Posted on 03/07/2017 7:49:31 AM PST by ckilmer
A shockingly low price for energy from solar panels was recently bid during an auction for a solar farm near the city of Abu Dhabi, according to a report in solar trade publication PV Magazine. A consortium of the Chinese solar panel maker and project builder JinkoSolar (JKS, -1.34%) and the Japanese developer Marubeni put in a bid to build a large solar panel farm near the sun-rich city for a jaw-dropping 2.42 cents per kilowatt hour. That's by far the lowest solar panel farm bid out there. A few ultra low-cost large solar panel farms have recently achieved around 4 cents per kilowatt hour, and earlier this year the previous record bid for a solar panel farm in Chile was 2.91 cents per kilowatt hour.
Can you say, “cost overruns”? I knew you could.
The Arabs are not the Feds. They will make sure that they put in the contract that the builder will eat any cost overruns, and they will not be paid until completion and satisfactory acceptance.
agree. they’re likely playing around with the numbers. But chile was also mentioned in the article which says they getting solar electric for 2.9 cents a kwh. How likely is it that they fudged the numbers.
A good question to ask might be:
“Can this price per kwh payoff the investment in solar panels?”
My guess is, the answer will be “No.”
THe solar resource is high there so the plant will run more predictably and closer to it’s nameplate specifications. Therefore the bidder is willing to sharpen his pencil on the upfront costs.
Any idea how the price is calculated in terms of KW-H? Is there a system lifetime used? Is the builder going to be the owner and then agree to sell at the KW-H rate?
Solar panels degrade in 10 years.
All those homes you see with solar panels, they are degraded. A roof only lasts 20 years under hot sun.
Are they Sandblast Proof ?
Fresh oats cost a lot.
But if you will settle for oats that have been through the horse, it will cost a lot less.
according to this article Mexico last year caught a bid of US¢2.699/kWh for the solar power project.
http://cleantechies.com/2016/10/31/fotowatio-wins-300-mw-solar-in-mexico-auction-at-us%C2%A22-69kwh/
so there are three bids recorded in 2016 in three different countries in three different deserts on three different continents by three different companies that are sub 3 cents @ kwh. The diversity of circumstances increases the probability that the numbers work.
Its worth noting too that the costs of these types of solar projects—ie utility scale solar—have been coming down pretty dramatically in the last couple years.
see post 11.
The Atacama Desert is one of the driest places on earth, so there would be very few days without sun. I assume the Arabian Peninsula also has mostly sunny days. They also have the advantage of cheap fossil fuel backup.
Oh, and lots of essentially free third-world labor, too.
according to this article Mexico last year caught a bid of US¢2.699/kWh for the solar power project.
http://cleantechies.com/2016/10/31/fotowatio-wins-300-mw-solar-in-mexico-auction-at-us%C2%A22-69kwh/
so there are three bids recorded in 2016 in three different countries in three different deserts on three different continents by three different companies that are sub 3 cents @ kwh. The diversity of circumstances increases the probability that the sub 3 cent @ kwh bids work.
Its worth noting too that the costs of these types of solar projects—ie utility scale solar—have been coming down pretty dramatically in the last couple years.
It bears repeating.
Never buy a house because it contains a solar panel on the roof. It is DEGRADED.
agree on all your points. but these are prices without subsidies which companies in the USA get.
I’m not talking about residential solar but rather big utility scale solar. If you fly over the southwest you can see these gleaming circles of reflected sunlight dotting the landscape these days.
US subsidized utility scale solar in the desert southwest runs about .04@kwh —as of 2015.
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NV Energy recently reported signing a PPA for the 100 MW output of First Solar’s Playa Solar 2 installation at $0.0387/kWh after paying at $0.046/kWh for the output of SunPower’s 100 MW Boulder Solar installation last year. The utility bought utility-scale solar power for an average of $0.1377 per kWh for solar generation over the course of 2014.
Austin Energy recently received record low bids below $0.04/kWh in response to its 2015 request for proposals (RFP). Those bids were 20% lower than the contract it signed with Recurrent Energy in 2014 for $0.045/kWh and only 25% of the $0.16/kWh it paid for the 30 MW Webberville project, the utility’s first large installation.
They must have built in the low cost Slave Labor to build the Panels in China.
Time to upgrade the Suicide Prevention Nets at the Factory.
I’ve been watching the consumer level solar panel market and they’ve been continually getting more powerful and cheaper for years. There are 485 watt Kyocera or LG panels now, for what a 200 watt panel cost less than a decade ago. These are the “good” ones, not the throwaway Chinese panels. 25 year warranty.
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