Antinuclear

 The coal industry laughed, suggesting such a scenario was highly unlikely. But what if technology took the decision out of the hands of politicians, as seems increasingly likely with the plunging costs of renewables, particularly solar PV, across the globe? And what does that mean also for Australia’s energy infrastructure, and the tens of billions of dollars that will be invested in the coming decade on the basis that business will continue as usual?

New forecasts from China suggest the cost of solar PV in that country will fall below that of coal-fired generation within 10 years. From that point, or even before, says Wu Dacheng, the vice chairman and secretary general of the China Photovoltaic Society, the country’s energy build out will be dominated by cheaper renewables.

China, which has only just introduced its own feed-in tariff for solar PV, is anticipating massive growth, and has already upgraded its official forecasts to 2020 from 30GW to 50GW. But it concedes that 100GW of PV is possible and may even be overshot. Wu himself said earlier this year that China would reach 5GW in capacity by 2015, but it is now likely to reach that in 2012.

As one analyst noted, FiTs are not necessarily the cheapest form of incentive, but they are devastatingly effective in unleashing the forces of greed and pushing down costs. And the Chinese are not fettered by established industry vested interests. In China, the government is the vested interest, and they have already been ruthless in their closure of inefficient power stations.

Wu told Climate Spectator in Sydney on Wednesday that solar PV is already cheaper than peaking prices in some areas of China, and will match parity with commercial and industrial supply in 2014, will reach retail parity in 2018 (households pay less for electricity in China than industrial users), and match wholesale price parity by 2021, when prices will be around 0.6 yuan/kWh.

His forecasts were reinforced by Martin Green, the executive research director of the world-leading Photovoltaic Centre of Excellence at UNSW, who says solar PV is likely to fall below the cost of coal in Australia (wholesale grid parity) before the end of the decade. He points out that most studies, and much of government modeling, are based around solar PV having a cost of $3.50 a watt. He says it is already down to just over $1/watt and will likely halve again to 50c/watt by 2020…..

Mills last year released the first version of his ground-breaking research that showed that the entire US grid could be powered by just wind and solar thermal, and he provided an update on that research at the Solar 2011 conference on Wednesday. Mills challenges the very concept of baseload power, the sort provided by coal and nuclear.

“People say we need baseload plans, but we don’t,” he says. Instead, grids can work perfectly well with a mixture of inflexible supply (wind that blows whenever it wants), and flexible supply (solar thermal with storage). Mills has yet to release the financial modelling for his scenario, but notes that wind is already cheaper than new-built coal in the US, and solar thermal with storage, and used as a peaking plant, will be competitive with peaking gas.

Mills did not factor in PV in his scenario, but it would have the same impact as wind. As wind and PV fills up the energy stack (they go first because they have the lowest short run marginal cost – wind and solar radiation is free), what is needed to complete the requirements is flexible generation. Coal doesn’t fit the bill.

The first impacts of this have already been seen in South Australia, where wind has provided more than 20 per cent of annual output last year and much higher on occasions….

John Grimes, the head of Australian Solar Energy Society, agrees. “The public has a perception that that solar is expensive, that it has failed,” he says. But there is in fact a seismic shift happening globally and it is all about China, which has flicked the switch on domestic consumption.

“This presents threats and opportunities. Threats are what we need to manage, but we should be pursing the opportunities.” Grimes says Australia should be pursuing a more strategic partnerships with China – like that between UNSW and Suntech, the world’s biggest solar PV maker. “Australia can leverage off the enormous manufacturing juggernaut that is China and generate maximum benefit to the economy.”….

http://www.climatespectator.com.au/commentary/why-we-dont-need-coal