Tag Archives: reippp

Solar vs Coal – the Math

Solar, solar solar.

If Solar doesn’t work for most of the evening, how can it compete?
Wouldn’t we be better off with Coal? Isn’t coal better for generation – you know, its baseload!

Yes, its another post based of an answer to something asked on MyBB!

At first glance, you’d think so, however the math tells a different story.

As I like to do in my posts, I’ll first go over some basics

Solar PV farms are built to supply electricity at a certain price. This price per kW.h is usually awarded with an REIPP auction where vendors bid to supply a given amount of electricity – typically 100MW or less at a certain price.
The price paid is then guaranteed by the government for every kW.h supplied for a 20 year contract, typically with small escalations per year.

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