Renewable Revolution

Xcel Attracts ‘Unprecedented’ Low Prices for Solar and Wind Paired With Storage

Bid attracts median PV-plus-battery price of $36 per megawatt-hour. Median wind-plus-storage bids came in even lower, at $21 per megawatt-hour.

JASON DEIGN JANUARY 08, 2018

SNIPPET:

The rate is 20 percent lower than the cheapest PV-plus-battery power-purchase agreement seen to date, which came in a NextEra Energy Resources contract for Tucson Electric Power signed in May last year, at $45 per megawatt-hour.

The NextEra deal, which included 4 hours of lithium-ion battery-based storage, saw flow battery maker ViZn Energy Systems promising to deliver solar-plus-storage at a cost of $40 per megawatt-hour, still 9 percent above the median rate seen in the Xcel bid.

GTM Research Advisor Shayle Kann said on Twitter that although the Xcel pricing came with “lots of caveats,” it is “incredible nonetheless.”

Vibrant Clean Energy CEO Dr. Christopher Clack, who last year tangled with Stanford University Professor Mark Jacobson over pathways to a 100 percent renewable energy system, tweeted: “What fabulous numbers!”   

The bids for wind-plus-storage were even lower, with a median price of $21 per megawatt-hour. The Xcel figures are also well below the unsubsidized levelized cost of energy (LCOE) for wind and solar published by Lazard last November.

The financial advisory firm estimated the current LCOE for utility-scale solar-plus-batteries to be $82 per megawatt-hour. Lazard did not calculate an LCOE for wind-plus-storage.

Lazard's estimates for wind LCOE alone were higher than Xcel’s wind-plus-storage median bid rate, with a range of $30 to $60 per megawatt-hour.

GTM Research’s director of energy storage, Ravi Manghani, said it is clear that Xcel’s bidders were expecting significant solar, wind and battery cost reductions between now and when the projects are due to go online, in 2023. 

Full article:

https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/record-low-solar-plus-storage-price-in-xcel-solicitation#gs.3Uhh=DU