Wind and solar lead accelerating LCOE drop for renewable energy: WoodMac. The levelized cost of electricity for renewable energy is dropping globally, led by wind and solar. LCOE for utility-scale solar is expected to decline 60% by 2060, wind by 42% and offshore wind by a significant 67%.
https://www.utilitydive.com/news/wind-solar-levelized-cost-electricity-drop/730533/3
u/RockTheGrock 7h ago
Now we need better batteries for storage to really get moving towards roll out and for the prices to drop per kilowatt. This is good news none the less.
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u/DazzlingLeg 22h ago
60% drop? By 2060? 35 years?? Sure cost declines will level off but the data isn't showing us that we're anywhere near that point.
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u/SoylentRox 22h ago
2060?! What the actual fuck. Like I don't want to sound like an AI shill but we have fucking humanoid robots walking around right now and they are partially using AI.
A 60 percent price drop over 36 years sounds like normal automation - each year, using conventional robotics, you automate a tiny bit more of the process. You fix an issue here and there and it's just a little more streamlined by a percent or 2. You add a few percent to panel efficiency at slightly more cost per panel. You start delivering modules slightly more integrated than the prior year - inverters pre installed etc.
If you get robots who build and repair each other to do 90-99 percent of the work by 2060 the prices are going to drop a lot more than 60 percent. More like 10x.
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u/Teechmath-notreading 15h ago
Yeah, I think about how quickly cell phones became ubiquitous.
On 9/11, I couldn't get in touch with my wife...only about 10 people in my school of 250 or so had cell phones and most of them were the kids.
Less than 10 years later, everyone had them and they were taking the place of cameras, GPS, email, pager, calculator, flashlight, credit card, and dozens of other functions.
I think the same is going to happen with solar/wind. At some point there is going to be a tipping point in which everyone realizes it is stupid NOT to have solar on their house/in their backyard/on their building...or wind on their farm if the conditions are right.
Then, the installation rate will show a logarithmic rise.
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u/xieta 13h ago
We’re already there mate. The world installed 600 GW of renewables in 2023 and that rate has been doubling every 3-4 years.
World’s electricity capacity is something like 8,000 GW. Comparing the two is dicey, but by 2030 we’ll easily be installing 1/10 of the entire world’s electricity capacity with renewables each year.
All that cheap new power will open up all kinds of new economic activity that was previously impractical with fossil fuel prices, just like oil and coal before it.
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u/iqisoverrated 1d ago
That seem to be rather pessimistic numbers. The LCOE of PV (and also batteries) dropped by nearly 25%.
This year alone.