Price Is No Longer an Obstacle to Clean Power

[abu afak]

Cheapest source of Fossil Fuel Generation is Double the Cost of Utility-scale Solar​

Solar levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) has fallen to $29 to $92 per MWh, said a report from Lazard.
June 11, 2024

Lazard released its annual report analyzing levelized cost of electricity (LCOE), a critical measure of cost-efficiency of generation sources across technology types. The report found that onshore wind and utility-scale solar have the lowest LCOE by a large margin.

LCOE measures lifetime costs divided by energy production and calculates the present value of the total cost of building and operating a power plant over an assumed lifetime.

“Despite high end LCOE declines for selected renewable energy technologies, the low ends of our LCOE have increased for the first time ever, driven by the persistence of certain cost pressures (e.g., high interest rates, etc.),” said Lazard. “These two phenomena result in tighter LCOE ranges (offsetting the significant range expansion observed last year) and relatively stable LCOE averages year-over-year.”

Onshore wind ranked as the lowest source of new-build electricity generation, ranging from $27 to $73 per MWh. Utility-scale solar was a close second, ranging $29 to $92 per MWh.

Utility-scale solar has had the most aggressive cost reduction curve of all technologies, falling about 83% since 2009, when new build solar generation had an LCOE of over $350 per MWh.
[.......]

Cheapest source of fossil fuel generation is double the cost of utility-scale solar

Solar levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) has fallen to $29 to $92 per MWh, said a report from Lazard.

pv-magazine-usa.com

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[abu afak]

How cheap solar power will change the world​

Our podcast on science and technology. Why the exponential growth of solar power will transform everything​

Jun 26th 2024 - The Economist

Solar power is the world’s fastest-growing source of energy. It currently provides 6% of the world’s electricity but, by the mid-2030s, solar cells will probably be the planet’s single biggest source of electricity. A decade later they may be the world’s largest source of energy.

Access to this cheap, abundant power will make nearly everything else cheaper, too.
How did solar energy get to this point and what will its rise mean for the future of the world? Plus, where does solar power technology go next—could unlimited energy from the Sun be collected from space?
[......

How cheap solar power will change the world

Our podcast on science and technology. Why the exponential growth of solar power will transform everything

www.economist.com

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[justoffal]

I smell a shameless bullshitter. No one's charged anything per kilowatt.

Well actually yes they are. The kilowatt hour is based on the kilowatt...both are volumetric.... Sooooo.....where are the lower rates? So far energy bills are way up this year.

 

[abu afak]

Price Is No Longer an Obstacle to Clean Power
Peter R. Orszag
Bloomberg
September 22, 2020

Price Is No Longer an Obstacle to Clean Power

(Bloomberg Opinion) -- As the harm from climate change becomes increasingly manifest, there is some good news: The estimated cost of reducing carbon emissions is falling rapidly. One dramatic example is an analysis by Geoffrey Heal of Columbia University showing that it would cost only $6...

ca.finance.yahoo.com

"...Geoffrey Heal of Columbia University showing that it would cost only $6 billion a year for the U.S. to move to carbon-free electricity generation by 2050.​

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Even if the precise numbers are off, Heal is right to emphasize that the transition to cleaner energy is much less costly today than it used to be. Three forces are changing the math.​

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First, renewable power costs are dropping so fast, both utility-scale solar and onshore wind power have become cheaper than natural gas or coal power, as Lazard’s levelized-cost-of-energy estimates from 2019 show. As I wrote when these numbers came out, multiple forces have driven costs down, including ongoing improvements in technology and lower capital costs. (In November, Lazard will have updated estimates of the cost of various energy technologies.)​

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Second, the cost of storing renewable energy is also falling. The challenge with wind and solar energy is that they are intermittent, so they require either supplemental conventional power, such as combined-cycle natural gas, or enough storage to smooth the variation relative to demand. As storage becomes more affordable than supplementation, the share of energy production based solely on renewable power can expand.​

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Third, and crucially, many power plants are nearing the end of their useful lives and need to be replaced one way or another. That means the cost of building new facilities is a given, and shouldn’t be counted as a cost of the transition to lower-carbon electricity. ...​

[......]​

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Nope.... Show the numbers.
Cost of equipment, construction, connection, The fact that you need three times the megawatt capacity of renewable to match the megawatt capacity of conventional....

Show the numbers ...

You won't because you can't...

It's not cheaper. Stop lying to people.
Now if you want to say you think it's a better source of power and a cleaner source Go right ahead make that claim.
Stop trying to tell people it doesn't cost as much because that's a lie.

 

[Grumblenuts]

Well actually yes they are. The kilowatt hour is based on the kilowatt...both are volumetric.... Sooooo.....where are the lower rates? So far energy bills are way up this year.

Not mine and when you can put time in a bottle.. or volumetric flask.. then talk.

 

[justoffal]

Not mine and when you can put time in a bottle.. or volumetric flask.. then talk.

I've never seen a bill for kilowatts only for kilowatt hours. Of course kilowatt is an amount of joules per second.... So even though it's a rate it's still volumetric.

 

[jc456]

Not mine and when you can put time in a bottle.. or volumetric flask.. then talk.

Where are yours?

 

[San Souci]

Yet, green cIean renewable energy costs the consumers 3×s as much per kilowatt.

I detect another lie.

And supplies very little.