World Energy Hits a Turning Point: Solar That's Cheaper Than Wind

[SQ8]

Imagine a world powered by the sun and the wind; wouldn't that be a sight to behold @Technogaianist ?

You will have to break your own world record of eating Payas to get that much wind power out.

 

[Khafee]

You will have to break your own world record of eating Payas to get that much wind power out.

 

[chandrak]

Well india has already taken the initial steps in this direction...and there is a huge plan to generate max electricity from solar peojects..pakistan also has some great solar areas which it can use to generate electricity..
We have some ongoing projects amd some completed projects too

 

[Clutch]

storing and generating energy are two different thing.no matter how efficient batteries will get.you still have to generate enough energy for 24 hrs in 12hr duration.i think thats the bottle neck of the solar power.

Vanadium-Flow Batteries: The Energy Storage Breakthrough We've Needed

The latest, greatest utility-scale battery storage technology to emerge on the commercial market is the vanadium redox battery, also known as the vanadium flow battery.

V-flow batteries are fully containerized, nonflammable, compact, reusable over semi-infinite cycles, discharge 100% of the stored energy and do not degrade for more than 20 years.

Most batteries use two chemicals that change valence (or charge or redox state) in response to electron flow that convert chemical energy to electrical energy, and vice versa. V-flow batteries use the multiple valence states of just vanadium to store and release charges.

V can exist as several ions of different charges in solution, V(2+,3+,4+,5+), each having different numbers of electrons around the nucleus. Fewer electrons gives a higher positive charge. Energy is stored by providing electrons making V(2+,3+), and energy is released by losing electrons to form V(4+,5+).



https://www.google.ca/amp/www.forbe...ugh-weve-needed/?client=ms-android-blackberry

 

[!eon]

How about Pakistan? What are they doing in the renewable energy field?

Practically nothing.

There's shortage of power and there's no single mega project on horizon to fulfill the energy needs. Yes, I agree there are some toy like project e.g. Nandi Pur (you can google what happened in that project).

People mainly use UPS (uninterrupted power supply) system, in which Chinese firms and Pakistani govt (govt in Pakistan always means the ruling party) are making enough money. Rest is all good.

 

[DJ_Viper]

A transformation is happening in global energy markets that’s worth noting as 2016 comes to an end: Solar power, for the first time, is becoming the cheapest form of new electricity.

This has happened in isolated projects in the past: an especially competitive auction in the Middle East, for example, resulting in record-cheap solar costs. But now unsubsidized solar is beginning to outcompete coal and natural gas on a larger scale, and notably, new solar projects in emerging markets are costing less to build than wind projects, according to fresh data from Bloomberg New Energy Finance.

@saiyan0321 @The Eagle @PaklovesTurkiye

Sir, there is nothing new here. If you just use common sense, you are using Silicon batteries / Panels, and the Sun to produce the required electricity. These two items by themselves reduce a much costly process and expensive furnace oil, or gas. Then, as the energy is already clean, coming from the Sun, the turbine related work is also much less complex and low maintenance, vs. running the Oil or Gas, associated heavier maintenance cost and then dealing with the Carbon emission footprint. So there are plenty of savings just by using Solar power.

The only issue is, you couldn't go 100% Solar as there might be many cloudy days in a year. Plus majority of Europe and many other countries don't get Sun many weeks during the Winter. So to use combined cycle equipment, or, have back up power generation with Oil, when the Sun isn't visible, it would take you back to a higher price tag. But the benefits are tremendous, easy to setup, easier to operate, fuel comes from the mother nature and much cheaper maintenance in terms of the Solar Panels.

 

[I S I]

Practically nothing.

There's shortage of power and there's no single mega project on horizon to fulfill the energy needs. Yes, I agree there are some toy like project e.g. Nandi Pur (you can google what happened in that project).

Please don't spread propaganda & lies. You are defaming our country.

http://www.dawn.com/news/1205484



World's largest solar park to light up Pakistan's future
ZOFEEN T. EBRAHIM — UPDATED Sep 08, 2015 08:14pm
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Entrance to Quaid-e-Azam Solar Power Park - Photo courtesy Zofeen T. Ebrahim.
Some 400,000 solar panels, spread over 200 hectares of flat desert, glare defiantly at the sun at what is known as the Quaid-e-Azam Solar Power Park (QASP) in Cholistan Desert, Punjab, named after Pakistan’s founding father, Mohammad Ali Jinnah.

