Solar Report Stunner: Unsubsidized ‘Grid Parity Has Been Reached In India’, Italy–More By 2014

Think Progress

Deutsche Bank just released new analyses concluding that global solar market will become sustainable on its own terms by the end of 2014, no longer needing subsidies to continue performing.
The German-based bank said that rooftop solar is looking especially robust, and sees strong demand in solar markets in India, China, Britain, Germany, India, and the United States. As a result, Deutsche Bank actually increased its forecast for solar demand in 2013 to 30 gigawatts — a 20 percent increase over 2012.

Renew Economy

Analysts at Deutsche Bank have predicted that the global solar PV sector will transition from a subsidised market to a sustainable market within a year, citing the arrival of “grid parity” in a number of key markets, unexpectedly strong demand and rebounding margins.

The Deutsche Bank team said key markets such as India, China and the US are experiencing strong demand and solar projects are now being developed with minimal or no incentives.

“While some risks around subsidy cuts in Japan and the UK market remain, we expect a more constructive outlook in most other emerging markets,” Deutsche Bank writes. “We see the sector transitioning from subsidised to sustainable markets in 2014.”

The Deutsche Bank analysis is the third in the past month to focus on the dramatic changes in the solar market, and the energy industry in which it is playing an increasingly profound role.

Good news that you won't hear about in the Corporate MSM. A shift away from fossil fuels to solar is becoming reality in many countries, without subsidy and more countries to follow.

India is currently experiencing an economic boom and much infrastructure is being built and while much of that is following traditional carbon heavy construction, a lot is also being done to accommodate other energy technologies, many buildings are being built with extremely high efficiency standards and white rooftops.

India and China are going to leave the US in the dust in this growing market, but they are motivated to transition. Not to say they don't have their elements of denial or corruption, obviously they do. But both nations have the two largest populations to deal with, many are destitute and one of the facts of global climate change is that the glaciers that feed the rivers that people depend on for fresh water, are disappearing which will result in the deaths or migrations of billions of people. They couldn't afford to do nothing anymore so they didn't, they invested (subsidized) solar energy, and now that market is beginning to flourish.

The report only looks at nameplate installation and its cost and ignores capacity factors when comparing installed prices. This is a joke .. right?

reply to post by SirMike


Unsure the point you are making-unless its the cliche one "It doesn't do miracles, lets mock it and do what we can to keep the status quo" sort of approach.

In areas such as India where infrastructure is extemely difficult spread out as it is-they don't have freeways or precut paths through mountains/jungles for distributed power.

Solar is the perfect answer.

If you are meaning something else-please elaborate why it is a 'joke'.

reply to post by SirMike


Are you trying to state that India and Italy haven't reached grid parity with solar energy, that the claim is false? Or are you mad about something? I'm not quite catching your point.

“Grid parity has been reached in India even despite the high cost of capital of around 10-12 percent,” Deutsche Bank notes, and also despite a slight rise in module prices of [3 to 5 cents per kilowatt] in recent months (good for manufacturers).

Italy is another country that appears to be at grid parity, where several developers are under advanced discussions to develop unsubsidized projects in Southern Italy. Deutsche Bank says that for small commercial enterprises that can achieve 50 percent or more self consumption, solar is competitive with grid electricity in most parts of Italy, and commercial businesses in Germany that have the load profile to achieve up to 90 percent self consumption are also finding solar as an attractive source of power generation.

Same source as in my OP.

reply to post by Kali74


A Feed in Tariff is a subsidy, there's no way around that. Additionally, these analyses don't take into account storage costs or the cost of spinning reserves when amortizing total cost for solar, which is a huge consideration for any variable output generator.

reply to post by lordtyp0


Solar is the perfect answer unless you want to run your refrigerator when the sun goes own.

Think progress? might as well have used the blaze for a source..

Think progress did not think this through as solar is NOT the near future for MANY things...

reply to post by SirMike

“Thanks to significant cost reductions and rising retail tariffs, households and commercial users are set to install solar systems to reduce electricity bills – without any subsidies.” And Macquarie Group argued that costs for rooftop solar in Germany have fallen so far that even with subsidy cuts “solar installations could continue at a torrid pace.”

Retail tariffs not feed in tariffs, which is what standard electricity companies use.

reply to post by starfoxxx


There's links.
Feel free to follow them.

Good for them!

Having the solar power available to feed the grid during peak manufacturing and public/private demand is prob a good idea. Theoretically you only have to produce electricity from coal and nuclear at night.

