Renew Extra Weekly

There is now over 580 GW of grid-linked solar photovoltaic (PV) generation capacity in place globally, around 205 GW of it in China, according to IRENA .   Japan has around 62 GW, the USA 60 GW and Germany 49 GW. IRENA has said solar PV could supply 25% of global electricity by 2050, with 8.5TW in place. And, as I noted in my last post, others have come up with even higher figures. The Covid 19 crisis has slowed the growth of most renewables, including PV, so some of the very high estimates may have to be revised, but it seems clear that PV is going to be big. Will there be space for it? Roof tops are ideal for PV solar , but there may not be enough space there to meet all our energy needs, and there may also be limits to how many arrays we can accept on the land in solar farms and other large ground-mounted projects.   If there’s not enough land space available, one idea has been to put PV arrays on lakes & reservoirs . That has now been done on a wide scale, wit...

As we struggle with Covid 19, while still needing to deal with climate change, I thought I would look at some uplifting success stories in the renewable energy area. Solar energy offers just that.   Its uptake has been driven by rapidly reducing costs, as volume production increased and technology improved. For example, back in 2017, solar auctions in Mexico yielded an unheard-of average price of $20.57/MWh, including a $17.7 bid by Enel, this beating an earlier $17.9/MWh tender for a 300 MW PV plant in Saudi Arabia. Some of these prices may be exceptional , unsustainable   and locally specific (in sunny countries), but clearly prices were falling around the world.   Lazarad’s 2018 global review put the Levelised Cost of Energy for utility scale PV, without subsidy, at $44/MWh, falling to $32-42/MWh for thin film systems in its 2019 review . New materials Thin film cells, with the cell material deposited in a very thin layer on a substrate backing, are the ch...