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.
3. This is also for state of Kerala. grid connected systems are available.
"Consumers have the option of choosing from two models of power generation. In the first model, the energy generated is fed into the grid for 25 years and 10 per cent of the energy is given to the premises owner. In the second model, the energy generated is sold to the consumer at a fixed tariff for 25 years. In both models, the total cost of the installation is borne by KSEB, while the premise owner gives the rooftop for installation. "
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.
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.
> Rich men throwing their weight behind renewable power to make money. Good.
I mean, it's good that he's doing this. Whether one person should have the financial resources to make that decision by himself is a different question.
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!
I would dearly love to electrify everything, but electricity around here (California) has price growth strongly exceeding inflation while simultaneously getting less reliable. You're economically better off converting electric loads to gas, even if that means using gas to generate electricity.
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.
I haven't read it and I'm curios what is the gist of the electrification approach. Is it that it's more efficient?
Wouldn't heating and cooling be more efficient if done through architectural approaches?
For example, for cooling Persians use "cooling towers" called Windcatcher[0]. I know that there's a lot that can be done through design both for cooling and heating.
Also, organising the public spaces and infrastructure must be much more productive than aiming for changing the energy conversion systems(i.e. switching away from combustion propellers to electric ones). I' m very sceptical of the idea that electric cars will solve our problems. Just recently Elon Musk demonstrated that electrification of cars and taking the traffic underground simply creates underground traffic congestion[1].
I mean that doesn't sound like a revolutionary hot take to me, I guess I'm glad you're inspired?
The problem we on this side of the pond are facing now is that the electrification is going too fast; people installing solar panels on their roofs, getting an electric car, companies putting solar panels on every building and unused patch of land, people electrifying their house by replacing their gas boilers and stoves with pure electric alternatives is all well and good, but the infrastructure can't handle it, and they need YEARS to upgrade said infrastructure, to the point where they are forced to refuse to connect new businesses (that produce or consume a lot of electricity).
It's great, but it needs big investment in the electricity infrastructure.
And of course, better guarantees for energy production. We're facing an energy crisis over here, due to fuckery with Russia, the gas supplies are running out and prices of gas have gone way up, which is causing electricity prices to go up as well. As a country, you need to be able to give guarantees about the stability, availability and cost of electricity. It's not something fixed overnight.
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:
Wind produces noise, has moving parts that require quite a bit of maintenance, too much wind and the breaks are applied, too little they don't turn, they require a very large foundation made of an enormous amount of concrete and may cause issues with birds depending on location.
Additionally small wind mills don't make economic sense and that is why they are getting bigger and bigger. This limits where you can install them and make the approval process a huge burden. Compare this to solar which can be installed on almost any size house.
We can easily store this energy with hydro storage and hydro damns. Hydro storage is an amazing thing as it requires very little maintenance and can go from 0 to 100% in seconds which is great for areas that require a lot of power in a short amount of time. Even nuclear power doesn't have such a quick ramp up/down.
If you've got the land area and the sunshine, solar PVs are cheaper than wind, it's that simple.
Wind is a better fit for Europe where there are far fewer sunshine hours but fairly constant wind due to macro-scale atmospheric weather patterns.
With that said, the cost of PVs is dropping so fast - faster than wind power - that I expect solar to become more important in Europe as well. Even in northern latitudes, solar farms are popping up on land that was previously used for agriculture, and I expect this trend will accelerate. If you're a landowner, you can potentially make more money using the land to generate electricity with PVs than with agriculture.
I think it's genuinely because wind is a pretty mature technology, lighter-than-air turbines notwithstanding. We know what a state-of-the-art turbine costs, what it produces, and we can make a good estimate of its useful life. There's just not much for a capital allocator to do in the wind space. Solar still has startups and experimentation, so there's at least the perception that as a capital allocator it's possible to pick winners.
Wind energy is mechanical,in 2021 it costs around $0,06 per kWh, it will not get cheaper than $0,035 per kWh (quote Saul Griffith of Makani power).
Solar photovoltaics cost $0,01 per kilowatt hour in 2021 and will get two orders of a magnitude cheaper in the next decades. This cost projection is based on physics.
Why would you be interested in more expensive sources?
> 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.
Renewables are massively cheaper than anything else on the market today, and this is one of the reasons I am definitely in favor of them. One thing to consider though is that the capacity factor (basically how much of GWh you actually produce from your available capacity) of renewables is less than coal/nuclear plants, so in that case 1GW of solar and 1GW of nuclear is not the same. But even with this taken into account, renewables are the cheapest and there is virtually no chance for this to change in the future.
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?
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!
“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.”
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 :-/.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
[+] [-] reacharavindh|4 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] nmridul|4 years ago|reply
1. Solar plant planned in Desert, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhadla_Solar_Park
Mostly organised by https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_Energy_Corporation_of_... and installed by private players.