The 100MW photovoltaic cells (PV) solar farm was built by Chinese company Xinjiang SunOasis in just three months, and started selling electricity to the national grid in August.

This is the first energy project under the $46 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), a key part of China’s ‘new silk road’, linking the port at Gwadar in southern Pakistan with Kashgar in China’s western region of Xinjiang.

The 100MW plant is the pilot stage of a more ambitious plan to build the world’s largest solar farm. Once completed in 2017, the site could have capacity of 5.2 million PV cells producing as much as 1,000MW of electricity – enough to power about 320,000 households. Construction of the next stage is already underway, led by another Chinese company Zonergy.

One of the main access roads inside QASP - Photo courtesy Quaid-e-Azam Solar Power (Pvt) Ltd.
Eighteen months ago, the site was nothing more than wilderness. Now a mini city has emerged in the middle of the desert, with over 2,000 workers accompanied by heavy machinery, power transmission lines, blocks of buildings, water pipes and pylons.

Reducing emissions, providing livelihoods
The Cholistan desert is an ideal spot for solar power, said Muhammad Hassan Askari, operating manager of the solar park. The area gets 13 hours of sunlight every day while the huge expanse of flat desert is ideal for a large commercial project like this one.

The big advantage of solar power, he said, is that a large park can be completed faster than thermal or hydropower projects, which take much longer and require a lot of maintenance.

The solar park will also shrink Pakistan’s carbon footprint, said Najam Ahmed Shah, the chief executive officer of QASP, displacing about 57,500 tonnes of coal burn and reducing emissions by 90,750 tonnes every year.

An aerial view of QASP. - Photo courtesy Quaid-e-Azam Solar Power (Pvt) Ltd.
Pakistan aims to reduce its reliance on hydrocarbons, especially imported coal, oil and gas, to around 60 per cent by 2025 from the present 87pc. The country has a target to produce 10pc of its total energy mix from renewable sources (excluding hydro-power, which already constitutes 15pc of the total energy mix). The current generation from renewable energy is around 1-2pc.

While Pakistan contributes less than 1pc to global Green House Gas (GHG) output, the country’s carbon emissions are growing by 3.9pc a year. By 2020 it will spew out 650 million tonnes of Co2e (carbon dioxide equivalent) if the current trend continues, said climatologist Qamar-uz-Zaman Chaudhry, the UN secretary general’s special advisor for Asia with the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO).

The solar park will also eventually generate 15,000 to 33,000 jobs for locals and attract investment to the region.

Unprecedented scale
Some experts worry the project is too ambitious. Former director general of WWF-Pakistan Ali Hassan Habib, who now runs a company providing rooftop solar solutions, welcomed the project but was uneasy about the government “jumping into untested scale”. The plant will be double the size of the existing largest solar PV generating facilities worldwide, he said.

“It may have been better to build the equivalent remaining 900MW closer to where electricity is consumed — on say the rooftops of large parking lots — rather than installing it in remote locations,” he said.

Environmental impact of clean energy
Because solar energy is still finding a foothold in the energy mix and technologies are evolving, not enough is known about the park’s impact on the environment and natural resources.

An aerial view of QASP. - Photo courtesy Quaid-e-Azam Solar Power (Pvt) Ltd.
Some negative impacts have already become apparent. For example, solar power consumes lots of water. PV panels may require little maintenance, according to QASP, but they need to be kept squeaky clean. An estimated one litre of water is used to clean each panel. Water consumed to clean the eventual 5.2 million panels built will be colossal for a country that is fast becoming water stressed. Currently, 30 people take 10 to 15 days to clean the 400,000 cells.

“This year we’ve been very lucky as there have been unprecedented rains and so panels were cleaned automatically,” said Askari, who said they were looking for more efficient ways to clean panels.

At the same time, increasing human activity will disturb the arid region’s rich biodiversity and wildlife, such as the Indian gazelle, caracal cat and houbara bustard.

The construction of a new road network and supporting commercial activities associated with large solar PV projects do leave a substantial “footprint” on the land, agreed Habib.

Shah justified the project, saying it was built on “uninhabited” “waste” land. “An Initial Environmental Examination was carried out and we got a nod from the Environment Protection Department before embarking upon the project,” he explained.

