Solar energy prices: Low and going lower

Submitted by Pramod Jain on Sat, 08/27/2016 - 12:44

I wrote about the falling price of wind energy, see https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/article/cost-wind-energy-low-going-lower-pramod-jain/edit.  

Here are amazingly low prices of solar PV (http://www.ecowatch.com/solar-price-chile-1982242311.html):

  1. Chile awarded a contract for 2.91 c/kWh for a 12 MW solar plant in the Atacama desert
  2. Dubai awarded a contract in May 2016 for 2.99 c/kWh for an 800 MW solar plant

An update on wind prices, the 2015 Wind Technologies Market Report from LBNL reports that wind PPA in interior of the US dropped to around 2 c/kWh in 2016, which is based on a sample of 2 projects totaling 207 MW.  Note this does not include the 2.3 c/kWh of production tax credits for 10 years.  So with the incentive the levelized revenue of these wind projects is below 4.3 c/kWh.