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From: David C. Burns9/3/2011 2:28:53 AM
of 762
 
Technology Cost Review: Grid Parity for Renewables?

Research from the University of Melbourne's Energy Research Institute predicts that the price of wind and solar energy will continue to fall. The Institute's Renewable Energy Technology Cost Review covers the current and future costs of three forms of renewable energy technology - photovoltaic (PV), wind and concentrating solar thermal (CST) - by comparing data from a range of international and Australia-specific studies.

"It's expected, especially in the case of solar technologies, that they'll become very close to competitive with fossil fuels over the next five to 10 years. What this means is that we should be planning for a future with much larger penetrations of renewable energy and focusing on how we get that built and how we can integrate into the system as fast as possible," said Patrick Hearps, one of the lead researchers.

Each of the studies reviewed performed assessments of cost reductions for major plant components, taking into account expected growth and experience. The major opportunities include mass manufacture of mirror components; implementation of higher temperature steam cycles and storage; scale-up of plant sizes; and convoy/experience effects on engineering and indirect overheads. Power tower (central receiver) solar thermal systems are expected to be cheaper than parabolic troughs.

Photovoltaics and wind power have historically shown that a large proportion of cost reductions have come from experience and economies of scale associated with large-scale global deployment - not just improvements in technical efficiency. This is made particularly apparent when displaying a technology learning curve as a function of cumulative installed capacity, rather than time. Therefore any projection of a cost curve over time has an inherent assumption, explicit or not, of the expected growth in deployment of the technology.


renewableenergyworld.com 
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