[Cable News] According to the latest analysis of Bloomberg New Energy Finance Bloomberg NEF, solar energy and wind energy are now the cheapest sources of power generation in all major economies except Japan.
Due to the adjustment of China's policies, the market of large photovoltaic power stations in China shrank by more than one third in 2018, which gave rise to a wave of global cheap equipment, driving the benchmark price of new global PV (non tracking) to 60 dollars/MWh in the second half of 2018, down 13% from the first quarter of this year.
BNEF's global onshore wind benchmark power generation cost is US $52/MWh, which is 6% lower than the analysis in the first half of 2018. This was achieved against the backdrop of cheap turbines and a stronger dollar. In India and Texas, onshore wind power without subsidies is now as cheap as $27/MWh.
Today, in most parts of the United States, wind power generation, as the source of new batch power generation, exceeds the combined cycle gas power plant (CCGT) supplied by cheap shale gas. If the natural gas price exceeds $3/MMBtu, BNEF's analysis shows that new and existing CCGT will face the risk of being rapidly weakened by new solar and wind energy. This means less running time and more flexible technologies, such as natural gas peak plants and batteries, do well at lower utilization (capacity factor).
In the past two years, the high interest rates in China and the United States have brought upward pressure on the financing costs of photovoltaic and wind energy, but compared with the decline in equipment costs, these two costs are dwarfed.
In the Asia Pacific region, more expensive natural gas imports mean that the competitiveness of new combined cycle gas power plants is still lower than that of new coal-fired power plants by US $59-81/MWh. This remains a major obstacle to reducing the carbon intensity of power generation in this region.
Currently, short-term batteries are the cheapest source of new fast response and peak capacity in all major economies except the United States. In the United States, cheap natural gas provides an advantage for peak natural gas power plants. According to the latest report, with the rapid development of the electric vehicle manufacturing industry, by 2030, the battery cost will be reduced by 66%. This in turn means that the battery storage cost in the power industry is lower, which can reduce the peak power cost and flexible capacity to the level never reached by traditional fossil fuel peak power plants.
Batteries coexisting with photovoltaic or wind power are becoming more and more common. BNEF's analysis shows that compared with new coal fired power plants and new gas fired power plants in Australia and India, new solar and wind power plants equipped with 4-hour battery storage systems have become cost competitive without subsidies.