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Indian Government Abandons Costly Solar Power, Becomes World’s Largest Producer(T)
dailycaller.com ^ | 8/9/2016 | Andrew Follett

Posted on 08/09/2016 6:10:48 AM PDT by rktman

The Indian government is wasting huge amounts of solar power because the panels are too expensive to operate, according to a letter sent to the government Monday by the country’s green energy ministry.

The letter explains that the Indian government is shutting down solar panels because they are unreliable and conventional energy from coal plants is almost always cheaper.

“Some load dispatch centres (LDCs) are asking solar projects to back down due to various reasons,” Tarun Kapoor, Joint Secretary of India’s Ministry of New and Renewable Energy wrote in a letter to the Central Electricity Regulatory Commission. “This problem has been going on for the past two months. There are shutdowns for up to two hours a day, resulting in daily losses of several [hundred thousand Indian rupees].”

The amount of electricity generated by wind turbines and solar panels is inefficient and doesn’t coincide with times of day when power is most needed. This poses an enormous safety challenge to grid operators and makes power grids vastly more fragile.

The government’s green energy ministry wants to solve the problem by paying solar companies for any electricity generated, even if it isn’t used.

(Excerpt) Read more at dailycaller.com ...


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Foreign Affairs; Philosophy; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: ecowankers; solarbs
Odd......"The government’s green energy ministry wants to solve the problem by paying solar companies for any electricity generated, even if it isn’t used." It's almost like a govt subsidy or something. I'm sure that'll work out just fine here in the U.S. Oh. NOT!
1 posted on 08/09/2016 6:10:49 AM PDT by rktman
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To: rktman

It’s already skewing the market in this country. Another Krakatoa will demonstrate the weakness of solar power.


2 posted on 08/09/2016 6:20:26 AM PDT by meatloaf
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To: rktman
The government’s green energy ministry wants to solve the problem by paying solar companies for any electricity generated, even if it isn’t used.

Gee, what could possibly go wrong with THAT plan?? /s


3 posted on 08/09/2016 6:25:08 AM PDT by Buckeye McFrog
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To: rktman
This poses an enormous safety challenge to grid operators and makes power grids vastly more fragile.

This is precisely why Soetoro loves solar power. Bankrupt the economy and crash the power grid. Declare martial law and seize total power.

4 posted on 08/09/2016 6:29:16 AM PDT by immadashell (Save Innocent Lives - ban gun free zones)
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To: rktman

India’s grid is already incredibly unreliable and precarious. It’s not just the energy production, either. There’s not enough juice to go around as it is, and to top that, India’s climate is so brutal that the providers are frequently forced to cut power due to physical problems as well.

During the hottest part of their summer, power is frequently cut in rolling brownouts to ration energy, as well as having to be cut due to degradation of the big high-tension lines due to the heat. In the rainy season, minor localized power cuts are frequent, as the providers try to shield substations and other distribution infrastructure from lightning strikes when storms approach.

In the areas I visited, most local power poles are either cast concrete or repurposed railroad rails, because the termites would make short work of anything wooden. This limits the amount of real estate available on a pole to hang wire runs because neither option can be very tall, and thus puts electric lines uncomfortably close to people.

India is probably the best candidate out there for a massive revival of nuclear power, and they are trying. They’ve already got several molten-salt reactors in testing, and just finished building a new conventional reactor. I’d love to see them implement something akin to the little municipal reactors that some Japanese company proposed a few years ago, which would also help mitigate the problems India has with their long-distance transmission lines.


5 posted on 08/09/2016 6:30:01 AM PDT by Little Pig
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To: rktman
"...because they are unreliable and conventional energy from coal plants is almost always cheaper."

No kidding.
They just realized this now?

6 posted on 08/09/2016 6:31:36 AM PDT by Psalm 73 ("Gentlemen, you can't fight in here - this is the War Room".)
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To: rktman
several [hundred thousand Indian rupees].”

Bet the original said 'several lakh rupees'

7 posted on 08/09/2016 6:33:01 AM PDT by null and void (Has there ever been a death associated with the Clintons that *wasn't* beneficial to them?)
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To: rktman
The letter explains that the Indian government is shutting down solar panels because they are unreliable and conventional energy from coal plants is almost always cheaper.

This was a known fact before any solar panels were built - it's been a known fact for decades now that solar and wind are far more expensive than coal. Any nation (including ours) that chooses to invest in "renewable" energy sources, thereby driving up energy prices, deserves it's fate.

New technology may change the situation, but until then this is just governments driving up energy costs for their citizens. In a nation like India, which is just now starting to make electricity freely available for all of it's citizens, big investments in solar and wind are just glaring examples of bad government.
8 posted on 08/09/2016 7:49:48 AM PDT by AnotherUnixGeek
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To: Buckeye McFrog
The government’s green energy ministry wants to solve the problem by paying solar companies for any electricity generated, even if it isn’t used.

Gee, what could possibly go wrong with THAT plan?? /s


And I bet the govt. will still claim “Green Credit Points” for all of that generated, but unused, electricity...:^)

9 posted on 08/09/2016 7:59:05 AM PDT by az_gila
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To: rktman

Phantom solar power strikes again


10 posted on 08/09/2016 8:01:51 AM PDT by butlerweave
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To: rktman

The group of people who have probably invested the most in solar power in this country are RVers. A couple panels on the roof of an RV have their uses, but they cannot not replace your generator, not by a long shot. Solar panels on an RV are like the oars most people carry in their motorboats. Anyone who has been stuck in the middle of a lake a long ways from the boat launch with a dead outboard motor knows what I am talking about.

If you are in a kayak, canoe, or rowboat, oars or paddles are great. You can scoot along quite nicely in a craft that was designed to use them as their primary mode of propulsion. But it is still going to take a week to paddle to someplace that a ski boat could make it to in half an hour. So your expectations are limited to begin with.

