@SECI_Ltd in India launched a tender for "Round-the-clock" renewables. The winning bid from @ReNew_Power was very low - adjusting for escalation, the bid comes out to about $0.048/kWh, or about ~1.5x-2x average U.S. wholesale power prices. How should we interpret this? 1/ https://twitter.com/sumant_sinha/status/1258758484989886465

Bottom line, it means that renewables + storage are really cheap! But it doesn't mean you can get 100% reliable, 24/7 renewables + storage for <$0.05/kWh. Not yet at least.

It DOES mean you can get renewables for roughly 80% of the time for <$0.05/kWh! 2/

I couldn't find any details on the contents of ReNew's bid, but in my mind, the importance of this bid comes down to the definition of round-the-clock (RTC). If RTC means 100% availability, this would truly be amazing - 100% firm zero carbon power for only a few cents per kWh? 3/

The original tender document doens't provide that much detail. It basically says that SECI wants 100% availability during "supply hours," but insinuates that taking the plant down for maintenance is OK. https://bit.ly/rtc2Tender  4/

However, if you dig into the project addenda ( https://bit.ly/rtc1addenda ), SECI appears to change the RTC definition to mean 80% availability (i.e. a total plant capacity factor of 80%, measured against the contracted capacity). At 80% CF, the bids make much more sense... 5/

I pulled solar and wind profiles from India using http://Renewables.ninja  (thanks @iain_staffell & @stefpf!), and built a SUPER simplified hybrid wind-solar LCOE calculator ( https://bit.ly/rtcLCOEcalc ). I found you can easly get ~$0.05/kWh power, even without storage, at 80% CF. 6/

If you want 99% availability, the cost increases by ~40%. I was only examining 1 yr. & didn't including storage (an obvious shortcoming in my very simple calculations). Previous research shows that if you want 99% availability over multiple years, costs increase meaningfully. 7/

Long story short, these SECI bid numbers make sense if you want "round-the-clock" power 80% of the time. My calcs are based on incomplete info, so if I've missed something, please let me know!
cc @apoorv_bh89 @brendanpierpont 8/

PS to get to low cost, truly firm "round the clock" power, you need something like what @FormEnergyInc is building ;) 9/9