Solar and wind plus batteries massively disruptive

From PV Magazine:

NextEra: solar and wind plus batteries will be “massively disruptive” to conventional generation.

The power giant says that coal, gas and nukes will not be able to compete with clean energy, and that renewable energy deployment is “just getting started”.

Only one day after the U.S. Department of Energy’s Energy Information Administration (EIA) projected that coal’s decline will slow, gas will dominate the future energy mix and that wind will peter out after the PTC ends, one of the nation’s largest and arguably its most successful power companies has a very different forecast for the future.

In NextEra Energy’s fourth quarter results call, CEO Jim Robo dropped another bombshell, with his statement that solar and wind plus storage will be cheaper than coal, oil or nuclear, that this will be “massively disruptive to the conventional fleet” and that it will provide opportunities for developers well through the next decade.

Robo’s exact math is that even after the federal tax credits expire, wind will be 2 – 2.5 cents per kilowatt-hour, large-scale solar will be 2.5 – 3 cents, and storage will add .5 – 1 cent. This would put these resources slightly below the current cost of natural gas-fired generation, without the uncertainty around fuel prices that is inherent to gas.

Robo has been similarly optimistic about energy storage in the past, stating in a 2015 analyst conference covered by Greentech Media that “post-2020, there may never be another peaker built in the United States — very likely you’ll be just building energy storage instead.”

 [Read more here]

Utilities aren't switching to renewables out of the goodness of their hearts, but because renewables are cheaper.  Good news.