A worker sprays water at India’s first 1 megawatt canal-top solar power plant.
Credit: phys.org
The price of solar power in India fell at a faster-than-expected rate this year. Now, some experts suggest that by 2020, renewable energy in Asia’s third-largest economy may become up to 10% cheaper than coal power.
Earlier this month, the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy awarded a tender for a 500-megawatt solar park in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh to US-based SunEdison at Rs4.63 a unit—the lowest rate so far in the country.
“Today, in India, solar prices are within 15% of the coal power prices on a levelised basis. While this may not fully capture costs such as grid integration costs for solar, our analysis suggest that even after considering the same, solar prices would be competitive with coal,” market research firm KPMG said in a recent report titled “The Rising Sun” (pdf).
The chart below shows the levelized cost of energy on […]
