Oil Price on a Rollercoaster. Solar is on the Permanent Down Escalator…

Above, Ray Kurzweil on Solar power production doubling rate.  He may or may not be right, but some pretty smart people believe some version of what he is saying about the explosive, disruptive growth of solar.

Cleantechnica:

What a year this has turned out to be. To be honest, everyone expected solar to grow at a “good” pace. But the sector has outdone most expectations — taking the fight to the fossil camp at every possible chance.

Here’s a quick recap before we delve into the big news. The year started with Recurrent Energy signing up a deal to sell solar electricity for 5 cents/kWh in Austin, Texas, without any support from the state. Even after accounting for the federal tax credit, the actual price would have been just about 7 cents/kWh. Later this year, in just a few weeks from each other, India and then Brazil announced low-cost solar power — within a band of 8–10.3 cents/kWh. This was without any subsidy whatsoever.

See the interview here at 1:02 with Sun Run’s CEO Lynn Jurich – sustained company growth rates of 60 to 100 percent annually:

Cleantechnica again:

It’s hardly been a month since the previous announcements, so how much south would you think the solar prices would go? Well, the exact number is 5.98 cents/kWh, and the venue for this magic is Dubai. Without any “government support.”

The unsubsidised prices (that’s a plural, for there is more than one) bid in a commercial setting go on to show that the time has come for rapid expansion of solar in the Middle East.

The state utility company of Dubai, the Dubai Electricity & Water Authority (DEWA), had opened a tender for a 100 MW solar power plant for the second phase of the Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Solar Park early this year. The park is located on a patch of 40 square kilometers of land just south of Dubai. While the solar park had come alive with a 13 MW solar PV plant back in 2013, its ultimate goal is to grow up to a gigantic 1,000 MW solar park by the summer of 2017.

DEWA had called on solar project developers to submit their bids for a fixed tariff over a 25-year period under a Build-Own-Operate (BOO) model. This was a much-awaited opportunity for local players who were missing out on solar action due to delays in the mega Saudi plans to deploy solar power. Of the 24 solar developers who started, only 10 remained till the final round of the bidding.

Riyadh-based Acwa Power (owned by eight Saudi conglomerates) bid a record low tariff of just 5.98 cents/kWh. To get an idea about how aggressive this is, consider that the average of the 10 finalists’ bids was 9.35 cents/kWh, with the highest bidder being the Chinese Huaneng Power International at 14.71 cents/kWh.

In the runner-up position is a consortium of Spanish developer Fotowatio Renewables and Saudi Abdul Latif Jameel Energy, bidding at 6.13 cents/kWh. That is even lower than the previous lowest solar tariffs!