ReNewEconomy.
We are witnessing the tipping point in the disruption of Energy Industry: Solar Power becomes the cheapest source of generated energy! ReNewEconomy provides the mindboggling data on the speed of race to the bottom of the cost for Solar Power. What is very important here that this new record of US $2.42c/kWh was set not in the lab, but by the biggest manufacturer in the world JinkoSolar.
Money talks. We are entering the exponential stage for Solar Power development in the world now and cheap lithium batteries change everything: now we can not only generate electricity using Solar Panels, but we can store it and use it when we want it. Tesla's new project in California will build the largest Energy Storage facility in the world in the record time using Powerpacks by the end of this year.
Cheap clean electricity is coming into our grid systems now at rapidly increasing levels substituting coal and nuclear. Now we will have a clean energy to power millions of EVs coming fast. Electric cars are already clean and will be getting only cleaner now with every record of the amount of Solar Power generation systems installed all over the world. Lithium is the magic metal at the very heart of this Energy rEVolution and China is flexing its muscles to build the 21st-century economy to dominate New Energy space.
EVs Are Clean And Getting Cleaner: U.S. Electricity Generation From Renewables Has Broken Records Every Month In 2016.
"I do hope that I do not really have to address this issue anymore. Numerous studies have already confirmed that even with the existing energy mix in the US grid a few years ago Electric Cars were much cleaner than ICE ones on the full life cycle. From lithium battery making including the production of lithium to the electricity to charge this battery. Now they are getting even cleaner with the energy mix of the US grid taken over by the renewables.
What is very important to note today is that renewable energy is breaking records every single month this year even in the US. Energy Storage with lithium batteries will be next to grow exponentially and will consume even more lithium batteries capacity and lithium than EVs. Fossil Fuels are consumable resources and renewables are technology. The functions for the progress of development for Solar Power and Lithium Batteries are not the same as the famous Moore's, but still very impressive with prices going down dramatically over the period of time with mass volume production. Particularly in the case with Solar Power, we are getting into the stage when the dramatic decrease in cost have made Solar the cheapest source of energy ever already. Cheap lithium batteries change everything and now we can store electricity, the most efficient form of energy known to us, and use it when we want it. Read more."
Report 2015.
How Electric Cars Beat Gasoline Cars on Lifetime Global Warming Emissions
Lithium Race: China Wants 3 Million Electric Cars On Road By 2025.
"I guess that it is the case that whatever China wants they will get. In the case of electric cars with all the best central planning can get they will be there much faster. I am expecting that China will sell 500,000 only in this year. And we will see 1,000,000 electric cars sold worldwide in 2016. They have sold already 207,000 by August in 2016! Bloomberg is even more optimistic on the chat above. I will throw my own number - China will have at least 5 million electric cars by 2025. Why - just stay with me for a while. These twenty minutes can change your next 20 years of life. If Tony Seba is correct: all new cars sold by 2025 will be electric.
There is a state-level military plan in action in China to leapfrog ICE-age technology directly into the post carbon world with its New Energy Plan. It is a part of strategic planning on the state-level within Five Year Plans. New Energy is based on Solar, Wind and Electric Cars. Military style planning includes the whole commodity chain starting with Lithium Raw Materials - Ganfeng Lithium and Tianqi are investing all over the globe to secure lithium supply. Lithium Chemicals including for lithium batteries production - China is number 1 in the world already including Ganfeng Lithium and Tianqi making it into "The New Lithium Top 5." Lithium Batteries - Now Warren Buffett's BYD is chasing Panasonic and new coming Megafactories in China from CATL, BYD, Foxconn, Boston Power, A123, LG Chem and Panasonic will make China the center of Lithium Universe for many years ahead. Electric Cars - there are 25 companies which are making 51 models of EVs already in China and 200 companies are developing 4,000 new EV models.
This is what I call a serious exercise of a structural shift in the economy, driving internal consumption by building a 21st-century manufacturing base in Solar, Wind and Electric Cars and growing its middle class who will produce and consume all those beautiful cars. Now they will be able to breathe a fresh air as well. Welcome to Henry Ford idea with the state level implementation of new lithium technology and 1.4 billion people who would like to be happy and only starting to consume a fraction of the goods compare to the West.
I am preaching for the same approach here in the West for years. My dog is listening to me every time, but even him got bored already. Nothing is perfect anywhere, but you better check it out and learn fast: while we are still fighting DieselGate after one year from its mass media discovery, Red Dragon is flying fast and high picking up the best lithium projects, technology and brains to feed its new appetite for growth. Links below will provide you with my ideas where this growth will lead us and what will be the diet for this hungry creature. For those who is a long time here - we are coming back to our main investment thesis. It is very difficult to handle dragons: they are naughty, moody and can fry you just by trying to kiss. It is a better business to run a grocery store and feed them well. This New Energy domination plan will require a lot of Lithium and Copper and this is where my research is leading me to as well now. Read more."
