Houston Chronicle


Lower costs and more capacity helped to drive growth in the renewable energy industry this year, according to a new study.

Renewables get a boost from lower cost batteries- oil and gas 360

Source: Houston Chronicle

The lifetime cost of operating utility-scale solar facilities declined by 18 percent and on-shore wind dipped by 10 percent during the first half of the year, according to the consulting firm Deloitte.

The biggest decline in cost was for lithium-ion battery storage which fell 35 percent between January and June, according to the New York accounting and consulting firm Deloitte. The drop in battery storage is adding more value to renewables because the batteries make intermittent solar and wind generation increasingly competitive with traditional fossil-fuel energy sources.

April marked the first time that renewable energy, which provides 23 percent of U.S. power generation, outpaced coal which provides 20 percent, according to the study. Taken together, wind and solar sources accounted for about half of the nation’s renewable power generation, replacing the one-time dominance of hydroelectric power.

 


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