Thread by @Sustainable2050

Solar PV in India, now for €0.023 per kWh!

“India has become one of the top renewable energy producers globally, with a plan to achieve 175GW by 2022 and 500GW by 2030 as part of its climate commitments.”

https://twitter.com/SolarInMASS/status/1330973149429714949

It’s hard to explain how cheap solar electricity has become. I’ll try though:

This means that you can drive 1,000 km on €4 ($4.75) of solar electricity! Yes, I know you need a battery and all that. But you’d need 50 liters of gasoline to drive the same distance.

OK, that still doesn’t work for US readers. Full conversion:

This means you can drive 1,000 miles for $7.60 of solar electricity! Yes, I know you need a battery and all that. But you’d need 21 gallons of gasoline to drive the same distance, at 47 mpg.

(Will Biden go metric?)

Another try. A modern, efficient coal-fired power plant produces around 0.84 tonnes of CO2 per 1,000 kWh of electricity. Just a modest CO2 price of €30 per tonne *without any generation cost* would already cost more than 1,000 kWh of solar electricity!

Bottom line: solar PV (and wind in many places) has now become so cheap that it’s all about system integration. That’s hard work: grid expansion, batteries, electrification of demand, electrolyzers, hydrogen storage, demand response, interconnectors, etc.

But: you can spend a heck of a lot on energy system integration and still have an affordable, zero-emission, 100% renewable electricity (and even energy) system. And innovation and cost reduction there have only just begun.
You ain’t seen nothing yet!

You can make a 100% renewable power system work by running gas-fired power plants on green hydrogen in days and weeks with little wind and solar.

That only has a roundtrip efficiency of 40%: 67% in producing green hydrogen on windy and sunny days, and 60% in generating electricity again. But at very low solar PV generation costs: who cares?

If out of an electricity demand of 100 kWh, you’d get 85 kWh directly from sun and wind, and 15 kWh via green hydrogen, you’d need 85 + 15/0.4 = 122.5 kWh of renewable electricity.

If a kWh of renewable electricity costs €0.023, that means an average generation cost of €0.028 per kWh of demand. That is still unbelievably cheap!

Yes, I know: system integration cost, materials needed (included in the €0.028, by the way) etc. But this is extremely doable.

So let’s accelerate, big time. It will continue to be tough: hard work, fierce competition, many technical and non-technical challenges to address. But great opportunities to create new industries, clean the air, and stop climate change in its tracks. Worth every ounce of it.

At the heart of this great development: solar cells for only €0.08-0.13 ($0.09-$0.15) per Watt of capacity. Written as €80-130 per kW this causes shock and awe among conventional (and nuclear) energy producers.

https://twitter.com/solarinmass/status/1332368735588511753

Me, 9 years ago, in @grist:

“Recently it has become clear that PV is set to go beyond grid parity and become the cheapest way to generate electricity.
Whenever I say this I encounter incredulity, even vehement opposition, from friends and foes of renewable energy alike...

.. Apparently, knowledge of the rapid developments of the last few years has not been widely disseminated. But it’s happening, right under our noses!”

grist.org/solar-power/20…

“It was only on a 2004 visit to Q-Cells‘ solar cell factory in Germany, that it dawned on me that PV could become very cheap indeed. They gave me a stack of 100 solar cells, each good for 3.8 watts of power in full sunshine. I still have it in the office; it’s only an inch high!”