To offset any negative impact, Habib suggested the government set up an “environment and social fund”.

Environmentalists are also concerned about the fate of the millions of PV panels which will wear out within 25 years. The panels will have to be recycled to extract the silicon used to make them, and then replaced.

Pakistan’s energy crisis
Pakistan has been in the grip of severe energy shortages for many years with some rural areas left without power for up to 20 hours a day. There has been little local or foreign investment in the industrial sector because of the extensive power cuts, and a number of factories have had to close down.

An aerial view of QASP. - Photo courtesy Quaid-e-Azam Solar Power (Pvt) Ltd.
With an installed electricity generation capacity of 22,797MW, the country’s total production stands at just 14,000MW. In recent years, demand has risen to 19,000MW.

While the 1,000MW of solar energy will help ease energy constraints, Askari said government investment in several other hydropower and coal projects should also help alleviate power shortages.

Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif promised power cuts would end by 2018 at the inauguration ceremony of 100MW solar project in May, earlier this year.

Not everyone is happy
But some critics say it is the investors who will get rich from the solar project, while consumers will have to pay more in the long run.

“Hydropower can produce energy for less than half the price of solar and about the same as wind so why a fixation on solar?” said an Islamabad-based energy expert working with the government, who spoke to thethirdpole.net on the condition of anonymity.

He is sceptical of solar for a number of reasons.

First, the solar farm will actually produce far less than the much touted 1,000MW of electricity. “On average, solar power plants deliver only about 20pc of installed capacity, and the peak production is during the day, while the peak demand is in the evening when the plant does not produce anything,” the expert pointed out.

Quaid-e-Azam Solar Power Park - Photo courtesy Zofeen T. Ebrahim.
Alternative arrangements have to be made to draw upon hydro or thermal sources at an “extra cost”. But the project’s owners say the 100MW solar plant could produce near to capacity at 85MW at its peak.

Second, solar energy is more expensive than other energy sources. QASP claims it is selling solar power to the grid at $0.14 per unit. Sources within the National Transmission and Dispatch Company (NTDC) say they have signed a deal to buy electricity at $0.24 per unit, which will drop later to perhaps $0.17 per unit after a period of seven years when loans are paid off. In either case, this price is far higher than the $0.07 for hydropower, $0.11 for fuel oil and $0.12 for imported LNG.

“And these figures are only for generation; another 25pc must be added to it for cost of delivery to be borne by the consumer, accounting for losses and theft,” he pointed out.

“The financial justification for solar was approved when oil prices were at $110 a barrel,” he said, lamenting that the government refused to heed to advice that oil prices would drop.

Others argue that solar prices will fall over time, making it competitive. Vaqar Ahmed, deputy executive director at the Islamabad-based think tank, Sustainable Development Policy Institute, said: “For every new technology the fixed costs are higher in the initial years and diminish over time as economies of scale are achieved.” And learning from China, efficiency will rise and prices for solar cells will continue to fall, he said.

Wind could be a much bigger contributor to Pakistan’s energy need, said WWF’s Habib, given its potential of 120,000MW. “Unlike solar, wind energy maintains production at night,” he pointed out.

Political risks
With just a little over two years left in his term, the success of the solar project is important for Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif.

“The project has huge political implications for the ruling Pakistan Muslim League (N),” said Lieutenant Colonel (Ret) M Hassan Malik, who is responsible for the security arrangements of the entire QASP area.

An aerial view of QASP. - Photo courtesy Quaid-e-Azam Solar Power (Pvt) Ltd.
”Through this project the government also wants to send out the message to the outside world that it has the capacity to undertake mega projects and will provide foolproof security to investors.”

Working in an area known as a hotbed of criminals and extremists, Malik’s job is challenging. “Not only is the park a national asset, we have foreign nationals working at the plant, so the sensitivity is two-fold,” he said.

There are 800 to 900 men guarding the site, where around 400 Chinese workers and over 2,000 labourers work at any given time.

Cultural shock
For Alexander Halbich, a German engineer who has been at the park for over a year, getting used to “gun-toting” security men following him around was most disconcerting aspect of his new job. “The food is good, the people are extremely hospitable and we do go out to the city once in a while tailed by armed guards, but there is little to do after dark,” he added.

