[_FKS_]

While by no means I mean to minimize this announcement, if the press was publishing an article every time a Coal plant opens in India, we would have an article every few days or so on HN.

Just to put things into perspective:

- A plant like Topaz, California generates ~1100 GWh/year. [3]

- "India was the third top electricity producer in the world 1272 TWh in FY 20014-15" [1]

- "India was the third top coal producer in 2015 with 283.9 Mtoe (7.4% global share)." [1]

- "Nearly 80% of total electricity generated (utility and captive) in India is from coal." [1]

So we're about at 3 orders or magnitude, in terms of generated electricity, between what you currently get from coal plants and this new Tamil Nadu plant. While the penetration rate of renewables is faster than coal [2], the same thing cannot be said of generated capacity. Globally an unit of power from renewables has a far lower EROI compared to Coal [4].

So I support what kumarski said below, this is much of a hype. If India wants to be serious about climate change, they should at least stop building Coal plants.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_India

[2] https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/Renewables- Are-Outpacing-Coal-in-India

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topaz_Solar_Farm

[4] http://festkoerper-kernphysik.de/Weissbach_EROI_preprint.pdf

[georgecmu]

A plant like Topaz, California generates ~1100 GWh/year. [3]

In other words, that's a 125MW plant, 5 times lower capacity than the new Indian one. https://lmgtfy.com/?q=1100+GWh%2Fyear+in+MW

Can you explain how it's relevant for this story context? For comparison, a typical coal power plant is 500MW. The new Indian plant is a real first step toward coal capacity replacement.

EDIT: BTW, the article cites Topaz's nominal (or max?) capacity at 550MW; that means its real capacity is 4-5 times lower. I didn't even realize the turndown due to sunlight (un)availability was so high.

[_FKS_]

Topaz is of the same magnitude as this Tamil Nadu plant, in terms of "rated power". However, many people seem to miss that "rated power" does not equal "actual output". Please see capacity factor [1].

For a solar plant like this one, the capacity is about at ~25%. If it was 100%, for a 650MW plant, you would get 650 * 365 * 24 = 5694 TWh / year. In practice, you will get 5694 * .25 = 1423 TWh / year.

If this was a nuclear plant, you would get 5694 * .90 = 5124 TWh / year. Continously, day and night. Without back-end storage required. Big difference.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacity_factor

[sremani]

The electricity penetration and per-capita usage in India is abysmal. If Quality of Life for Indians is a concern (which it rightfully should be), India should open more coal plants.

US and Europe's path to prosperity went through Coal and to demand Indians and Chinese sacrifice while not making any thing substantial themselves (i.e. in US and Europe) is hypocrisy.

Indian population : 16% of world pop US population : 5% of world pop

Just one more stat for perspective.

[amluto]

> US and Europe's path to prosperity went through Coal and to demand Indians and Chinese sacrifice while not making any thing substantial themselves (i.e. in US and Europe) is hypocrisy.

Regardless of whether hypocracy is involved, wanting India and China to avoid the mistakes the West made is entirely reasonable. If nothing else, the US and Europe built coal plants before better technologies were available. India has access to modern natural gas plants, fuel cells, wind, solar, etc if it wants them. No one would suggest that India or China build lots of steam engines, after all.

[shripadk]

> Regardless of whether hypocracy is involved, wanting India and China to avoid the mistakes the West made is entirely reasonable. If nothing else, the US and Europe built coal plants before better technologies were available. India has access to modern natural gas plants, fuel cells, wind, solar, etc if it wants them. No one would suggest that India or China build lots of steam engines, after all.

Building steam engines and maintaining them was more expensive than building fuel based / electric trains. Even the initial cost was less. So the transition was faster and made a lot of economic sense.

Solar energy prices dropped to around parity with coal for the first time this year, hitting 4.34 rupees (about 6 US cents) a kilowatt-hour (kWh), while coal tariffs range usually range in between 3–5 rupees/kWh (about 5–8 US cents). It wasn't possible until April of this year to even consider Solar a viable alternative. With prices dropping (and hopefully continuing to drop until at least 2030) we can now think of installing new power plants backed by solar.

However, what happens to the old coal based power plants that power 20% of Indian populace (that is close to 3/4th of the population of the United States)? It is going to be super expensive to transition those old power plants to solar. Also, what about 24/7 power? Solar power plants don't guarantee 24/7 power. So you can't completely get rid of coal plants anyways. India has to do quite a bit of balancing act to provide energy for it's 1.3 billion and growing population.

It's not as easy as you make it out to be. If that was the case, United States would have already transitioned to 100% clean energy like it did with steam engines in the 19th-20th century.

[siscia]

European and Americans made mistakes during the industrial revolution for sure. However this is not a good excuse for other countries to make the same mistakes.

