Yesterday, thanks to a tweet, I read this:
A leader in wind energy, Tamil Nadu is all set to claim at least the No. 2 slot among Indian states (after Gujarat) in solar power, as the State is gearing up to signing power purchase agreements for 698 MW.Hey, the heart warms up every time there is any positive story about the old country, especially Tamil Nadu where I grew up. I remember how impressed I was, during the sabbatical stay, with the windmill farm near Nagercoil.
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| A few kilometers outside Nagercoil |
And, yes, with the harsh sun beating down on the land day in and day out, there is plenty of potential for solar power. The science and technology to convert the sunrays into flowing electrons is getting better, and getting less expensive, by the year. Well, getting less expensive in dollar terms. But, with the rupee sliding down the slope,
Pashupathy Gopalan, Managing Director, SunEdison, says that rupee depreciation raises project costs by at least Rs 50 lakh per MW. Solar module prices have also gone up in the last few months and could raise capital costs by not less than Rs 12 lakh per MW. On the overall, project costs have gone up by 7-8 per cent, while the tariffs have remained low.The dollar cost going down is all the more the reason that private production of solar power is on the increase in the US. Among the corporations going solar, the biggest one is Wal-Mart. Yes, that same Wal-Mart that the solar-loving left typically loves to hate. Unlike the left that pushes expensive solar for reasons other than a dollar bottom-line, Wal-Mart does that precisely because it sees money in it:
“It is going to be very hard to make it work,” says Gopalan.
Since 2007, when the first solar arrays went up on its store roofs in California, the installed costs of Wal-Mart Stores Inc.'s solar systems have dropped from $6 or $8 per watt of capacity to about $3.50 per watt, said David Ozment, the company's senior director of energy management. He said he expects the retailer to be paying as little for solar power as utility power "in less than three years," opening the floodgates to solar expansion.Wal-Mart produces about 4% of the electricity it uses but intends to make 20% by 2020, taking advantage of idle acreage on thousands of store rooftops.Should not surprise us, right? After all, if the cost of energy goes up, or if there is an increase in the risks with the energy supply, then it makes economic sense to seek alternatives. A textbook case of how we expected, and expect, a growth in solar and wind and other sources of energy that will slowly draw us away from carbon-based sources.
Now, before you think all is well, life is rarely ever without downsides even in positive news. What can be the drawback here, you ask? After all, isn't it a good thing to generate more solar power? Yes, indeed. But ...
State and federal regulators say they are worried that utilities could end up with fewer customers to pay for costly transmission lines and power plants. Utility executives, meanwhile, are asking themselves a disquieting question: "Am I going to just sit here and take it and ultimately be a caretaker of a museum, or am I going to be part of that business" that's emerging, said Nick Akins, chief executive of American Electric Power Co.,I say this is a better problem to have.
Because, there are some really energy problems in the developing world. How serious? Here is a neat way to compare the excesses that we indulge in against the acute shortages elsewhere--comparing the electricity demand at the Dallas Cowboys stadium and the entire country of Liberia:
During moments of peak demand on game day, the 80,000-seat stadium may consume up to 10 megawatts of electricity, Bernstein said. Liberia has the capacity to pump less than a third as much power into its national grid.So, celebrate Tamil Nadu and Gujarat and Wal-Mart and others tapping into solar energy. The more they do, and the more the technology develops, the more we can then also address the energy shortages in Liberia and the developing world. Like the proposal to construct the world's largest solar power plant in Rajasthan.
And maybe even put some solar panels on the Cowboys stadium ;)
2 comments:
Oh yes - non carbon based energy sources will be the future . If we recognise the true cost of today's sources like coal and factor in the pollution offset costs, the differential with solar/wind, etc could possibly be bridged in a decade.
Developing countries are investing - the leader of course is China which is leading the world in solar energy. Uncle Sam will sit on its backside and do very little and in the fullness of time can become caretakers of the museum :):):)
Hey, hey, don't count out the US so easily ... our foot-dragging in this context is primarily because unlike China or Germany, we have plenty of fossil fuels and the market forces are creatively figuring out how to extract more of them when we previously thought was not possible. Yes, there are plenty of issues related to the true cost of extracting and using them, but there is a logic behind the madness.
And even within this madness, the use of coal is dropping, and is dropping fast. Which is why now we want to sell so much coal to China. And, btw, Western European countries import US coal like some crazy addicted people. It is bizarre that we are decreasing our coal usage, and selling our "surplus" to Europeans and Chinese.
So, if developing countries, especially China, are focusing on it, well, it is more out of sheer necessity and urgency. However, my suspicion is that the technological breakthroughs to make solar power competitive and at large magnitudes will come from the US, and not from a China or India ... As a energy consumer, the US is one huge hog. When solar breaks through the price barrier, we will see a sudden uptick here in the US. And given the vast land area that is also unpopulated, it will be an anergy feast all over again in the US!
The neatest thing is that it is also far easier to export electrons than it is to export coal or gas. Which means it is quite possible that if and when we break through those technological and price barriers, exporting energy as electricity can become a tempting activity by itself--we can become the world's battery, instead of being the batterer ;)
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