“There isn’t much to do in the evenings,” agreed Muhammad Hasan Askari, who heads the technical team. Hailing from Lahore, he keeps himself busy with work and looks forward to going home at the weekends.

Foreign workers get to go home less often. “I go every three months for ten days or more,” said Zhang Ting, a young Chinese engineer. “I’m quite ready to go home by two months but when I do go back, I miss Pakistan and the work,” she added.

Ting had to deal with a language barrier and hostile weather when she arrived to work at the site. The Chinese engineer also had to adjust to a “whole new work culture”.

“We resolved the issue by getting more Pakistanis on our design team to crease out the differences and conflicts,” she said.

View of the infrastructure developed alogside the solar park to connect it to the national grid. -Photo courtesy Zofeen T. Ebrahim.
This article was originally published on The Third Poleand has been reproduced with permission.



This is one single renewable energy project i pointed out of dozen.


@Muhammad Omar

 

[Khafee]

Well I'm no expert on power generation, but doesn't solar come with an inherent flaw i.e. its dependency on sunshine. Storage is too costly. Isn't wind more consistent?

 

[Deidara]

With due diligence in pre-studies maximum juice can be squeezed out of solar farms. As a thumb rule photovoltaics are better for high and dry places and concentrated light is better for deserts.

 

[!eon]

Oh sorry that hurts but Nandi Pur corruption and then failure is a reality not a lie

and no matter how much solar parks you built, I would only believe when they start contributing their full potential in national grid, otherwise they are just continuation of corruption scums.
I have seen enough starting in this country and then disappearing in oceans of vast corruption. I am from very near to Kalabagh and we have seen arrival of machinery for dam, not once but twice.

Please don't spread propaganda & lies. You are defaming our country.

http://www.dawn.com/news/1205484



World's largest solar park to light up Pakistan's future
ZOFEEN T. EBRAHIM — UPDATED Sep 08, 2015 08:14pm
WHATSAPP
243 COMMENTS
PRINT

Entrance to Quaid-e-Azam Solar Power Park - Photo courtesy Zofeen T. Ebrahim.
Some 400,000 solar panels, spread over 200 hectares of flat desert, glare defiantly at the sun at what is known as the Quaid-e-Azam Solar Power Park (QASP) in Cholistan Desert, Punjab, named after Pakistan’s founding father, Mohammad Ali Jinnah.

The 100MW photovoltaic cells (PV) solar farm was built by Chinese company Xinjiang SunOasis in just three months, and started selling electricity to the national grid in August.

This is the first energy project under the $46 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), a key part of China’s ‘new silk road’, linking the port at Gwadar in southern Pakistan with Kashgar in China’s western region of Xinjiang.

The 100MW plant is the pilot stage of a more ambitious plan to build the world’s largest solar farm. Once completed in 2017, the site could have capacity of 5.2 million PV cells producing as much as 1,000MW of electricity – enough to power about 320,000 households. Construction of the next stage is already underway, led by another Chinese company Zonergy.

One of the main access roads inside QASP - Photo courtesy Quaid-e-Azam Solar Power (Pvt) Ltd.
Eighteen months ago, the site was nothing more than wilderness. Now a mini city has emerged in the middle of the desert, with over 2,000 workers accompanied by heavy machinery, power transmission lines, blocks of buildings, water pipes and pylons.

Reducing emissions, providing livelihoods
The Cholistan desert is an ideal spot for solar power, said Muhammad Hassan Askari, operating manager of the solar park. The area gets 13 hours of sunlight every day while the huge expanse of flat desert is ideal for a large commercial project like this one.

The big advantage of solar power, he said, is that a large park can be completed faster than thermal or hydropower projects, which take much longer and require a lot of maintenance.

The solar park will also shrink Pakistan’s carbon footprint, said Najam Ahmed Shah, the chief executive officer of QASP, displacing about 57,500 tonnes of coal burn and reducing emissions by 90,750 tonnes every year.

An aerial view of QASP. - Photo courtesy Quaid-e-Azam Solar Power (Pvt) Ltd.
Pakistan aims to reduce its reliance on hydrocarbons, especially imported coal, oil and gas, to around 60 per cent by 2025 from the present 87pc. The country has a target to produce 10pc of its total energy mix from renewable sources (excluding hydro-power, which already constitutes 15pc of the total energy mix). The current generation from renewable energy is around 1-2pc.

