Bhadla Solar Park

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A very large photovoltaic complex in Bhadla, Jodhpur district, Rajasthan, in the Thar desert of north-western India, developed in four phases from the mid-2010s to a total capacity of roughly two and a quarter gigawatts. It is included in this Journey as a physical illustration of what "resource quality determines where the transition is cheap" means. Bhadla receives among the highest solar irradiance in India on largely unproductive, sparsely inhabited desert land, and the tariffs bid into Indian solar auctions during its build-out were among the lowest recorded anywhere at the time. The same site demonstrates the limits: desert dust makes soiling losses material and cleaning a real operating cost in a water-scarce district, ambient temperatures above forty degrees Celsius reduce module output because silicon cell voltage falls as temperature rises, and the park's output must be evacuated hundreds of kilometres to load centres over transmission that had to be built for it. Cheap generation and delivered energy are different quantities, and the distance between them is visible here.