Natural gas’s dominance as power-plant fuel in the US is fading fast as the cost of electricity generated by wind farms and solar projects tumbles, according to Guggenheim Securities.
Utility-scale solar is now about a third cheaper than gas-fired power, while onshore wind is about 44% less expensive, Guggenheim analysts led by Shahriar Pourreza said Monday in a note to clients.
I think we’re soon going to get to the point when anything other than solar/wind gets rejected on the financial basis, except cases not covered by solar/wind (still need some baseload).
As solar gets cheaper, even baseload/heating should be viable - there are many energy storage methods that are ‘inefficient’ but scale better than li-ion - thermal storage, various ‘heavy’ battery chemistries, even making hydrogen or synfuels - you can have 50% energy loss if it costs 50% of the alternatives and you’d be unable to use it on peak sunlight anyway.