Solar ... In the news

Martyn1981

Not just Spain throwing up lots of PV, France continues with it's 6 monthly auction of 500MWp, and once again hits a new low .... price that is.

France awards 507MW in second large-scale solar tender

zeupater

Martyn1981 wrote: »

Not just Spain throwing up lots of PV, France continues with it's 6 monthly auction of 500MWp, and once again hits a new low .... price that is.

France awards 507MW in second large-scale solar tender

Hi

Particularly interesting is the strive to 'encourage' the developers of these large projects to partner with local communities ...

.... a total of 82% of the winning players have committed to participatory investment and therefore will see their premiums increased by €3/MWh. The ministry said this showed a rising appetite for residents and communities to take ownership of energy production, when compared to the first auction.

... I know that there have been various attempts to get local communities involved in UK onshore wind developments, but I find the idea of dangling an incentive at the auction stage interesting - I wonder how much effect this would have with wind-farm NIMBYism ... perhaps the travelling protesting hoards would find their position less acceptable if the vast majority in a particular location were YIMBYs and vocally welcoming .... :cool:

HTH
Z

Martyn1981

zeupater wrote: »

Hi

Particularly interesting is the strive to 'encourage' the developers of these large projects to partner with local communities ...

HTH
Z

Hiya Z, I'm glad you spotted that, it's a policy they've had from the start (this is the second of the six auctions). As can be seen in the UK (form the BEIS/DECC surveys) RE is massively well supported, but there can't be anything better than local support and financial returns back into the community.

Regarding wind, and back to the 21 surveys, I'm particularly fascinated by the fall off of opposition from 12% down to 8/9% in the last five years. I'm guessing that as wind has been rolled out, many of the opponents realised they aren't so bad after all.

I cycled down to 'my' local 2.3MW windturbine yesterday, and again, couldn't hear any noise from it, from about 30m away.

Reality trumps fear of the unknown I suspect.

Martyn1981

Hanergy are back (remember the Ikea PV), with a PV roofing material, a bit like a Tesla roof. Could be interesting.

Hanergy unveils new rooftop PV product

Martyn1981

More good news for PV, with more evidence of a move to subsidy free PV farms in the near future, with them finding ways to reach viability.

The item is rather long and dry, but still interesting, suggesting build outs from 2018, but hinting towards 2020. There's some vague mentions of new markets,

As such, it has to be inferred that subsidy-free operation of these is envisaged, or at a minimum using shifting to a different business model and revenue streams and carrying a different risk profile for investors.

which I suspect means PPA's (power purchase agreements) where leccy is sold to the end user, so higher than grid price, but lower than wholesale price.

There's a also a mention that around 25% of the schemes are planning storage*, so another way to increase value, and the public sector getting involved, after all they consume a lot of leccy, and have carbon targets too.

There is also this interesting line:-

and this is a game-changer as momentum continues to build that future CfD rounds could be highly favourable to solar PV as a prioritised technology of choice.

though I admit to not understanding it, and can only guess that it may mean a CfD contract, at a low price, but the guarantee of a market will allow construction to take place as it removes some of the risk from investors.

Hopefully this will re-establish a larger UK supply chain, and get all PV prices heading down again. Throw in the trend for PV to get cheaper, and the end (eventually, perhaps 18 months) of the MIP which artificially inflates the cost in Europe and we may be smiling broadly by 2020(ish).

Gigawatts of subsidy-free solar farms being planned for UK market rebound

*For anyone interested storage has a problem (above and beyond cost) as the storing is currently treated as consumption, so incurrs the environmental levies on leccy consumption, only for those costs to be incurred again by the final consumer. Hopefully this issue can be easily resolved as the governmnet has confirmed they are aware of the problem, and that storage regulations need to be tidied up.

PS, but of course I'd rather see the PV on the demand side, as that's the big advantage PV has over the other technologies, but beggars can't be choosers, and any PV is still good PV.

zeupater

Martyn1981 wrote: »

More good news for PV, with more evidence of a move to subsidy free PV farms in the near future, with them finding ways to reach viability.

The item is rather long and dry, but still interesting, suggesting build outs from 2018, but hinting towards 2020. There's some vague mentions of new markets ...

Hi

Or in the case of Italy .... http://en.sma-sunny.com/en/pv-investment-grade-grid-parity-begins-in-italy/

... “We have been talking about grid parity for several years. This scenario is no longer just theoretical, but it has finally become a reality " ...

Looks interesting ..... 63MWp development with decent aerial picture to describe the scale ... grid parity in Europe in 2017 - who'd have thought it just half a dozen years ago! (note the use of a non-metric (duodecimal) unit-of-measure .. :cool:)

HTH
Z

Martyn1981

Hiya Z, apparently the Spanish contracts are subsidy free in all but name (€40-€45/MWh I believe) with the contract simply providing the assurance of sales.

France (Southern France to be fair) has recently come in at €55/MWh, and Germany at €57/MWh, but the Euro deals typically don't include infrastructure connection, so the UK is a bit higher.

Just imagine where this technology will be in 5yrs, and storage too! Who'd ever bet against it?

Martyn1981

Martyn1981 wrote: »

More good news for PV, with more evidence of a move to subsidy free PV farms in the near future, with them finding ways to reach viability.

Sometimes PV articles are like buses and they all come along at once:

Plans submitted for 50MW post-subsidy solar farm in Scotland

TBF it's not a done deal, but hopefully it's more a matter of when, not if:-

If approved, Elgin expects to build the site in 12-16 weeks, after which it will remain for the 30 year lifespan of the project. However, the subsidy-free nature of the project means the construction and energisation date are said to be predominantly dependant on the forecasted capital costs, electricity prices and technological advances.

Plus

Once completed, the project would deliver enough power for around 15,000 households while retaining its current agricultural use in the form of sheep grazing.

Martyn1981

China now has over 100GWp of solar.

China installed 24.4 GW of solar in first half of 2017, shows official NEA data

Nicolai_Grenovski

Hi Martyn1981, - interesting post, but a correction if I may be so bold.

"Tucson have just issued contracts for PV + storage at $45/MWh. Even if we assume the PV costs twice as much in the UK (lower generation, but not half as bad) and we double the storage cost (just for fun) then that's $90/MWh, or about £70/MWh v's £100/MWh for HPC in todays monies."

The pv+storage prices are not for what is called "dispatchable" power (a plant that reliably runs day and night from stored power) - these plants only to 'time shift' some day generation for a few hours.
It is called a 'peaker' plant, my company install them in Germany and Switzerland.

To the best of my knowledge, no such grid connected plants exist because the costs are enormous - the cost of such a system at German/English latitude is probably insurmountable.

In other words, rather than double the storage (for fun?), you'd actually have to increase it by a factor of 6-11 depending on location and then allow for an overcapacity of solar panels to simultaneously charge it and supply the demand.


Obviously batteries and pv for daylight+ 4hrs of demand cost a fraction of a system of pv+ batteries for the same total demand in kwh.

So the cost you quote is not a cost for pv+storage in any meaningful sense.

Hope that makes sense.