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Gudivada04
Celebrity Bewarse
Username: Gudivada04
Post Number: 8347
Registered: 09-2004
Posted From: 66.244.207.150
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, May 17, 2010 - 2:01 pm: |
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Don:inta unda rao garu..
Yes. at present Solar OEMs are doing well due to govt subsidies. I doubt this will last too long as people are already realizing the impacts through the power bills. Solar plants are not competitive on a plain level field compared to other fuels. Wind is getting better with bigger turbines and better technology. Solar tech is also developing faster and probably it will take 10 yrs before it becomes competitive. |
Don
Bewarse Legend
Username: Don
Post Number: 11414
Registered: 12-2004
Posted From: 12.46.64.18
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, May 17, 2010 - 1:55 pm: |
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inta unda rao garu..
aithe my thinking was wrong. nenu everytime gas prices increase, there will be some support for solar companies and short term ki their value goes up anukunna..
and last year gas prices periginappudu chaala solar stocks value perigindi..
eventually gas prices padipoyinappudu solar stocks also fell down idi coincidence ayyundochu..
and overall economy kooda down ayyindi ade time lo..
it makes sense now. chaala blind sighted logic aithe naadi. ippudu ardamayyindi.
President, BPFA 
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Gudivada04
Celebrity Bewarse
Username: Gudivada04
Post Number: 8345
Registered: 09-2004
Posted From: 66.244.207.150
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, May 17, 2010 - 1:44 pm: |
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Solar power plants and the correlation between Solar OEMs and Nat gas prices:
I will try to give you a brief synopsis here.
Power Industry works on two different (mainly) markets. 1) PPA (power purchase agreement) based market 2) Marchant power market. Depending on the specific region, utilities follow either PPA based or combination of PPA and Marchant power.
PPAs are normally longterm contracts with 20yr term for fixed price adjusted to some escalation. Marchant power is like spot price for the power and varies based on the region.
Normal range for power prices in PPAs are about 6 cents a kWh for Coal/Hydro/Nuclear. It's about 11 cents for Wind. 10 cents for Geo-thermal. For Solar it is anywhere between 25 cents to 80 cents depending on the region/technology and scale of operation. For example our company is building the biggest photovoltaic solar facility in North America. It is located near Sarnia, Ontario and it will generate 80MW at peak capacity. Ontario power authority (a govt corp)entered in to a 20 yr PPA with us at 43.5 cents per kWh. This is very generous and we gladly took it.
Solar equipment manufacturers will only benefit if the govts or utilities (owned by public/govt) enter in to such contracts and continue building these facilities. For North American market, supply of Nat Gas is not an issue and I think the price is going to stay around $4/MMBtu for at least in the next 5 years due to the glut in supply. Just to compare, Nat Gas based power plants have an availability of 96% and profitable at 6 cents per kWh where as Solar plants with roughly about 18% availability are not profitable below 40 cents per kWh.
On average people pay about 7 cents a kWh in NorthAmerica. If people see more of these "green" plants and end up paying too much power bills, there will be a big resistance in future. Also it's silly to throttle the base load (run by coal/gas/nuclear) plants in order to accomodate the unreliable Solar/Wind farms.
To conclude, the Govt subsidies will have more impact on Wind and Solar farms than Nat Gas prices.
Let me know if you have any questions. |
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