Comments on: Largest Solar Power Plant In World Now Under Construction

By: Bob_Wallace

Bob_Wallace — Sun, 21 Jul 2013 04:18:00 +0000

Large solar installations generally sign long term (20, 30 year) power purchase agreements before they are built.

They have a contract to sell all the power they produce over decades for a specified price. Almost all their costs are up front, very little exposure to cost inflation.

The city of Palo Alto just signed a 30 year PPA for a large scale solar installation that will now be built.

So, exactly how would an investor lose their money?

By: Paul Kangas

Paul Kangas — Sun, 21 Jul 2013 04:08:00 +0000

It is a failed investment.

By: Paul Kangas

Paul Kangas — Sun, 21 Jul 2013 04:07:00 +0000

Mayor Rexx Parris is the greatest mayor in America.

By: Paul Kangas

Paul Kangas — Sun, 21 Jul 2013 04:06:00 +0000

There are 2 ways to shift from gas to solar.
One is by each city, like Lancaster, Ca., passing a Feed-in Tariff, ( decentralization ) and then requiring local Utilities to pay home owners $0.33 kwh for solar fed onto the grid, OR centralization,
Large solar farms, that are just a corporate attempt to prevent home owners from putting solar on their roofs, to make money from solar.

Hermann Scheer wrote a great book, “Solar Economy” exposing how large solar farms are designed to fail, & are a just another corporate scam. Stranded investments. Don’t invest in solar farms. You will loose your money.

Lancaster is doing the right thing by requiring all new homes to be 100% solar. Now if Lancaster passes a FiT law, that will allow homes to make $10 K a year feeding solar onto the grid.

By: Bob_Wallace

Bob_Wallace — Sun, 02 Jun 2013 16:50:00 +0000

Because if we do not use a very tiny, tiny, tiny portion of the Earth’s surface for renewable energy and keep on burning fossil fuels we will devastate all the world’s wildlife and plants.

Think about it. We’ll use less than 0.001% of the world’s deserts for solar. What would happen to the other 99.999% if we make it a lot, lot hotter and a lot, lot dryer?

By: Janine

Janine — Sun, 02 Jun 2013 16:26:00 +0000

The cost to the environment is incalculable. So much devastation to the wild life and plants and earth. Why was this even okayed?

By: eo2

eo2 — Wed, 29 May 2013 04:03:00 +0000

All fine and dandy unless this is happening where you live. Lots of money to be made at what cost?

By: BigB

BigB — Sat, 25 May 2013 09:56:00 +0000

Well, actually, if you consider Brightsource 8.2 gigawatt project starting at the 372 megawatt Ivanpah project, then Antelope Valley is not really the largest

By: Roger

Roger — Wed, 08 May 2013 15:27:00 +0000

I am reflecting on the unpredictable, rolling power outages frequenting California during the peak cooling season and embracing the impact this will have on the grid. And how about those jobs……………

By: Construction Props

Construction Props — Wed, 08 May 2013 10:20:00 +0000

regardless if the numbers above are misleading, still I believe this solar plant will dramatically reduce carbon dioxide. The construction props that will be used will be expensive and may affect electrical costs for consumers but I'm not that sure.

By: Otis11

Otis11 — Mon, 06 May 2013 01:15:00 +0000

“The electricity produced will displace approximately 775,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide per year. That’s the equivalent of taking approximately 3 million cars off the road over the next 20 years.”

This is extremely misleading. The average US car produces 5.1 metric tons CO2/year. That’s equal to 15 thousand cars per year. Multiply this by 20 years and you get the 3 million figure you reference, but that removes the cars for only a single year – you could also say this removes 36 million cars off the road over the next 20 years (for a single month). It’s totally arbitrary if they aren’t in the same units of time.

By: Rhodomel Meads

Rhodomel Meads — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 22:02:00 +0000

Well, if land is cheap or on free lease, the only thing that matters is the unit cost of production per kWH of electricity and not if it will track the sun or not. If you want to save on land, especially if it has associated cost such as in an urban setting, then tracking the sun would matter a lot because you will not consume a lot of land per unit energy production. As it is, we have too many desert areas, constantly being added annually because of our addiction to fossil fuels, so those lands are cheap that it doesn’t make any financial sense to track the sun so that you can save on land while increasing your cost of energy production.

By: Bill_Woods

Bill_Woods — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 18:19:00 +0000

No idea, though one webpage mentions “leas[ing] 340 hectares of the 700 hectare airport”. They’re both on former airfields, so you’d think they already had grid connections.
http://www.solarserver.com/solar-magazine/solar-news/current/2011/kw50/solarhybrid-receives-lease-permitting-approval-for-150-mw-pv-plant-at-former-military-airport-in-brandenburg-germany.html

By: Bob_Wallace

Bob_Wallace — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 17:16:00 +0000

I can’t find a breakdown of those totals. Do they include land, transmission, etc. or do they cover only the cost of the solar part?

By: Bill_Woods

Bill_Woods — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 16:57:00 +0000

“That would mean that [German] utility (very large) installations would be considerably less than $2/W.”
Evidently not.

Neuhardenberg: 280M EUR / 145 MW = 2.5 USD/W
Templin: 205M EUR / 128 MW = 2.1 USD/W
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_in_Germany#Photovoltaic_power_stations

By: Bob_Wallace

Bob_Wallace — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 16:26:00 +0000

Germany’s $2/W is an average of utility, commercial and residential rates and heavily weighted (I think) by residential installations. That would mean that their utility (very large) installations would be considerably less than $2/W.

I would expect India to get their costs below that of the US fairly quickly, if they aren’t already. They will have lower labor costs and lower permitting costs.

By: doug card

doug card — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 14:02:00 +0000

Its always the same equation, but it averages about 5 hours times 330 days times 500ish (loose some efficiency in the inversion/resistance)megawatt hours.

By: kayzam

kayzam — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 10:06:00 +0000

come guy i am good in math bad in spelling. 3.000.000.cars off the road in 20 year thats only 1% when u got 10.000.000 new cars each yr.the only way ur going to win too the save the earth. is a good war. or free condom for every boy on the planet . remenber the more people the more WE need??

By: Ronald Brakels

Ronald Brakels — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 09:51:00 +0000

Well, Germany is installing solar at about $2 a watt or less. That’s about 30% less than this particular US project after adjusting for tracking. (Note that California’s much higher level of sunshine compensates for the difference in cost). India is more difficult to compare because its currency is non-convertable, capital costs are higher than in the US and labour costs are lower. But despite higher capital costs India appears to be producing electricity from utility scale solar for about 12 cents a kilowatt-hour and looks to be getting it down to about 10 cents a kilowatt-hour for new solar farms.

By: James

James — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 09:30:00 +0000

Hello… Can you tell me how much it costs in India for similar plant and whats the difference in price between Germany, India and US