The Revolution is Now

Denial can’t stop it. Obstruction can only slow it a bit. Lies can’t keep the truth from bubbling out.

Renewables aren’t knocking, they’re kicking in the doors.

Cleantechnica:

NV Energy, a Berkshire Hathaway-owned utility company, has signed a PPA to purchase electricity from the 100 MW Playa Solar 2 power plant at a stunningly low price of $0.0387/kWh!

CleanTechnica just reported on “the world’s cheapest solar” landing in Austin, Texas, with bids under 4 cents/kWh (and the assumed unsubsidized price of solar thus being below 5.71 cents/kWh), and that was incredible news, but it looks like that staggering news wasn’t even the highlight of the month!

Note that 3.87 cents/kWh is approximately 68% cheaper than the national average electricity price. I’s also well below the low levelized cost of electricity of coal, natural gas, or nuclear, according to Lazard. The only electricity generation option that can compete with that is wind energy. Furthermore, it’s much lower than the low of 6 cents/kWh that Lazard was predicting for solar in 2017, even if you add in the expected federal subsidy boost (which brings the price up to 5.53 cents/kWh).

Guardian:

So much power was produced by Denmark’s windfarms on Thursday that the country was able to meet its domestic electricity demand and export power to Norway, Germany and Sweden.

On an unusually windy day, Denmark found itself producing 116% of its national electricity needs from wind turbines yesterday evening. By 3am on Friday, when electricity demand dropped, that figure had risen to 140%.

Interconnectors allowed 80% of the power surplus to be shared equally between Germany and Norway, which can store it in hydropower systems for use later. Sweden took the remaining fifth of excess power.

“It shows that a world powered 100% by renewable energy is no fantasy,” said Oliver Joy, a spokesman for trade body the European Wind Energy Association. “Wind energy and renewables can be a solution to decarbonisation – and also security of supply at times of high demand.”

Woods McKenzie Consulting:

Since the late 2000s, a widespread collapse in the price of solar modules has altered the economics of solar energy, putting it in a strong position to compete with other forms of power in the United States.

With module costs at historic lows, increased efficiency has become the next frontier. Consequently, while higher efficiency solar technology may command a greater module price, capacity gains per square meter can make them more economic on a $/W basis.

With that said, savings will also be driven by changes outside of manufacturing. Non-module costs will increasingly depend on heightened downstream competition, market structuring and regulatory redesign.

As a result, large scale solar economics have already reached grid parity (exluding integration costs) – the point at which the levelised cost of solar is less than a gas combined cycle or combustion turbine – across multiple regions in the US.
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During our analysis, we identified many evolutionary parallels to shale and believe that solar has the potential to make the same scale of impact across markets.