The future is looking bright for solar as the clean, renewable energy source gets more affordable according to Inhabitat. In just 5 months, the cost of solar went down 25% as shown by two recent construction bids for solar projects in China and Abu Dhabi. On August 11, a bid of $0.46/W was put forward to build 500 megawatts of solar power in China and on September 19 a record low bid of $0.023/kW was submitted for 1.2 gigawatts of solar power in Abu Dhabi.
China and Abu Dhabi are not the only places in the world seeing dramatic changes in the cost of solar. A 100 megawatt solar project in Nevada recently submitted for approval would deliver electricity at $0.04 /kWh. That is the lowest price ever presented or seen from a US solar farm and much lower than the price of electricity for a new nuclear, coal or natural gas power plant.
A new report from the United States Department of Energy found that the cost of clean energy technologies has gone down 41% to 94% over the past seven years. The report looked at wind, residential solar, utility-scale solar, LED lighting and batteries and found that all of the clean energy technologies experienced dramatic price decreases from 2008 to 2015.
Wind and solar comprised 2/3 of new energy installations in the United States in 2015. The report also found that utility-scale solar farm costs have fallen by 64% since 2008 and the distributed solar cost went down by 54%.
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Featured Image Credit: Inhabitat.com
Solar Trust Centre Team
