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Comment by bandergirl | Hacker News Reader

₱200B is 11.7 billion USD. That’s an insane investment in the Philippines, which has a GDP only 35 times bigger.

200B philippine peso is, thank God, 3.58B USD, not 11.7. Looks dirt cheap for 3.5GW and a lot of storage too.

$1k USD and you get 1KW of solar and storage. I don't know how this compares to alternative grid-scale solutions over a ~15-25 year lifetime but that's ballpark how much you'd pay for retail solar without the storage.

1kwp panels cost <200 USD at the moment.

So $1k total including installation labour and maintenance seems reasonable

Sure, but it’s not like they mount themselves on a frame, or wire themselves in.

On the other hand, still much cheaper both to build and operate than the equivalent in conventional power plants. But I do wonder where all that money is coming from. Foreign investors?

Seems it was funded by the IPO of "SP New energy Corp"

> Funded by proceeds from its P2.7-billion initial public offering, the first 50 megawatts are targeted to start delivering power to the grid by the end of 2022, driving profitability for the firm - https://www.gmanetwork.com/news/money/companies/815990/spnec...

> Mr Leandro Leviste, 28, will seek to raise as much as 2.7 billion pesos (S$74 million) by selling shares in Solar Philippines Nueva Ecija, a unit of his Solar Philippines Power Project Holdings. The funds will go towards constructing the first phase of a 500MW plant in a province about 130km north of Manila - https://www.straitstimes.com/business/economy/a-28-year-old-...

Interesting enough, seems the founder initially got the funds by selling their Tesla and SolarCity shares:

> Mr Leviste founded Solar Philippines in 2013 after selling the shares in Tesla Motors and SolarCity he bought while attending Yale University in the United States - https://www.straitstimes.com/business/economy/a-28-year-old-...

SPNEC is owned (bought it from Leviste) by MVP which also owned several digital, electric, mining, hospital companies here. Totally rich nonetheless.

Yeah, I imagined. Also guessing Leandro Leviste had help to acquire their shares in the first place, as it's not super common for people to have funds available for stocks when they join university, unless someone help them afford it.

He’s the son of one of the largest political clans here too. If you know what I mean.

From Batangas right?

I believe so.

That accounts for 2.7 billion pesos - a good start but hardly a dent in the 200 billion figure.

Wow. 1/20th of their grid volume.

I suppose the cost per kw/h really hit a tipping point for them.

That, plus they don't have energy sovereignty. Similar to China, they want energy sovereignty and want to derisk from global political instability. So they're turning to renewables. It's smart. The cost curve pushed the decision over the edge.

Also being near the equator, the sun is stable. Countries like Denmark who are far from the equator will probably keep pursuing wind more aggressively than solar, unless the solar cost curve continues down.

This is correct. I am from the Philippines, we have only two types of seasons, sunny and rainy.

But we also have several wind farms operating since early 2000s.

> I am from the Philippines, we have only two types of seasons, sunny and rainy.

There's a buried third in there: "typhoon season"[1].

I do wonder how they intend to both lean into and protect such a massive, fragile investment when all it'll take is the debris from a single tropical storm to wreck some serious infrastructure carnage, let alone a full-blown super typhoon.

[1] https://www.pagasa.dost.gov.ph/climate/tropical-cyclone-info...

PV panels will be protected the same way as buildings. Not much difference there. If you can build a house, you can build a PV-farm.

Im not aware of any houses with flat structures sticking over the roof being successfully protected from hurricanes.

Both are popular in Denmark. Denmark has about 3.5GW of solar, mostly on people's houses. So, about the same as this project is installing. Of course the grid is dominated by wind power. Especially offshore wind.

Being further north makes a little bit of difference but not as much as people think. Winters are darker, obviously. So, that means solar isn't great then. But summers have much more daylight. Those long summer days are awesome for solar energy. From early morning until late at night basically. And obviously, Danish consumers like cutting a bit off their electricity bills just like people elsewhere.

Another issue is the angle of the sun. The light loses some energy having to pass through more of our atmosphere compared to blasting straight down at the equator. But otherwise, the difference in distance to the sun is negligible.

And of course heat pumps are pretty popular in Denmark as well. As are EVs. People that have those, would benefit a lot from solar panels.

Is there seasonal storage in Denmark, so excess solar in summer can be used in the winter?

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