Record Competitive Prices For New Energy

This is how coal dies — super cheap renewables plus battery storage; New Colorado wind farms with batteries are now cheaper than running old coal plants

Joe Romm, January 10, 2018 (ThinkProgress)

“Solar, wind, and battery prices are dropping so fast that, in Colorado, building new renewable power plus battery storage is now cheaper than running old coal plants. This increasingly renders existing coal plants obsolete…Xcel Energy [just] reported dozens of shockingly low bids it had received for building new solar and wind farms, many with battery storage…The median bid price in 2017 for wind plus battery storage was $21 per megawatt-hour, which is 2.1 cents per kilowatt-hour…[which is thought] to be lower than the operating cost of all coal plants currently in Colorado…The median bid price for solar plus battery storage was $36/MWh (3.6 cents/kwh), which may be lower than about three-fourths of operating coal capacity…[T]he average U.S. residential price for electricity is 12 cents/kWh…[B]y definition, half of the bids are below the median price…[There were] 87 bids for solar plus storage…There were 96 bids for wind power alone — at a median price of 1.8 cents/kwh…What XCel Energy has shown us is that the price for battery storage is dropping so fast, adding it to a solar or wind project increases the total price only modestly. And that’s a game-changer…” click here for more

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