EGEB: India offers subsidy support for solar manufacturing, China launches carbon tax market, more

Electrek Green Energy Brief: A daily technical, financial, and political review/analysis of important green energy news. Featured Image Source.

India proposes US$1.7 billion support for local solar manufacturers and 12GW CPSU scheme – Also contains a neat visual on showing how they are, roughly, looking at each stage of the manufacturing process for development. The incentive is a 30% ‘subsidy’ – and different amounts of it are available at different levels of solar panel manufacturing process. Seems like a smart way to get solar panels into a country – instead of, say, taxing every person who wants to install their own systems.

The complete guide to the world’s largest carbon market that just launched in China – Two things, 1. It’s been hard going so far, and includes only the power sector. 2. Price per ton of CO2 is about $7/ton today and is expected to rise to about $45/ton by 2020. Roughly that means adding 0.4¢/kWh for burning gas today and 2.7¢/kWh when the price rises to $45/and higher. For coal that means 0.7¢/kWh today and 4.5¢/kWh then. We’ll pay the tax, we’ll burn our pollution, we’ve got the money. This will shift pricing though. Cheating will occur.

‘Flow is less bankable than Li-ion – but that will change’ – The only hard number given in the article is that right now, per GTM, the US market is 95% lithium-ion, 0.5% lead acid and the rest flow batteries, nothing on pricing. Just yesterday Redlow, the only company that is on my radar making residential flow batteries, announced components being manufactured in their Thai factory. There’s going to be a lot of batteries in the world, so it seems like flow batteries will have a place. However, there’s a lot of competition from lithium ion being in cars and manufactured so heavily.

Alberta blows past competition to claim cheapest wind energy rate – The first round whittled down the results from 29 different renewable projects that had advanced to the bidding stage. The contribution of these projects will boost Alberta’s wind generation capacity by 40 per cent and boost its renewables by 20 per cent. The government had prepared for the costs to come in at around 8 cents per kilowatt-hour and had expected 400 MW of generation. But because the auction was so competitive, and because interest in Alberta was so high, we were able to get 600 MW” – at a 20 year average price of 3.7¢/kWh. The price was less than half of the prior average of 8.5¢/kWh. We’re probably in a phase where countries doing their natural energy bidding, versus bidding prompted by incentives and requirements, will start to integrate big chunks of wind and solar. And in many cases these sources will be the cheapest.

Presenting the ALLMAX M PLUS-DD05A.05(II) – and presenting it because the back of the solar panel is black. Never saw a black backsheet on a panel before. I’m guessing price is strong as production volume is lower. One of our readers educated me on its existence after reading about the Neon R Black and wondering about its backsheet.

Featured image is from the Department of Energy SunShot program. This picture shows a solar farm in Uxbridge, MA. It is composed of two separate arrays totaling 3.9 MW DC. Photo by Lucas Faria.

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