Vietnam install solar power surge to 5 gigawatt in only 2 years

The Economist reports that Vietnam undergoes an unexpected surge in solar power. In 2017 solar power played almost no part in Vietnam’s energy mix so to speed the technology’s adoption, the government offered that year to pay suppliers a generous $0.09 for every kilowatt-hour produced by big solar farms. However, under the conditionthatthey started operations within the following two years. The Vietnam government expected some 850MW of capacity to be installed. Instead, by the end of 2019 the country found itself with 5 gigawatts.

Full article: Vietnam grapples with an unexpected surge in solar power (LINK)

 

 

This map is taken from Global Solar Atlas, available at: https://globalsolaratlas.info/downloads/vietnam 

The stars are aligning behind hydrogen

Here is a promising forward-looking article by Mark Newman at Sandvik regarding the future of power to gas using Hydrogen and energy storage. The take away is that a hydrogen-based economy is much more likely today than 15 years ago. The reason is the recent expansion of electricity generation via wind turbines and photovoltaic cells. According to the article, batteries have improved a great deal over the years but are unsuitable for most grid-scale applications over a long period of an electricity outage. So far, pumped hydro plants have represented the standard for grid-scale energy storage, but it is only available in some locations due to its dependence on suitable geography.

This is where hydrogen comes in, writes Mark Newman: "Like electricity, hydrogen is an energy carrier as opposed to fuel, since it needs to be manufactured. The fuel, in this case, is the wind or the sun which is used to make electricity that splits water into hydrogen and oxygen via electrolysis. The part that I think is key is the fact that hydrogen doesn't always need to be used in conjunction with fuel cells in order to make electricity again when a demand peak occurs, but can instead be added into the natural gas grid and mixed with methane and be used in the same way as the methane would be used. There are numerous projects being undertaken around the world to investigate the feasibility and limits to doing this, for example, in Leeds, UK, and in Sydney, Australia, to mention just two."

"It very much looks as if the stars are aligning behind hydrogen. Some market assessments conservatively put growth rates in high single figures, but some large and credible companies are openly saying these estimates are much too low. Some have said the truth is more likely to be close to 10-fold growth by 2050."



Source: Full article LINK

Cheap and efficeint solar panles killed Crescent Dunes Solar Energy Project before it came online

The 110 MW Crescent Dunes Solar Energy Project in Nevada was the world’s first utility-scale facility to use molten salt power tower energy storage. It has 10,347 tracking mirrors (heliostats) that follow the sun and reflect and concentrate sunlight onto a heat exchanger, a receiver, atop a 640-foot (200 m) tower. 

 

Crescent Dunes is designed for 10 hours of storage and was to deliver 500,000 MW hours of electricity per year, day and night, to 75,000 homes. In September 2011, SolarReserve received a $737 million loan guarantee from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) for the project and broke ground. The project had a 25-year agreement with NV Energy for 100 percent of the electricity, but this was terminated by NV Energy in October 2019 due to the project having "failed to produce." Alleging a takeover by the DOE, SolarReserve has raised the possibility of this project filing for bankruptcy. 

 

Cost of Solar Technology in $ Per Megawatt-Hour (Source & credit: BloombergNEF) 

 

According to a recent article in Bloomberg (LINK), cheap solar panels have grown wildly more efficient in recent years, and that is a disaster for such companies as SolarReserve that can’t easily upgrade their dated components. As can be seen in the graph above, the current cost (2019) per megawatt-.hour is almost 2.5 times higher for the Cresent Dune plant as compared to a photovoltaic solar farm.

 

 

Crescent Dunes Solar Energy Project as seen from an airliner (Wikipedia) 

 

Background: SolarReserve (LINK)

US Federal officials plan to approve a massive solar farm with energy storage in the desert outside Las Vegas

According to the Los Angeles Times United States Federal officials plan to approve a massive solar farm with energy storage in the desert outside Las Vegas. A $1-billion project that will provide electricity to Nevada residents served by Warren Buffett’s NV Energy. At 690 megawatts across 7,100 acres, the facility would generate more power than the largest solar farm currently operating in the United States.