Origin says solar cheaper than coal, moving on from base-load

Origin Energy says the cost of wind and solar farms has fallen so far it is now cheaper than the marginal cost of coal generation, and the company is moving on from the concept of “24/7 base-load”.

Wind and solar is cheaper than the marginal cost of coal generation.

The assessment was made by Greg Jarvis, the company’s head of energy trading and operations, in an interview for RenewEconomy’s popular Energy Insiders podcast, published on Tuesday.

“I have been in this game for so long … the one thing I have seen is just the cost of renewables really change the game,” Jarvis says. “It is amazing what we have been seeing.

Read the story by Giles Parkinson from RenewEconomy - “Origin says solar cheaper than coal, moving on from base-load.”

New study reaches a stunning conclusion about the cost of solar and wind energy

In one of the fastest and most astonishing turnarounds in the history of energy, building and running new renewable energy is now cheaper than just running existing coal and nuclear plants in many areas.

Stunning report - wind and solar now cheaper
than existing coal and nuclear plants.

A widely-used yearly benchmarking study — the Levelized Cost of Energy Analysis (LCOE) from the financial firm Lazard Ltd. — reached this stunning conclusion: In many regions “the full-lifecycle costs of building and operating renewables-based projects have dropped below the operating costs alone of conventional generation technologies such as coal or nuclear.”

Read Joe Romm’s on ThinkProgress  story  - “New study reaches a stunning conclusion about the cost of solar and wind energy.”