{"id":7331,"date":"2014-01-04T08:00:36","date_gmt":"2014-01-04T13:00:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/?p=7331"},"modified":"2014-01-03T12:30:50","modified_gmt":"2014-01-03T17:30:50","slug":"solar-is-now-competitive-with-natural-gas-crossborder-energy-study","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2014\/01\/solar-is-now-competitive-with-natural-gas-crossborder-energy-study.html","title":{"rendered":"Solar is now competitive with … natural gas –Crossborder Energy study"},"content":{"rendered":"

\r\nColorado, California, North Carolina: when will Georgia catch up in solar power?\r\nWhat will it take to get the Georgia legislature to realize all Georgians\r\nwill benefit economically from much<\/em> more solar power than\r\n\r\nGA PSC in July required Georgia Power to buy<\/a>?\r\nAnd why should we permit\r\n\r\na methane gas pipeline to gash through Georgia<\/a>\r\nto profit executives in Houston and Juno Beach, Florida\r\nwhen we could be deploying solar everywhere in Georgia\r\nfor\r\n\r\nlocal jobs, profit, lower electric bills, and clean air and water<\/a>?\r\n

\r\nHere’s \r\nthe study<\/a>\r\nthat showed solar benefits outweigh costs in North Carolina,\r\n\r\nThe Benefits and Costs\r\nof Solar Generation\r\nfor Electric Ratepayers\r\nin North Carolina<\/a>,\r\nby R. Thomas Beach and\r\nPatrick G. McGuire for Crossborder Energy, 18 October 2013.\r\n

\r\n

\r\nWholesale solar PPA prices provide perhaps the most dramatic\r\nevidence of the continued decline in solar PV costs. Solar PPA\r\nprices have fallen dramatically over the past several years, to the\r\npoint that, in some regions of the U.S., solar is now competitive\r\nwith other generation resources, including wind and natural gas.\r\nXcel Energy in Colorado recently announced that it is proposing to\r\nadd 170 MW of utility-scale solar to its system, with its CEO\r\nstating “[f]or the first time ever, we are adding cost\r\ncompetitive utility scale solar to the system.”33<\/sup><\/small>\r\nThe\r\nCalifornia electric utilities make public each year the average PPA\r\nprices for renewable contracts approved by the CPUC in the prior\r\nyear. Figure 3<\/strong> shows the trend in the prices for their solar PV\r\nPPAs; CPUC contract approval can occur up to a year or more after\r\nbids are received, so the figure is indicative of prices through\r\nroughly 2011.34<\/sup><\/small>\r\n2012 solicitations for solar PPAs in California in\r\nthe 3 MW to 20 MW size range through the Renewable Auction Mechanism\r\n(RAM) have yielded market-clearing prices in the\r\n8 to 9 cents\r\nper\r\nkWh range.3<\/sup><\/small>\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\n

\r\nThe Lawrence Berkeley National Lab (LBNL) conducts and publishes\r\nregular national surveys of the installed costs of solar PV; these\r\nsurveys include PPA prices for utility-scale solar projects. LBNL\r\nrecently released its most recent survey of wholesale, utility-scale\r\nsolar PPA prices, including data to September 2013.36<\/sup><\/small>\r\nLBNL samples\r\nthe prices only for utility-scale solar PV projects that sell both\r\nelectricity and RECs in the wholesale power market through a\r\nlong-term PPA that includes the “bundled” sale of both\r\npower and RECs.37<\/sup><\/small>\r\nFigure 4<\/strong>\r\nillustrates the trend in utility-scale,\r\nwholesale solar PPA prices.38 Based on the 2012-2013 data,\r\nutility-scale solar PPAs now appear to be in the range of $55 to $75\r\nper MWh. The data for PPAs from 2012 and 2013 are for projects that\r\nare not yet on-line, and thus remain subject to some uncertainty\r\nover contract performance. However, LBNL’s PPA data from earlier\r\nyears is based on projects which in general are now on-line, which\r\nsubstantiates the trend of rapidly dropping PPA prices and provides\r\nconfidence that most of the reported 2012-2013 PPA prices will\r\nresult in successful projects.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\nHow about some more successful solar projects in Georgia?\r\n

\r\n -jsq\r\n<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Colorado, California, North Carolina: when will Georgia catch up in solar power? What will it take to get the Georgia legislature to realize all Georgians will benefit economically from much more solar power than GA PSC in July required Georgia Power to buy? And why should we permit a methane gas pipeline to gash through […]","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[14,6124,6687,21,22,23,24,36],"tags":[339,1994,7368,8704,8701,8702,7369,7370,12,7,562,158,1026,1035,1036,1131,8713,8714,6,8716,6820],"class_list":["post-7331","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economy","category-natural-gas-2","category-pipeline-2","category-planning","category-politics","category-renewable-energy","category-solar","category-wind","tag-california","tag-colorado","tag-crossborder-energy","tag-economy","tag-georgia","tag-lake","tag-lawrence-berkeley-national-lab","tag-lbnl","tag-lowndes-area-knowledge-exchange","tag-lowndes-county","tag-natural-gas","tag-north-carolina","tag-photovoltaic","tag-power-purchase-agreement","tag-ppa","tag-pv","tag-renewable-energy","tag-solar","tag-valdosta","tag-wind","tag-xcel"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p585fK-1Uf","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7331","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7331"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7331\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7333,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7331\/revisions\/7333"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7331"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7331"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7331"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}