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Renewables are Disruptive to Coal and Gas

posted by martyb on Sunday May 24 2015, @08:12PM   Printer-friendly
from the price-of-sunlight-and-wind-is-pretty-constant dept.

An Anonymous Coward writes:

Over the last 5 years, the price of new wind power in the US has dropped 58% and the price of new solar power has dropped 78%. Utility-scale solar in the West and Southwest is now at times cheaper than new natural gas plants. Even after removing the federal solar Investment Tax Credit of 30%, a recent New Mexico solar deal is priced at 6 cents / kwh. By contrast, new natural gas electricity plants have costs between 6.4 to 9 cents per kwh, according to the EIA.

 
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  • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 25 2015, @09:21PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 25 2015, @09:21PM (#187737)

    > FWIW, solar cells *do* wear out. I'm not sure how long it takes,

    All modern solar panels are guaranteed to produce at least 80% of their rated capacity at 25 years of age. [energyinformative.org]
    Actual in the field results [nrel.gov] seem to be better than that.

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  • (Score: 2) by kaszz on Tuesday May 26 2015, @07:59AM

    by kaszz (4211) on Tuesday May 26 2015, @07:59AM (#187908) Journal

    According to a quick look in the above document the solar cells degrade with approximately 0.5% per year. The time in years it takes to degrade to 80% compared to when new is:
    years = log(0.80) / log(1-.005) = 44 years

    The amount of degradation at a specific year is:
    Lost capacity in part of full (1) is: 1-(1-.005)^year

    Ie after 44 years 1-pow(1-.005,44) = 0.20 of full capacity has been lost.

    And these calculations is a rule of thumb, statistics.