While Pakistan contributes less than 1pc to global Green House Gas (GHG) output, the country’s carbon emissions are growing by 3.9pc a year. By 2020 it will spew out 650 million tonnes of Co2e (carbon dioxide equivalent) if the current trend continues, said climatologist Qamar-uz-Zaman Chaudhry, the UN secretary general’s special advisor for Asia with the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO).

The solar park will also eventually generate 15,000 to 33,000 jobs for locals and attract investment to the region.

Unprecedented scale
Some experts worry the project is too ambitious. Former director general of WWF-Pakistan Ali Hassan Habib, who now runs a company providing rooftop solar solutions, welcomed the project but was uneasy about the government “jumping into untested scale”. The plant will be double the size of the existing largest solar PV generating facilities worldwide, he said.

“It may have been better to build the equivalent remaining 900MW closer to where electricity is consumed — on say the rooftops of large parking lots — rather than installing it in remote locations,” he said.

Environmental impact of clean energy
Because solar energy is still finding a foothold in the energy mix and technologies are evolving, not enough is known about the park’s impact on the environment and natural resources.

An aerial view of QASP. - Photo courtesy Quaid-e-Azam Solar Power (Pvt) Ltd.
Some negative impacts have already become apparent. For example, solar power consumes lots of water. PV panels may require little maintenance, according to QASP, but they need to be kept squeaky clean. An estimated one litre of water is used to clean each panel. Water consumed to clean the eventual 5.2 million panels built will be colossal for a country that is fast becoming water stressed. Currently, 30 people take 10 to 15 days to clean the 400,000 cells.

“This year we’ve been very lucky as there have been unprecedented rains and so panels were cleaned automatically,” said Askari, who said they were looking for more efficient ways to clean panels.

At the same time, increasing human activity will disturb the arid region’s rich biodiversity and wildlife, such as the Indian gazelle, caracal cat and houbara bustard.

The construction of a new road network and supporting commercial activities associated with large solar PV projects do leave a substantial “footprint” on the land, agreed Habib.

Shah justified the project, saying it was built on “uninhabited” “waste” land. “An Initial Environmental Examination was carried out and we got a nod from the Environment Protection Department before embarking upon the project,” he explained.

To offset any negative impact, Habib suggested the government set up an “environment and social fund”.

Environmentalists are also concerned about the fate of the millions of PV panels which will wear out within 25 years. The panels will have to be recycled to extract the silicon used to make them, and then replaced.

Pakistan’s energy crisis
Pakistan has been in the grip of severe energy shortages for many years with some rural areas left without power for up to 20 hours a day. There has been little local or foreign investment in the industrial sector because of the extensive power cuts, and a number of factories have had to close down.

An aerial view of QASP. - Photo courtesy Quaid-e-Azam Solar Power (Pvt) Ltd.
With an installed electricity generation capacity of 22,797MW, the country’s total production stands at just 14,000MW. In recent years, demand has risen to 19,000MW.

While the 1,000MW of solar energy will help ease energy constraints, Askari said government investment in several other hydropower and coal projects should also help alleviate power shortages.

Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif promised power cuts would end by 2018 at the inauguration ceremony of 100MW solar project in May, earlier this year.

Not everyone is happy
But some critics say it is the investors who will get rich from the solar project, while consumers will have to pay more in the long run.

“Hydropower can produce energy for less than half the price of solar and about the same as wind so why a fixation on solar?” said an Islamabad-based energy expert working with the government, who spoke to thethirdpole.net on the condition of anonymity.

He is sceptical of solar for a number of reasons.

First, the solar farm will actually produce far less than the much touted 1,000MW of electricity. “On average, solar power plants deliver only about 20pc of installed capacity, and the peak production is during the day, while the peak demand is in the evening when the plant does not produce anything,” the expert pointed out.

Quaid-e-Azam Solar Power Park - Photo courtesy Zofeen T. Ebrahim.
Alternative arrangements have to be made to draw upon hydro or thermal sources at an “extra cost”. But the project’s owners say the 100MW solar plant could produce near to capacity at 85MW at its peak.

