l'Actualité du Solaire

Renewable energies now threaten natural gas. This is what came out of the Global Power & Energy trade fair in Barcelona (Spain). The decrease in the price of storage is combined with the drop in the price of wind or solar kWh.

Storage: The United States are

the world leader in operational capacity. Global capacity reaches 6 GWh worldwide. Wood Mackenzie forecasts a more than tenfold increase, reaching at least 65 gigawatt hours by 2022.

The United States is probably five years ahead of the rest of the world. It has invested earlier in energy storage. China and Europe are starting to install storage.

This is combined with the falling price of the installed solar kWh. Records for the lowest prices have been broken seven times since the beginning of 2016. The cost of solar energy is now cheaper than the cost of a kWh from coal and gas in Chile, Mexico and parts of the Middle East.

Solar is also competitive with gas in the United States, where solar is back to $0.037/kWh in 2016. Since then, prices have fallen further with the sharp decline in panel prices. They have reportedly fallen by 30% since China changed its policy. Added to this is the low cost of capital due to almost insignificant interest rates. The risk on the installations is very low, making it possible to borrow a lot, which makes it possible to reduce prices and attract investors.

Only wind energy is not separable from its installation whereas gas is. Hence the interest of storage.

This will develop, especially as the addition of storage does not seem to increase the cost of electricity supply contracts: in May 2017, Tucson Electric Power signed a solar+storage purchase contract with NextEra at a price of only $0.045/kWh. This installation will replace a state-of-the-art gas-fired power plant. Recently, Xcel Energy obtained proposals for storage at an average price of $0.036 / kWh. The cost of storage is expected to decline at a rate of 5% to 8% for any doubling of the facilities.

GreenTech Media of September 20