{"id":39859,"date":"2020-05-18T15:12:05","date_gmt":"2020-05-18T04:42:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.solarquotes.com.au\/blog\/?p=39859"},"modified":"2020-05-18T15:12:05","modified_gmt":"2020-05-18T04:42:05","slug":"ramez-naam-solar-cost","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.solarquotes.com.au\/blog\/ramez-naam-solar-cost\/","title":{"rendered":"Solar Power Is Getting Cheaper, Faster Than Anyone Predicted"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Ramez

Solar energy is getting cheaper faster than anyone predicted says Ramez Naam.<\/p><\/div>\n

Utility-scale solar electricity is going to drive fossil fuels out of the power generation market, sooner rather than later, according to clean energy investor and advocate Ramez Naam.<\/p>\n

Nearly a decade after he first forecast a huge price advantage for solar energy over fossil fuels, Naam has had to admit an error: he under-estimated how far solar costs would fall.<\/p>\n

In this very wide-ranging blog post<\/a> published last week, Naam said solar costs plunged<\/p>\n

\u201cfaster than anyone – including me – predicted\u201d.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Reworking his original and then-optimistic 2011 model (which he revised in 2015), Naam writes that solar prices will reach levels that are:<\/p>\n

\u201cinsanely, world-changingly cheap\u201d.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

If he\u2019s right, coal-fired electricity is done for<\/a>. As former NSW Premier and Federal Foreign Affairs Minister Bob Carr wrote<\/a> in the Sydney Morning Herald last week, there\u2019s already a capital flight away from coal, even before we get to where Naam believes solar power will take the world.<\/p>\n

Looking at what\u2019s happened since he first forecast \u201ccheap solar\u201d, Naam cites seven price trackers to demonstrate that between 2010 and 2020:<\/p>\n

\u201cThe price of electricity from utility-scale solar projects (the unsubsidized cost) has dropped by a factor of somewhere between 5 and 8 in the years from 2010 to 2020\u201d.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

While the International Energy Agency in 2010 predicted utility solar would deliver a kilowatt-hour of power at about 22.5 cents (US currency) this year – and Naam himself reckoned it would fall to about 12.5 cents – the reality is that nearly all trackers put today\u2019s kWh of solar power at around 5 cents. That\u2019s running \u201cliterally decades\u201d ahead of the decade-old forecasts, he writes.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s All About Scale<\/h2>\n

What\u2019s happened to solar electricity costs is very orthodox economics: when a technology scales up, it becomes cheaper (this is known as Wright\u2019s Law, and was formulated in 1936), which he summarises this way:<\/p>\n

\u201cEvery doubling of cumulative production leads to a percentage change in cost.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In the case of solar, the cost of the electricity produced declines \u201csmoothly\u201d in line with how much solar power is deployed.<\/p>\n

And that\u2019s where the forecasters got it wrong. The mainstream academic and forecasters – the IEA, Bloomberg New Energy Finance and the like – expected between 10% and 20% \u201clearning per doubling change\u201d, and Naam himself expected 16%. The reality: the price of utility-scale solar fell by between 30% and 40%<\/strong> \u201cwith each doubling of cumulative solar deployment\u201d.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s what he expects to drive future prices.<\/p>\n

By the end of last year, when solar power provided 2% of the world\u2019s electricity, it was competitive with already-operating fossil fuel plants, everywhere except \u201chigh-cost locations\u201d (where labour, capital and land prices load up the cost of a plant). In most cases, Naam wrote, a kWh of solar electricity costs between 2.5 and 5 cents.<\/p>\n

\"Historical<\/p>\n

Assuming that solar maintains a 30% cost fall, he predicts that after two more doublings (from 600 GW today to 2,400 GW in the future), costs will have halved, and by the time the world reaches 19.2 TW installed solar, prices will between 0.5 and 1.5 cents per kWh.<\/p>\n

When Too Much Solar Is Barely Enough<\/h2>\n

Is it feasible that the world will deploy that much solar, enough to power two-thirds of today\u2019s consumption?<\/p>\n

Naam believes so: demand will continue to rise, driven by rising incomes and consumption in the developing world, the electrification of the world\u2019s transport fleet, more flexible demand, cheap energy storage, and industrial decarbonisation.<\/p>\n

\u201cAdd these up, and it\u2019s plausible that solar\u2019s contribution to the energy system could double or triple the amount currently considered feasible for solar to provide,\u201d he wrote.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

How soon might this happen? If the chart above tracks between 2020 and 2050, and deployment grows 16% annually, in just ten years building new solar will<\/p>\n

\u201croutinely be cheaper than operating already built fossil fuel plants\u201d.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Naam continues:<\/p>\n

\u201cIn a purely open market, these incredibly low prices would drive the world\u2019s remaining coal plants into bankruptcy, and steal some of the most profitable operating hours even from cheap natural gas plants.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And while challenges like cheap storage, grid integration, and complementary generation to keep up with the northern hemisphere\u2019s winter peak consumption remain, it\u2019s clear to Naam that<\/p>\n

\u201csolar provides us an incredible tool for decarbonizing our electrical grid, while ultimately lowering costs for consumers, businesses, and industries\u201d.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Utility-scale solar electricity is going to drive fossil fuels out of the power generation market, sooner rather than later, according to clean energy investor and advocate Ramez Naam.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":39874,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-39859","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-economics","entry"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nSolar Power Is Getting Cheaper, Faster Than Anyone Predicted<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Utility-scale solar electricity is going to drive fossil 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