Once Cheap, Wind and Solar Prices Are Up 34%. What’s the Outlook?
Early last year, I thought the increase in wind and solar power prices was a blip. After all, one of the constants in my decade-plus covering energy was that wind and solar prices were in a near-perpetual state of decline. Not anymore. The trend is unmistakable. Prices are rising—by a lot.
Related Knowledge Center: ENERGY BASICS: renewables
Renewable energy sources — once the fuel of the future, then practical in specific, narrow applications — are increasingly economic mainstream sources of power generation. Hydropower was long the mainstay of U.S. renewable electricity generation, although wind power surpassed hydro for the first time in 2019, and solar continues its rapid growth. The continued growth of wind and solar, with their fluctuations, is tied in part to improvements in storage technology: batteries.