Side-note: a barrel of oil gives a fixed amount of gasoline and diesel fuel, and that's hard to change [1]. A given refinery could slightly change the amounts, but not much, and that's billions in investments. Even if you replaced diesel vehicles by electric ones, the diesel fuel will be burned somewhere else.
"the skin of the aircraft (probably made of titanium) gets as hot as 12,000 degrees F during flight because of air friction."
First, there's no material on earth that could sustain that kind of heat. Titanium has a melting point at 3,000 degrees F. Tungsten about 6,000 degrees F. Other composites, maybe a bit more. But nothing at 12,000 degrees F.
Second, the only plane that somehow had regular service at that kind of speeds was the SR-71. It was indeed made of titanium. The front of the plane had to sustain a temperature of over 600 degrees F, and it was only for short periods of time. Nothing close to 12,000 degrees F and was already a feat.
Third, titanium is extremely hard to work with. Ask the SR-71 guys. Tools had to be made especially to build that plane, for hundreds times more than regular tools. They break down often and you need to replace them. Nothing to sustain a production line.
In case you're interested, this[1] document is of great interest if you wish to understand how these offshore turbines perform empirically. I'll give you a hint: not very good. Any piece of machinery exposed to sea salt doesn't last long. Also maintenance will be a big problem: just think one second the kind of undertaking needed to send a team of technicians to repair only one of these turbines. Let's not talk about replacing any large piece.
Even if you had the computing power AND if you were simulating your fusion reactor's plasma in realtime, while it's running AND you know/can predict the plasma instabilities in realtime (under a few ms), you still need a way to "counter" those instabilites in the said plasma. And you need to counter fast, before the instability "poisons" the entire plasma, something that should happen within a few ms. If you don't, your entire experiment stops, and it takes a while to get it back (minutes). Currently: 1. nobody really understands the instabilities, why and when they happen; 2. there's no way to 'counter' them. So it's not only about the computing power.
Topaz is of the same magnitude as this Tamil Nadu plant, in terms of "rated power". However, many people seem to miss that "rated power" does not equal "actual output". Please see capacity factor [1].
For a solar plant like this one, the capacity is about at ~25%. If it was 100%, for a 650MW plant, you would get 650 * 365 * 24 = 5694 TWh / year. In practice, you will get 5694 * .25 = 1423 TWh / year.
If this was a nuclear plant, you would get 5694 * .90 = 5124 TWh / year. Continously, day and night. Without back-end storage required. Big difference.
Nothing happens at night, there's no electricity output. You need some kind of storage on the back-end if you want to store the day's surplus electricity. Molten salt or hydro work well and can store the electricity, in order to distribute it at night time.
But in practice, this is mitigated by the actual power grid, another plant(s) somewhere else would take over at night. On a coal plant it is harder to adjust the load factor on the fly, it is not instantaneous. On a gas plant or a hydro dam, it is a matter of minutes, the turbines can start very quickly. That's why usually when such utility-scale renewable plants are installed, they need to be paired with another load-following plant, such as gas. Nevertheless, a renewable+gas/coal plant means less CO2 emissions, so I guess it's a good thing.
Not exactly, you can't do that kind of calculation. Solar panels work only in full sunlight, and only during the day. When there's cloud coverage, the electricity production goes down drastically. I was giving Topaz solar farm in California as a reference, because it's a solar plant of the same magnitude, in about the same sunlight conditions as India. There's about 3 years of track record for Topaz, and so far its best year (2015), it generated 1.3 TWh/year. We're far from the 5.67 TWh/year that you mention. The best upper limit (theoretical) in a solar farm is about 7 hours of sunlight/day, but that's just the theory. In practice it's always lower.
While I agree - people from western world live way over what is needed - there's an issue with demography also in Asia. Kaya's identity [1] shows that the factor P, global population, is by far the most important. Control demography, you will raise the Quality of Life. At least while we have high EROI energy sources (like fossil fuels); without high EROI energy, demography will become (again) a dominant energy source.
While by no means I mean to minimize this announcement, if the press was publishing an article every time a Coal plant opens in India, we would have an article every few days or so on HN.
Just to put things into perspective:
- A plant like Topaz, California generates ~1100 GWh/year. [3]
- "India was the third top electricity producer in the world 1272 TWh in FY 20014-15" [1]
- "India was the third top coal producer in 2015 with 283.9 Mtoe (7.4% global share)." [1]
- "Nearly 80% of total electricity generated (utility and captive) in India is from coal." [1]
So we're about at 3 orders or magnitude, in terms of generated electricity, between what you currently get from coal plants and this new Tamil Nadu plant. While the penetration rate of renewables is faster than coal [2], the same thing cannot be said of generated capacity. Globally an unit of power from renewables has a far lower EROI compared to Coal [4].
So I support what kumarski said below, this is much of a hype. If India wants to be serious about climate change, they should at least stop building Coal plants.
The issue is that craftmanship means time & experience (experience like tens of years). Think compagnons. This is fading away since the end of WWII, and especially since all manufacturing was moved to Asia. There are still a few artisans standing, but it's expensive work and they are hard to find.
Check This Old House (both the magazine and the PBS episodes). It's a pretty good starting point.