Wind and Solar Cheapest Form of New Energy Capacity Addition Globally: Study

The new best in class solar and wind plants cost half of what coal plants used to cost, including in China and India

In all the major economies around the world, wind and solar have become the cheapest source of new energy capacity addition, a study found.

The new best in class solar and wind plants cost half of what coal plants used to cost, including in China and India, the latest energy cost analysis by Bloomberg NEF has found.

Done twice every year, Bloomberg runs its Levelized Cost of Electricity (LCOE) analysis globally to assess the cost competitiveness of different technologies in power generation and storage sector.

The scope of study covers 7000 projects in 46 different countries encompassing 20 different technologies.

The analysis has found that because of policy revisions in China the utility scale PV market has shrunk by more than a third.  This development has had a ripple effect ushering a wave of cheap products globally driving down the cost of new PV down to $60 per MWh in second half of 2018, a 13% drop from the first half of this year.

“Our benchmark global levelized cost for onshore wind sits at $52 per MWh, down 6 per cent from our 1H 2018 analysis. This is on the back of cheaper turbines and a stronger U.S. dollar. Onshore wind is now as cheap as $27 per MWh in India and Texas, without subsidy,” Blomberg NEF said in a statement.

The report says that except in the US where peak capacity is handled by gas plants, the cheapest source in rest the major economies, is short-duration batteries.

With the increasing market of electric vehicles, battery cost is slated to drop another 66% by the year 2030, the report says. This will also benefit the power sector lowering the peak power cost to levels never reached before.

Source: ET