" those are expensive and the Indian government already subsidises fuel - something that already works well. Batteries are not a solution to rickety distribution infrastructure in the developing world.

known 5y ago

johnmato 5y ago

That's great initiative in which can definitely help the world in a positive light.

visava 5y ago

While california and Florida are going against green energy https://engage.tesla.com/articles/1105-california-stop-solar-tax https://engage.tesla.com/articles/1105-california-stop-solar... https://www.ecowatch.com/rooftop-solar-florida-2656084105.html https://www.ecowatch.com/rooftop-solar-florida-2656084105.ht...

sproketboy 5y ago

boringg 5y ago

Now this is a statement!! At least compared to all the other wealthy philanthropists funds dipping their toes (see Breakthrough Energy Ventures - $1B who include Gates, Bezos, Benioff, Bloomberg, Branson, Ma, Hoffman, Soros, Steyer, Whitman, Zuckerberg, Lutke, Muskovitz). To be fair Mukesh (Chairman of Reliance) is also in on BEV. I hope this is the beginning of a major transformation for India and continued global progress!

cinntaile 5y ago
It's a bit much to call them wealthy philanthropists. They're all businessmen.
- boringg 5y ago
  Fair enough - I believe philanthropists is what they call themselves. I think I used it slightly pejoratively. They are indeed businessmen who made enough money to then donate a portion of it to philanthropy (both good and some bad) after they made their billions and rebranded themselves as philanthropists.

bhupy 5y ago

An excerpt from a 2020 Stratechery article (https://stratechery.com/2020/facebook-invests-in-jio-platforms-the-building-of-jio-understanding-the-deal https://stratechery.com/2020/facebook-invests-in-jio-platfor...): “Over the past two years, more than 200m Indian phone users have flocked to take advantage of arguably the greatest corporate gamble in the country’s history. Mukesh Ambani, India’s richest man, has spent $32bn building up his telecoms company Reliance Jio — the biggest private sector investment in India’s history — as he fights for dominance in the world’s second-biggest telecoms market by user numbers. Much of that money has been spent giving away free access to what Jio says is now the world’s largest mobile data network, with its clients consuming about three times the amount of data of an average European customer. The launch of Jio has helped to engineer a socio-economic revolution in India. For the first time, millions of Indians are able to access the internet to register for benefit payments, download school textbooks or simply watch India beat Pakistan at cricket. The rapid growth in the telecoms network has encouraged some of the world’s biggest retail and technology companies to plough money into the country. Walmart this year announced the world’s largest ecommerce deal by buying 77 per cent of Indian online retailer Flipkart for $16bn. Google is beefing up its India team, while Netflix says it hopes to add 100m customers from the country.” Hell of a legacy.

kylehotchkiss 5y ago
For real. Traveling there and having 4 bars of fast 4g almost anywhere you stand in cities and on the road is remarkable for such a large country

Shadonototra 5y ago

one person shouldn't be able to hold this much power