To understand why most solar power is wasted most of the time think about this: When you have solar cells on your RV and the batteries are already charged up, what happens to the power generated by the solar panels? Nothing, if you constantly overcharge your batteries they will be destroyed in a short amount of time. So the panels are electronically disconnected from the panels by the voltage regulator.

In the vast majority of solar power systems, the cells are used to charge storage batteries. Typically, the batteries are connected to a voltage inverter which converts the DC power coming from the batteries into AC power which most electric items in our society are designed to use.

In this country people who have solar panels who are connected to the grid, still have storage batteries which are kept charged. But they have expensive inverters which can sync with the AC frequency of the grid. They are able to feed excess power back into the grid which the owners get credited for. In this way the electrical energy produced by the solar panels is not “wasted”.

This sounds good in theory, but there are many issues not the least of which is that the equipment used to hook the panels into the grid is so expensive that it takes many years to recoup the investment just in that equipment not to mention the panels and storage batteries. If the government was not subsidizing this, no one would ever bother doing it, because the systems would take too long to recoup the money invested. And in fact most of the systems will never recoup the actual amount of money invested. This is especially true when one considers that the systems are not maintenance free.

It is all well and good here where we can seemingly get away with wasting hundreds of billions of dollars on feel good stuff that basically accomplishes nothing which is actually productive. In places like India or China where they don’t actually have that luxury they have to cut their losses when they realize that they have been sold a bill of goods that will never work out.

The mainstream media is constantly claiming using charts and graphs and all manor of impressive looking presentations that solar power is now as cheap or nearly as cheap as power produced by power plants. Don’t believe it. In the first place it is an apples to oranges comparison. In the second place the data is manipulated so that the theoretical maximum output from the cells is typically used in figuring their actual constant power output. It is all smoke and mirrors all the time.


11 posted on 08/09/2016 9:13:26 AM PDT by fireman15 (The USA will be toast if the Democrats are able to take the Presidency in 2016)
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To: rktman
"The government’s green energy ministry wants to solve the problem by paying solar companies for any electricity generated, even if it isn’t used."

During WW II my dad worked in the lead and Zinc mines where the government paid for Rock ton moved. The evil mining company just did what companies do, mined rock and left the lead and Zinc behind, for later.

12 posted on 08/09/2016 9:25:33 AM PDT by itsahoot (Trump kills PC--Hillary kills USA--Pick one.)
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To: Little Pig
I’d love to see them implement something akin to the little municipal reactors that some Japanese company proposed a few years ago

The reactors we use to power modern Air Craft Carriers should do the job.

13 posted on 08/09/2016 9:31:52 AM PDT by itsahoot (Trump kills PC--Hillary kills USA--Pick one.)
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To: Little Pig
India is probably the best candidate out there for a massive revival of nuclear power

Nuclear for electricity generation has proven to be nearly as expensive as wind power, but has the additional feature of an astronomical cost of failure. The Japanese, with uniform high IQs, engineering talent, and rule following culture couldn't safely do it. The average IQ in India is 82.

14 posted on 08/09/2016 10:11:51 AM PDT by Reeses (A journey of a thousand miles begins with a government pat down.)
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To: Reeses

True about the IQ, but India also has more than 1.2 billion people, so the number of folks out at the right end of the Bell curve is still a pretty sizeable population. There ought to be enough smart folks to ensure that there’s a good candidate pool to run the reactors.

And the problem Japan had has nothing to do with how well they ran the plant, and everything to do with how the original property was set up back in the 60s/70s, with generators at ground level, and no easy access to the plant from the outside. When the water came through, the gennies were swamped and there was no way to get alternate systems out to keep things going.


15 posted on 08/09/2016 10:28:01 AM PDT by Little Pig
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To: rktman
too expensive

Total cost is an honest indicator of total energy consumption and environmental damage. If something is more expensive then it's almost certainly less green.

16 posted on 08/09/2016 10:30:29 AM PDT by Reeses (A journey of a thousand miles begins with a government pat down.)
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To: Little Pig
And the problem Japan had has nothing to do with how well they ran the plant

And socialism only fails because it isn't implemented by the right people.

17 posted on 08/09/2016 10:35:24 AM PDT by Reeses (A journey of a thousand miles begins with a government pat down.)
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To: rktman; Buckeye McFrog; AnotherUnixGeek
The article you posted is leaving out the problem.

The thermal generators are paid a two part tariff. One part for their fixed costs and second part for their fuel costs.

If the discoms don't take the power from the thermal generators they still have to pay the generators' fixed cost, but are not required to pay them the fuel costs.

The solar and wind generators receive only a single tariff and if the discoms don't take their power they receive nothing.

Naturally the buyers don't want to take the power from the renewables because they still have to pay the thermal generators' fixed costs.

The energy minister says the solution is to pay the renewable generators whether their power is used or not.

The renewable generators say pay us a two part tariff like you pay the thermal generators a two part tariff.

But, renewables don't have fuels costs, although they are probably paying a royalty.

18 posted on 08/09/2016 10:51:59 AM PDT by Ben Ficklin
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To: Reeses

Apples/Oranges.

Standards and policies change over time as new information is learned. Only the oldest reactor at Fukushima had poorly-sited generator sets. The other cores were ok.


19 posted on 08/09/2016 4:42:31 PM PDT by Little Pig
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To: Little Pig
The other cores were ok.

Per wiki three of six reactors had meltdowns. The accident has cost $105 billion so far and has made a large area of Japan off limits.

20 posted on 08/09/2016 5:30:38 PM PDT by Reeses (A journey of a thousand miles begins with a government pat down.)
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