Wind power prices now lower than the cost of natural gas
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In the US, it’s cheaper to build and operate wind farms than buy fossil fuels.
This week, the US Department of Energy released a report that looks back on the state of wind power in the US by running the numbers on 2018. The analysis shows that wind hardware prices are dropping, even as new turbine designs are increasing the typical power generated by each turbine. As a result, recent wind farms have gotten so cheap that you can build and operate them for less than the expected cost of buying fuel for an equivalent natural gas plant.
Wind is even cheaper at the moment because of a tax credit given to renewable energy generation. But that credit is in the process of fading out, leading to long-term uncertainty in a power market where demand is generally stable or dropping.
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