Thread by @AukeHoekstra

The marginal cost of solar is approaching the magical number of 1 euro cent per kilowatt hour!

Latest auction in Portugal pegs the fixed-rate lot at 1.1 cent per kWh (25% less than in 2019).

It still boggles my mind how far we have come. (short thread)
portugal.gov.pt/pt/gc22/comuni…

I published an opinion piece about it in the Dutch Financial Time in 2007. I claimed that extrapolation of current trends could give us 1 euro cent per kWh in 2032. But I but admitted that might be too optimistic. Turns out I was too pessimistic!

I already knew price reductions in solar where making the expectations of many too conservative (maartensteinbuch.com/2017/06/12/pho…) but I would not have dared to predict that we could come close to 1 cent in 2020, anywhere in the world.

Look at this Lazard estimate for the whole of the US. Basically we are talking about a price reduction of ten times in ten years!

That's incredible!

Can you understand why I find working in renewable energy so exciting?
lazard.com/perspective/le…

And yes, I know I have to include some caveats:

1) This was sunny Portugal so it will be more expensive in e.g. the Netherlands.

2) This excludes storage that solar needs at high levels of penetration.

3) This is probably a barebones price.

But still: SO MUCH has happened!

Anyway, we still need to speed up if we want to avoid the worst of climate change but the developments in solar fill me with hope and joy!

(And those in batteries, electric cars/trucks/planes, wind, BIPV, hydrogen, HVDC grids, etc.)