{"id":179500,"date":"2018-01-20T21:17:00","date_gmt":"2018-01-21T02:17:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2018\/01\/20\/this-is-impressive\/"},"modified":"2018-01-20T21:17:00","modified_gmt":"2018-01-21T02:17:00","slug":"this-is-impressive","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2018\/01\/20\/this-is-impressive\/","title":{"rendered":"This is Impressive"},"content":{"rendered":"

The costs of renewable energy installations, including storage, has fallen precipitously<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Proposals for renewable electricity generation in Colorado are coming in cheap, like, $21\/MWh-cheap for wind and battery storage<\/i>. Though there are a few caveats to those numbers, federal incentives and quickly falling costs are combining to make once-quirky renewable projects into major contenders in an industry where fossil fuels have comfortably dominated since the 19th<\/sup> century. <\/span><\/span>

<\/span><\/span> Early last year, Colorado energy provider Xcel Energy requested proposals for new electricity generation. Specifically, the company needed<\/a> 450 megawatts of additional generation to meet future demand. In a separate request called the Colorado Energy Plan, Xcel said<\/a> (PDF) it would consider replacing two coal plants providing 660MW of capacity with “hundreds of megawatts of new wind and solar as well as some natural gas-fired resources” if new resources could be found cheaper than what those coal plants cost to operate (including costs to shut down the plants early).<\/p>\n

By late November, energy companies had submitted their best offers. Although exact details of the offers aren\u2019t available yet, Xcel Colorado was required to make public a summary of the proposals<\/a> (PDF) in the month after the bids were submitted. <\/p>\n

\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/p>\n

Still, the prices quoted were encouragingly competitive. Although Xcel’s report doesn’t have a lot of details, this is what we know:
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