2. Floating solar power on top of dams. https://www.deccanchronicle.com/nation/in-other-news/300416/...
3. This is also for state of Kerala. grid connected systems are available.
"Consumers have the option of choosing from two models of power generation. In the first model, the energy generated is fed into the grid for 25 years and 10 per cent of the energy is given to the premises owner. In the second model, the energy generated is sold to the consumer at a fixed tariff for 25 years. In both models, the total cost of the installation is borne by KSEB, while the premise owner gives the rooftop for installation. "
https://www.newindianexpress.com/cities/kochi/2020/feb/29/ks...
[+] [-] prashantsengar|4 years ago|reply
Otherwise, a lot of focus has been put by the current government towards renewal energy.
[+] [-] eldaisfish|4 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] HWR_14|4 years ago|reply
I mean, it's good that he's doing this. Whether one person should have the financial resources to make that decision by himself is a different question.
[+] [-] stayfrosty420|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Shadonototra|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] bwood|4 years ago|reply
If you are at all concerned about the future of our planet, IMO this is required reading!
[0] https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/electrify
[+] [-] zbrozek|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] beaconstudios|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] keyKeeper|4 years ago|reply
Wouldn't heating and cooling be more efficient if done through architectural approaches?
For example, for cooling Persians use "cooling towers" called Windcatcher[0]. I know that there's a lot that can be done through design both for cooling and heating.
Also, organising the public spaces and infrastructure must be much more productive than aiming for changing the energy conversion systems(i.e. switching away from combustion propellers to electric ones). I' m very sceptical of the idea that electric cars will solve our problems. Just recently Elon Musk demonstrated that electrification of cars and taking the traffic underground simply creates underground traffic congestion[1].
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windcatcher [1] https://twitter.com/parismarx/status/1479153917749600257
[+] [-] Cthulhu_|4 years ago|reply
The problem we on this side of the pond are facing now is that the electrification is going too fast; people installing solar panels on their roofs, getting an electric car, companies putting solar panels on every building and unused patch of land, people electrifying their house by replacing their gas boilers and stoves with pure electric alternatives is all well and good, but the infrastructure can't handle it, and they need YEARS to upgrade said infrastructure, to the point where they are forced to refuse to connect new businesses (that produce or consume a lot of electricity).
It's great, but it needs big investment in the electricity infrastructure.
And of course, better guarantees for energy production. We're facing an energy crisis over here, due to fuckery with Russia, the gas supplies are running out and prices of gas have gone way up, which is causing electricity prices to go up as well. As a country, you need to be able to give guarantees about the stability, availability and cost of electricity. It's not something fixed overnight.
[+] [-] keewee7|4 years ago|reply
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
[+] [-] sschueller|4 years ago|reply
Additionally small wind mills don't make economic sense and that is why they are getting bigger and bigger. This limits where you can install them and make the approval process a huge burden. Compare this to solar which can be installed on almost any size house.
We can easily store this energy with hydro storage and hydro damns. Hydro storage is an amazing thing as it requires very little maintenance and can go from 0 to 100% in seconds which is great for areas that require a lot of power in a short amount of time. Even nuclear power doesn't have such a quick ramp up/down.
[+] [-] marmarama|4 years ago|reply
Wind is a better fit for Europe where there are far fewer sunshine hours but fairly constant wind due to macro-scale atmospheric weather patterns.
With that said, the cost of PVs is dropping so fast - faster than wind power - that I expect solar to become more important in Europe as well. Even in northern latitudes, solar farms are popping up on land that was previously used for agriculture, and I expect this trend will accelerate. If you're a landowner, you can potentially make more money using the land to generate electricity with PVs than with agriculture.
[+] [-] SuoDuanDao|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jopsen|4 years ago|reply
Why not just have more capacity than we need, and a grid to redistribute it.
[+] [-] morphle|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] laxmin|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] barcoder|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] WaxedChewbacca|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] Tade0|4 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] locallost|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] h0l0cube|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] boringg|4 years ago|reply
I hope this is the beginning of a major transformation for India and continued global progress!
[+] [-] cinntaile|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bhupy|4 years ago|reply
“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|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dirtyid|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ngcc_hk|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] johnmato|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sidcool|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ir123|4 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] JoelJacobson|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Shadonototra|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] known|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] Proven|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] sproketboy|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] drenvuk|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] stubish|4 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] _fizz_buzz_|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] locallost|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kumarvvr|4 years ago|reply
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
[+] [-] throw8932894|4 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] option_greek|4 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] dghughes|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] visava|4 years ago|reply
https://engage.tesla.com/articles/1105-california-stop-solar...
https://www.ecowatch.com/rooftop-solar-florida-2656084105.ht...