The problem I have had with a lot of the alternative energy zealots is that...the sun doesn't always shine and the wind doesn't always blow...you still need the old reliable power generators for those times or when peak demand exceeds the capacity of the alternative sources.

Me personally? I wan a house by a nice stream...I want solar panels, a wind turbine or two and a small water wheel to turn a generator...erm..I mean my grain grinding stone. To be completely off the grid 24/7 and not needing an expensive bank of batteries to replace is the dream.

And as soon as I hit the lottery...that will be in the top ten things to do...right after my European tour!

reply to post by Kali74


I am in the solar business, so I can add some detail to this thread.

1. When you say that India and China are leaving the US in their dust, that is not exactly true. Germany and Italy are, but the US and China are pretty similar in installed capacity, and India is far behind but closing quickly.

2. The countries that are achieving "grid-parity" in this article are all very high solar insolation countries, in other words they get ALOTof sunshine.

3. The grid parity that they are talking about is parity between the COST of solar power with the RETAIL price of electricity. That is why they clarify that 'for companies that use alot of their own power' solar makes sense without any subsidy.

4. The parity arguments DO include the cost of idle spinning fossil fuel generators. In Germany, the power authorities have found that the cost of power goes DOWN on sunny days due to the effect of solar taking the peak off...

5. In almost all countries that have developed a solar industry through Feed-In-Tariff programs, solar is now actually at parity, but the banksters are hiding the fact. I am NOT saying they are intentionally hiding it, but their basic policies hide it none-the-less. The issue is the amortization period. We KNOW all decent solar panels will last at least 40 years, and there is not a single reason to believe they will not last a lot longer. But all solar installations are amortized over 20 years at most. If you extend your levellized cost of power calculations out to 40 years, things change radically. Anyone smart enough to invest in solar panels right now will get a much better rate of return than investing in gold OVER 40 YEARS.

6. The storage issue is just now being addressed by the reall renewable experts. The simplest solutions will be a modernization of a German company called Sunventions. It is much easier, (and cheaper) to produce heat from the sun that electricity ffom the sun, and simple,cheap, stirling engines can convert that heat toelectricity. the German gov't has just announced a Feed-In-Tariff program specifically to promote storage solutions. Although the details are trade secrets, a number of companies and organizations are working hard of very interesting stirling engine designs that will be out in time for the fossil fuel crash in 2016.

7. The real answer to full time power is biodigesters. Germany gets more power from these than from solar....


Fof those of you that have a positive outlook, the problem isn't a technical one. My company produces power at a levellized cost of .06 cents per kWH, and we have a new tech all drawn up that is a concentrating, co-generation system using all simple parts and processes that is coming in a 0.03 cents per kWH.

The issue remains a political and emotional one. It is clear that the people will not support a real move over to solart till the reality of fossil fuel depletion is too obvious to ignore. The reason why India and China are going great guns in solar is this:\

Here is the annual amount of oil available for export from 2005 to 2011:
2005. 2006. 2007. 2008. 2009. 2010. 2011.
47398 47405 46860 47070 44960 45355 45965

So the amount of oil that has been available for export has declined steadily from 2005 to 2011 from 47,398 million barrels per day to 45,965 milllion barrels per day.

The US has only seem a small effect of retail prices of gas and diesel because your economy has crashed, due to the small increase in fuel prices that you have seen, and total consumption of gas and diesel is down almost 2 million barrels a day.

Anyone who looks at the production figures, well drilling numbers, and costs of fracking can see that although fracking is here to stay, despite is horrible environmental costs, total US production will resume its relentless decline in about four years.

reply to post by Melyanna


Very informative.
Thank-you much for adding to this thread.

Originally posted by SirMike
reply to post by lordtyp0

 

Solar is the perfect answer unless you want to run your refrigerator when the sun goes own.

Oh dear...looks as though someone might have invested in the wrong multi-national...eh Mike?

You've heard of the new Graphene 'Super-duper Capacitors' i suppose?

No?

A quick search will show you a thread all about them on this board. (you could even make one for yourself with a HB pencil and a Lightscribe DVD writer...if you liked)

Well, those expensive storage solutions you mention, will be a thing of the past...as i predict these new, cheap, energy dense and ultra lightweight storage solutions and products should start rolling off the manufacturing lines quite soon...i wouldn't be surprised to find them available sometime around 2014-2015 ish...fancy that, it may even be almost the same time frame as a self sustaining Solar economy is predicted to be...i'd start thinking about moving your investments mate.

reply to post by MysterX


To add to your post: Graphene Super Capacitors. Combine these with solar or wind and wow.

reply to post by MysterX


It adds capital which increase price which makes it uncompetitive. It aint rocket science.