How India is winning the future with solar energy

[one...two...tree 2,762]

India set a goal to build 20 gigawatts of solar -- an enormous amount -- by 2020. The haters said at first that the country might not make it, but lately India's plan is seeming smarter than anyone imagined. Plus, it's creating jobs -- both in India and in America! What's leading to its success?

• Government subsidies that are aggressive … but not too aggressive. Subsides are creating both demand and enough competition to keep prices down.
• Private sector support. Indian banks are beginning to see solar as a desirable investment, since, like toll roads, they're infrastructure projects that offer predictable profit over a large number of years.
• Renewable requirements, first for state-run utilities and now for all state-run companies. That means even coal-fired power plants might have to invest in renewables.

India has incredible solar energy resources -- it's usually sunny there for more than 80 percent of the year -- and it needs people to build up and maintain infrastructure, so these projects are providing jobs as well as power. Not just techy energy jobs, either; one dusty solar farm needs workers to mop its 36,000 solar panels regularly. And since Indian projects have favored Made-in-the-U.S.A. thin-film solar panels (the country's leading solar supplier is Arizona-based First Solar), growth in the subcontinent is fueling job creation here.

straight to the source

• In Solar Power, India Begins Living Up to Its Own Ambitions, The New York Times
• Welspun Approached to Sell Security Backed by Solar Revenue, Bloomberg
• India Asks State-Run Firms to Build Renewable Energy Projects, The Wall Street Journal

[^_^ 5,021]

I was in India just about three years ago and will be there again in a few weeks. Unless this next visit is a huge surprise, I can confidently tell you India ain't winning chit.

[Karee 4,190]

Laugh. Sunny 80% of the year. Not sure where they got that stat. Everytime I went there it was pouring rain. Maybe I was just lucky.

[Hilarious Clinton 452]

Goooo solar!!!

Hey Steven.... it's a shame you are such a one trick pony when it comes to energy production.

Do you even know how electricity is made? It's probably too technical for you.

[lostinblue 1,989]

A. thin-film solar panels (the country's leading solar supplier is Arizona-based First Solar), growth in the subcontinent is fueling job creation here

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2011-12-16/first-solar-drops-holy-grail-technology-that-sank-solyndra.html

Dec. 15 (Bloomberg) -- First Solar Inc. is closing a research project aimed at developing the same solar-panel material that doomed Solyndra LLC after a global supply glut drove down prices.

First Solar plans to fire about 100 employees, including 60 at a Santa Clara, California, research center, the Tempe, Arizona-based company said in a filing. The job cuts are part of a reorganization plan to narrow its focus to large utility-scale power plants and away from smaller, rooftop installations. It also slashed its profit and sales forecast.

Solyndra declared bankruptcy Sept. 6 saying it couldn’t compete after prices for polysilicon, the raw material in traditional solar cells, fell 64 percent this year. Global panel production has “effectively tripled” in the last three years, led by China, and demand is slowing in Europe and other regions where subsidies have been cut, said First Solar’s Chairman and Interim Chief Executive Officer Michael Ahearn.

“We’re dedicating all of our resources” to making utility-scale projects more cost-effective, Ahearn said on a conference call yesterday. Other initiatives “will be on the back burner.”

First Solar’s Santa Clara team was developing copper- indium-gallium-selenide, or CIGS, technology, said Mark Bachman, an analyst at Avian Securities LLC.

Solyndra received $535 million in U.S. government loan guarantees to build a CIGS panel factory, which it shut in August. First Solar received loan guarantees through the same U.S. Energy Department program to build large-scale projects that it later sold to power producers.

‘Holy Grail’ Research

First Solar has concluded that CIGS wasn’t going to compete on cost against polysilicon, Bachman said.

“They were going heavy into CIGS research as sort of a ‘holy grail’ effort that they’ve now abandoned,” he said in an interview. Instead, the company will “double-down” on its existing thin-film technology, he said.

First Solar became the world’s largest maker of thin-film panels, which require half the energy to manufacture of those made from silicon, using an automated process to apply cadmium- telluride to glass. General Electric Co. and closely held Abound Solar Inc. are also betting that the technology will make solar power cheaper than electricity from fossil-fuel plants.

Allocating Resources

“They’ve shifted the allocation of resources from CIGS to what is more important in the near term for them, which is to realize cost reductions from their existing technology,” said Shyam Mehta, senior analyst for Boston-based GTM Research. “The price drops we’ve seen for polysilicon have eroded the value properties of all alternative technologies, including cadmium- telluride.”

First Solar is “refocusing its research and development center in Santa Clara” to improve its cadmium-telluride technologies, according to the filing yesterday. Ted Meyer, a company spokesman, wouldn’t discuss the goals of the center.

The company this year received $3.43 million in sales tax breaks from California to purchase $37.7 million in solar manufacturing equipment for the Santa Clara center, according to state filings. Meyer said the company is “in discussions” with state officials regarding the facility. “We believe that we have met all of the requirements for the sales tax credit,” he said.

The California State Treasurer’s Office is reviewing First Solar’s tax breaks, though not necessarily with the expectation of recovering the money, said Joe DeAnda, a spokesman for the office.

State Tax Incentives

Besides the U.S. government loan guarantees, Solyndra received $25.1 million in state sales-tax breaks under the same program. The company developed solar panels using glass tubes lined with CIGS. Solyndra was the only CIGS manufacturer to win U.S. loan guarantees.

First Solar received more than $3 billion in U.S. loan guarantees for three projects it’s developing in the Southwest, with total capacity of 1,070 megawatts, comparable to one nuclear reactor, making it the largest single recipient of backing under the U.S. Energy Department program.

Those projects already have buyers for the electricity they will produce and carry less risk than guarantees offered for manufacturing plants.

First Solar and Solyndra are among a group of Western panel makers that have been undercut by cheaper competition from Chinese manufacturers such as Suntech Power Holdings Co., the world’s largest. Factory expansion, led by Chinese companies, has triggered a 43 percent plunge in panel prices this year, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance data.

Focusing on large projects may be a good strategy for First Solar, said Jenny Chase, senior solar analyst at New Energy Finance in Zurich.

“The companies that survive this slash-and-burn market are going to have to be the best at what they do,” she said in an interview. “The utility scale market is First Solar’s sweet- spot and they are the best in the arena.”

For Additional News and Information: First Solar news: FSLR US <Equity> CN BN <GO> Polysilicon prices: SSPFPSNO <Index> GP <GO> Solar bankruptcy news: TNI SOLAR BCY <GO>

--With assistance from Jim Efstathiou Jr. in New York, James Nash in Sacramento and Ben Sills in Madrid. Editors: Will Wade, Tina Davis, Todd White

[rlogan 2,036]

I've been doing capital analysis for energy projects since about 2007. I do other stuff too, but I've had a run of work at this, about four dozen projects over the years. Hydro blows everything else out of the water when you can harness it, and the decisive question after that is transmission costs. This area they talked about in the article is arid, yet still with solar:

That is about twice the price of coal-generated power

I don't get this. The supply of coal is endless for practical purposes, and half the cost. India is a poor country, so taxing the poor to make their energy more expensive is, well - retarded.