Also Europe and US had a much smaller population than India during the industrial revolution and we can imagine that the pollution produced during those years was significantly lower than the pollution produce by china and India (hopefully some technology advances made this point wrong); in a finite world this does makes a difference.

Finally I am not sure how well know were the implications of environmental pollution during the industrial revolution; for sure such implications weren't well know as they are today.

Granted it is a complex problem and tradeoffs will be necessary, however claim that the western world did the same is not a good motivation to destroy the environment.

[1024core]

> European and Americans made mistakes during the industrial revolution for sure. However this is not a good excuse for other countries to make the same mistakes.

Well, there's nothing preventing EU and US from atoning for those mistakes by paying for Solar installations in India. So why don't they?

[siscia]

Your question, while interesting, is not a counter argument to any of my points.

Anyhow, western countries do not have enough resource to finance clean energy in India. Or, at least, there are more pressing issue from the point of view of the average elector/citizen.

[shripadk]

> Anyhow, western countries do not have enough resource to finance clean energy in India.

Then they should refrain from advising India on it's energy program. The biggest polluter, after China, is the United States and the EU. Emission per capita is 16.5t and 6.7t in comparison to India's 1.8t. That is pretty crazy considering that the population of US is not even 1/3rd of India. If US isn't serious about moving to clean energy why would India be?

Every country has "pressing issues" of it's own and that includes India as well. The country needs energy and lots of it. It would be great if moving to clean energy was faster and cheaper than setting up coal based plants. It's just not the case.

[lenkite]

Dude, you know this "oh well they shat in the river so we get to do so too", is not a really great argument when our cities like Delhi are covered in dangerous smog, our coastal villages are regularly flooded with sea water and the cancer incidence rates in our population are skyrocketing.

[kerbalspacepro]

because they're too busy trying to make America great again.

[_FKS_]

While I agree - people from western world live way over what is needed - there's an issue with demography also in Asia. Kaya's identity [1] shows that the factor P, global population, is by far the most important. Control demography, you will raise the Quality of Life. At least while we have high EROI energy sources (like fossil fuels); without high EROI energy, demography will become (again) a dominant energy source.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaya_identity

[sremani]

I completely agree with you on this point. The exploding population esp. that is not well trained is a BIG headache for India, and they are not addressing it the right way.

[wbl]

The PPM250 levels in Dehli are worse than Beijing. The Indian government needs to regulate air quality or deal with a generation suffocated by its failures beyond the remains of the license Raj.

[hokkos]

If Quality of Life for Indians is a concern they should stop burning coal, because they a currently slowly killing their citizens with air pollution. Also US and Europe used coal because they didn't knew better but gave the world nuclear energy, just use it already.

[sremani]

Yes, India is also building many Russian Nuclear reactors. Because of sanctions India is stuck with Gen2 reactors and they are upgrading them to the latest. As an net energy deficit country, India's energy policy is both realistic and future focused. Its not perfect but it is hitting all the right notes, balancing short-term and long-term.

[swatkat]

I'll just leave this here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DuL4sRc8ZMA

Mr. Piyush Goyal is India's energy minister, and he's damn good. And, he knows what he's doing.

[yread]

Indeed India is way behind China, EU and US in installing renewable energy

Look at the first graph here (and ignore predictions in orange) https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/oct/25/renewabl...

Think of this graph next time you hear that climate change is a chinese hoax and despair

[mirekrusin]

IMHO the only way India will stop building coal plants is when it's going to be better investment to not build one and build solar farm instead, for example.

Actually completing the project so much cheaper than Topaz (for whatever reasons) gives hope and it's great news.

I wonder how far are we from situation where investing into solar farm project is genuinely a very good deal? Are we there yet?

[hashhar]

I think solar efficiency improvements played a very large factor and also the cheaper labour costs in India.

[vezycash]

Why can't they just use Nuclear? Surely, there are inhabited places that can be used for it. Correct me if I'm wrong - nuclear power should produce more reliable power at a fraction of the cost of solar.

[mirekrusin]

Nuclear requires huge up front investment, may not be so easy for gvmnt.

Solar farms (I believe) can scale slowly even after being operational.

I may be wrong but it's also likely that deeper analysis of the cost for solar doesn't look that bad as you're probably spending most, if not all of the money on your own people - giving jobs and pouring money back in, not out of the country.

[philipkglass]

India is building nuclear power too. But it is not as fast or inexpensive as you might guess.

India's most recently grid connected reactor, Kudankulam-2, took 14 years to complete: https://www.iaea.org/PRIS/CountryStatistics/ReactorDetails.a...

