Onshore Wind Is The Cheapest Electricity Generation Option In Europe

[unhappycamper]

http://cleantechnica.com/2014/05/23/onshore-wind-cheapest-form-generation/

Originally published on RenewEconomy. (Editor’s Note: the chart/calculation below assumes 25% wind capacity factory, while the norm is now much higher. Throw in 35% to 50% depending on your location in order to get a much better comparison.)

Onshore Wind Is The Cheapest Electricity Generation Option In Europe
Giles Parkinson

The falling cost of renewables is not news to those who have paid attention to analysis from green-focused think tanks, or groups like Bloomberg New Energy Finance. But it is when a major European utility, with equal exposure to fossil fuels, wind, and hydro, says that onshore wind is the cheapest of any new utility-scale technology.

That is the assessment of Portugal’s EDP, which has around 24 GW of generation, of which around 8.7 GW is in onshore wind.

In a recent presentation to analysts, EDP’s head of renewables Joao Manso Neto presented this slide below, which shows that the levellised cost of electricity of onshore win in Europe is 20 per cent cheaper than gas and one third cheaper than coal. (The figure assumes 25 per cent wind capacity factor).



These estimates are for Europe, but Neto suggested the cost difference is even greater in the US, where recent contracts have been struck between $20/MWh and $40/MWh. That’s despite the so-called shale gas boom, which brought down costs of gas-fired generation for a short period, but still cannot compete with wind.