Second, solar energy is more expensive than other energy sources. QASP claims it is selling solar power to the grid at $0.14 per unit. Sources within the National Transmission and Dispatch Company (NTDC) say they have signed a deal to buy electricity at $0.24 per unit, which will drop later to perhaps $0.17 per unit after a period of seven years when loans are paid off. In either case, this price is far higher than the $0.07 for hydropower, $0.11 for fuel oil and $0.12 for imported LNG.

“And these figures are only for generation; another 25pc must be added to it for cost of delivery to be borne by the consumer, accounting for losses and theft,” he pointed out.

“The financial justification for solar was approved when oil prices were at $110 a barrel,” he said, lamenting that the government refused to heed to advice that oil prices would drop.

Others argue that solar prices will fall over time, making it competitive. Vaqar Ahmed, deputy executive director at the Islamabad-based think tank, Sustainable Development Policy Institute, said: “For every new technology the fixed costs are higher in the initial years and diminish over time as economies of scale are achieved.” And learning from China, efficiency will rise and prices for solar cells will continue to fall, he said.

Wind could be a much bigger contributor to Pakistan’s energy need, said WWF’s Habib, given its potential of 120,000MW. “Unlike solar, wind energy maintains production at night,” he pointed out.

Political risks
With just a little over two years left in his term, the success of the solar project is important for Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif.

“The project has huge political implications for the ruling Pakistan Muslim League (N),” said Lieutenant Colonel (Ret) M Hassan Malik, who is responsible for the security arrangements of the entire QASP area.

An aerial view of QASP. - Photo courtesy Quaid-e-Azam Solar Power (Pvt) Ltd.
”Through this project the government also wants to send out the message to the outside world that it has the capacity to undertake mega projects and will provide foolproof security to investors.”

Working in an area known as a hotbed of criminals and extremists, Malik’s job is challenging. “Not only is the park a national asset, we have foreign nationals working at the plant, so the sensitivity is two-fold,” he said.

There are 800 to 900 men guarding the site, where around 400 Chinese workers and over 2,000 labourers work at any given time.

Cultural shock
For Alexander Halbich, a German engineer who has been at the park for over a year, getting used to “gun-toting” security men following him around was most disconcerting aspect of his new job. “The food is good, the people are extremely hospitable and we do go out to the city once in a while tailed by armed guards, but there is little to do after dark,” he added.

“There isn’t much to do in the evenings,” agreed Muhammad Hasan Askari, who heads the technical team. Hailing from Lahore, he keeps himself busy with work and looks forward to going home at the weekends.

Foreign workers get to go home less often. “I go every three months for ten days or more,” said Zhang Ting, a young Chinese engineer. “I’m quite ready to go home by two months but when I do go back, I miss Pakistan and the work,” she added.

Ting had to deal with a language barrier and hostile weather when she arrived to work at the site. The Chinese engineer also had to adjust to a “whole new work culture”.

“We resolved the issue by getting more Pakistanis on our design team to crease out the differences and conflicts,” she said.

View of the infrastructure developed alogside the solar park to connect it to the national grid. -Photo courtesy Zofeen T. Ebrahim.
This article was originally published on The Third Poleand has been reproduced with permission.



This is one single renewable energy project i pointed out of dozen.


@Muhammad Omar

Well I'm no expert on power generation, but doesn't solar come with an inherent flaw i.e. its dependency on sunshine. Storage is too costly. Isn't wind more consistent?

Yes that's right.
We have to clear the ground for sales of some power storage manufacturers company.

 

[Banglar Bir]

Its indeed heartening and encouraging for all of us to witness such active participation by enlightened Pakistanis by contributing their wise wisdom in this crucial green and clean eco- friendly renewable energy sector.
May Almighty fulfill your visions.

 

[Maxpane]

Wecare going towards green energy also . Jhimpur wind project and quaid e azam solar energy are the exapmles . I heard sweden company want to invest in south punjab for wind energy

 

[I S I]

Oh sorry that hurts but Nandi Pur corruption and then failure is a reality not a lie

and no matter how much solar parks you built, I would only believe when they start contributing their full potential in national grid, otherwise they are just continuation of corruption scums.
I have seen enough starting in this country and then disappearing in oceans of vast corruption. I am from very near to Kalabagh and we have seen arrival of machinery for dam, not once but twice.

i don't have words for your ignorance. You first stated that there is no renewable Energy project in Pakistan & now what you're basically saying is that "Die Noora Die". Pathetic.