ReNewEconomy:
Solar price hits record low of 2.42c/kWh, and may fall further
The price of solar PV continues to fall. On Monday, a new record low of US2.42c/kWh ($A0.032c/kWh) was set in a tender for a large solar park in Abu Dhabi, not by an industry outlier but by the biggest manufacturer of solar modules in the world, JinkoSolar.
The tender handsomely beats the previous record of US2.91c/kW set just last month in Chile, and previous sub-3c/kWh markers set in Dubai in an earlier tender.
And it continues the stunning cost reductions across renewable energy technologies, with new records set in recent months for on-shore and off-shore wind and solar thermal and storage in particular.
And, it seems, even this bid could be beaten, with the local National newspaper reporting that a local consortium, possibly Masdar Energy, submitting an offer of just US2.3c/kWh if the local authority agrees to write a contract for a solar farm of more than 1.1GW.
It was only 18 months ago that Saudia Arabia-based ACWA Power stunned the solar world, and the broader energy industry, with a bid of less than 6c/kWh in a Abu Dhabi tender.
That price was deemed “impossible” by many doubters, but that plant is being built – at even lower cost after it achieved cheaper than expected finance – and it has been bettered numerous times in the US, the Middle East, and South America.
Paddy Padmanathan, the CEO of ACWA Power, says prices can still fall: “We haven’t reached the bottom yet, but we’re close,” he told The National.
The fall in the cost of renewable energy technologies – 80 per cent in five years for solar and 60 per cent for wind – was cited as a major reason why agreement was reached in Paris last year for a landmark and an ambitious climate target, or well under 2°C and possibly 1.5°C. Now prices have fallen dramatically again.
PV Magazine described the latest solar bid as “astonishing”. It said it was entered into a tender conducted by the Abu Dhabi Electricity and Water Authority’s (ADWEA) for a solar park of at least 350MW. The price was offered by a consortium of JinkoSolar and Japanese industrial giant Marubeni.
PV Magazine reported that the plant is to be built in the town of Swaihan northwest of Abu Dhabi. A new settlement is being built in the region and it is need of quick, affordable electricity.
“Understanding that solar could be the cheapest option, ADWEA invited bids for a 350MW, but allowed bidders to increase the size of the development,” the website says. There were six bids in all, the National said, including the proposed offer of US2.3c/kWh.
“This is real, and the rate of change is accelerating, not slowing,” says Tim Buckley, the director of energy finance studies at IEEFA in Sydney.
“How can seaborne thermal coal compete with solar at $US24/MWh? The direction and trend is clear and certain – wondering if grid parity in any particular region will hit in 2015 or 2025 is irrelevant when the alternative is building new 40 year life coal plants that take 5 years to commission and then are only justifiable if you assume no carbon price, and no restrictions on water and air pollution, over the entire project life.”
Frank Wouters, the former director of Masdar Clean Energy, said that the record low bids were being helped by cheap financing, but the actual cost of solar cells were also falling.
“On the one hand I think the low cost of capital plays an important role and that will not remain so low forever, but on the other hand we’re still learning how to further reduce the cost of solar cells and other components as well as operation and maintenance cost,” he told the National.
“So there’s no reason why the cost of solar will ever increase again.”
Solar is not the only renewable energy technology to show stunning cost reductions in the past 18 months.
Offshore wind, considered a critical component of renewable energy strategies in northern Europe and the Americas, has fallen dramatically with Swedish group Vattenfall offering to build two projects off Denmark for a price of €60/MWh – ($6680/MWh – or US6.6c/kWh)
That beats the previous record set by Denmark’s Dong Energy, which in won a contract for a project in the Netherlands at €72.70/MWh in July ($US80/MWh – or US8c/kWh) – a price that then stunned the industry because it was half the prices awarded in UK wind farm tenders in 2015.
In fact, the price stunned even Dong Energy, which in 2012 had predicted that offshore wind costs would not fall below €100/MWh until 2020. Now, even their price has been beaten.
Prices for onshore wind are also setting new benchmarks, with a tender in Morocco earlier this year achieving prices of around $US25/MWh as part of a large tender for 850MW of wind capacity. The average price was $US30/MWh.
The cost of solar thermal and storage is also falling, with US company SolarReserve bidding US6.3c-6.5c/kWh in a tender in Chile, which has excellent solar resources. This is less than half the price of the company’s first installation, the 110MW Crescent Dunes facility that is now producing and storing electricity in Nevada.
Meanwhile, IEEFA’s Buckley says these massive cost reductions spell trouble for the fossil fuel industry and the growing risk of stranded assets.
“Stranded assets risks are real and rising. Even the IEA is now predicting that with the decoupling of electricity demand from economic growth, no new thermal power generation across China for the rest of this decade. The IEA’s own report this month shows China coal peaked in 2013, they just don’t report it this way.”
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