Expected costs for the next 2 units at the same site are $5.91 billion: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kudankulam_Nuclear_Power_Plant

That's $3.58 per real annualized watt assuming 90% capacity factor. If this new solar farm operates at 27% capacity factor (like Topaz did in 2015) that will be $3.88 per real annualized watt. So nuclear is still cheaper than solar in India in terms of construction costs. That might be offset by higher O&M costs; in the US at least, PV O&M costs come to $25/kilowatt/year while nuclear is $198/kilowatt/year: http://www.power-technology.com/features/featurepower-plant-...

Again adjusting for capacity factor (PV 27%, nuclear 90%), that means spending about $220/kilowatt/year on nuclear O&M and $93/kilowatt/year on PV O&M. I wouldn't expect the absolute numbers to be the same in India but the ratios may still be similar.

I'd say that the instantaneous generation costs for solar and nuclear projects that start generating in India now or next year are going to be pretty close. In the future, nuclear still has the advantage of working around the clock. But if the next 14 years see even a modest fraction of the solar cost reductions of the past 14 years, the next Kudankulam unit to come online will be far more expensive per annualized watt than a solar farm completed at the same time. 10 years ago it was a lot easier to figure out the lowest cost mix; nuclear power was cheaper than utility scale solar always and everywhere. It will be an interesting balancing act, in India and elsewhere, to determine just how much cheap-but-intermittent power you can use instead of expensive-but-steady power.

EDIT: I might have overestimated how well nuclear power performs in India. I assumed 90% capacity factor but it looks like all but one of India's nuclear reactors have a cumulative capacity factor below 80%. Kudankulam-1 was at 40% last year: https://www.iaea.org/PRIS/CountryStatistics/ReactorDetails.a...

WTF.

If future Indian reactors continue to operate at dreadful capacity factors like this, a new utility scale PV plant is already cheaper per real annualized watt.

[philipkglass]

On further reflection, whatever issues cause dreadful under-performance of Indian nuclear reactors might also affect solar plants. Solar needs significantly less maintenance than other kinds of generating capacity but if it gets no maintenance then the output will fall even in areas with excellent solar resources. For the US the Energy Information Administration publishes detailed information about all utility-scale generators so it's easy to track performance over time but I don't know where or if equivalent data is available for India.

[option_greek]

The reason for under performance of nuclear is lack of fuel (due to sanctions imposed long back). Its only recently that India is signing up with many nuclear producers so this should improve drastically.

[undersuit]

>"India was the third top coal producer in 2015 with 283.9 Mtoe (7.4% global share)."

And the US was the second top coal producer, at 50% more coal produced and while also using 96% of the coal that India used in the same time.

>"Nearly 80% of total electricity generated (utility and captive) in India is from coal."

If 80% of the electricity in India is generated from coal and America used 96% of the coal of India in the same time period, and America generates 22% of energy from coal and 71% from all fossil fuels[1] why is this hype?

The plant is far more effective to reduce India's use of fossil fuels than any solar plant that has been installed in the United States.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_the_United_States

[megawatthours]

You should mention that a 648MW solar power plant produces 5.67 TWh/year (648 * 365 * 24). It doesn't seem that unimpressive then.

[_FKS_]

Not exactly, you can't do that kind of calculation. Solar panels work only in full sunlight, and only during the day. When there's cloud coverage, the electricity production goes down drastically. I was giving Topaz solar farm in California as a reference, because it's a solar plant of the same magnitude, in about the same sunlight conditions as India. There's about 3 years of track record for Topaz, and so far its best year (2015), it generated 1.3 TWh/year. We're far from the 5.67 TWh/year that you mention. The best upper limit (theoretical) in a solar farm is about 7 hours of sunlight/day, but that's just the theory. In practice it's always lower.

[philipkglass]

648 megawatts is peak capacity. A fixed-tilt solar PV farm in a good location, like Topaz Solar Farm (and presumably this one) can output 27% of peak capacity averaged over a whole year: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topaz_Solar_Farm

You'd actually expect something like 648 * 365 * 24 * .27 = 1.5 TWh/year.

[georgecmu]

a 648MW solar power plant produces 5.67 TWh/year (648 365 * 24).*

Is it reasonable to assume that a solar power plant will operate at peak capacity 24 hours per day? (hint: what happens to its output during night hours?)

[_FKS_]

Nothing happens at night, there's no electricity output. You need some kind of storage on the back-end if you want to store the day's surplus electricity. Molten salt or hydro work well and can store the electricity, in order to distribute it at night time.

But in practice, this is mitigated by the actual power grid, another plant(s) somewhere else would take over at night. On a coal plant it is harder to adjust the load factor on the fly, it is not instantaneous. On a gas plant or a hydro dam, it is a matter of minutes, the turbines can start very quickly. That's why usually when such utility-scale renewable plants are installed, they need to be paired with another load-following plant, such as gas. Nevertheless, a renewable+gas/coal plant means less CO2 emissions, so I guess it's a good thing.