 

[The Accountant]

A transformation is happening in global energy markets that’s worth noting as 2016 comes to an end: Solar power, for the first time, is becoming the cheapest form of new electricity.

This has happened in isolated projects in the past: an especially competitive auction in the Middle East, for example, resulting in record-cheap solar costs. But now unsubsidized solar is beginning to outcompete coal and natural gas on a larger scale, and notably, new solar projects in emerging markets are costing less to build than wind projects, according to fresh data from Bloomberg New Energy Finance.

The chart below shows the average cost of new wind and solar from 58 emerging-market economies, including China, India, and Brazil. While solar was bound to fall below wind eventually, given its steeper price declines, few predicted it would happen this soon. 1

Disclosed capex for onshore wind and PV projects in 58 non-OECD countries
Source: Bloomberg New Energy Finance
“Solar investment has gone from nothing—literally nothing—like five years ago to quite a lot,” said Ethan Zindler, head of U.S. policy analysis at BNEF. “A huge part of this story is China, which has been rapidly deploying solar” and helping other countries finance their own projects.

Half the Price of Coal
This year has seen a remarkable run for solar power. Auctions, where private companies compete for massive contracts to provide electricity, established record after record for cheap solar power. It started with a contract in January to produce electricity for $64 per megawatt-hour in India; then a deal in August pegging $29.10 per megawatt hour in Chile. That’s record-cheap electricity—roughly half the price of competing coal power.

“Renewables are robustly entering the era of undercutting” fossil fuel prices, BNEF chairman Michael Liebreich said in a note to clients this week.

Those are new contracts, but plenty of projects are reaching completion this year, too. When all the 2016 completions are tallied in coming months, it’s likely that the total amount of solar photovoltaics added globally will exceed that of wind for the first time. The latest BNEF projections call for 70 gigawatts of newly installed solar in 2016 compared with 59 gigawatts of wind.

The overall shift to clean energy can be more expensive in wealthier nations, where electricity demand is flat or falling and new solar must compete with existing billion-dollar coal and gas plants. But in countries that are adding new electricity capacity as quickly as possible, “renewable energy will beat any other technology in most of the world without subsidies,” said Liebreich.

Turning Points
The world recently passed a turning point and is adding more capacity for clean energy each year than for coal and natural gas combined. Peak fossil-fuel use for electricity may be reached within the next decade.

Thursday’s BNEF report, called Climatescope, ranks and profiles emerging markets for their ability to attract capital for low-carbon energy projects. The top-scoring markets were China, Chile, Brazil, Uruguay, South Africa, and India.

When it comes to renewable energy investment, emerging markets have taken the lead over the 35 member nations of the Organization for Economic Cooperation & Development (OECD), spending $154.1 billion in 2015 compared with $153.7 billion by those wealthier countries, BNEF said. The growth rates of clean-energy deployment are higher in these emerging-market states, so they are likely to remain the clean energy leaders indefinitely, especially now that three-quarters have established clean-energy targets.

Still, the buildup of wind and solar takes time, and fossil fuels remain the cheapest option for when the wind doesn’t blow and the sun doesn’t shine. Coal and natural gas will continue to play a key role in the alleviation of energy poverty for millions of people in the years to come.

But for populations still relying on expensive kerosene generators, or who have no electricity at all, and for those living in the dangerous smog of thickly populated cities, the shift to renewables and increasingly to solar can’t come soon enough.
Source
@saiyan0321 @The Eagle @PaklovesTurkiye

Stupid article ... wind and solar are the most expensive ... the bloomberg source is claiming that solar is now comparative to wind that means still expensive than fossil fuel coal hydro on nuclear ...

Solar energy is very expensive due to the reason that energy is generated half of the day and before transmission it needs to be stored in batteries so you it requires a very huge infrastructure cost still conversion rate is very slow ...

I know all this cause i have worked on feasibility studies of energy sector ...

 

[!eon]

i don't have words for your ignorance.
You first stated that there is no renewable

You need some English classes for understing English. Practically none, I said.

Energy project in Pakistan & now what you're basically saying is that "Die Noora Die". Pathetic.

I never said for any party, you took personally for noora. I have a lot of words for ignorance of nooni breed. I didn't know if you are nooni.
Pathetic would be if you say there was no corruption in Nandi Pur.
You are running away from discussing that nooni power pocket project ? Is that a practical project ? English please !