Solar power isn’t a new energy option by any means. While it’s very much in the news more and more these days, that’s because the technology is rapidly developing, making this an exciting time for solar energy.
You see, in the past, as good of an idea as solar power sounded to most people, the high costs of it prevented it from being a cost-effective option for just about everyone. But these days, production costs have gone down dramatically, turning solar power from a viable option for very few, into a viable option for nearly everyone. So much so that handheld generators of solar energy look to soon be everywhere, among plenty of other mobile charging solutions by harnessing the sun’s energy.
Still, the hurdle of becoming a cheaper option than the other main sources of energy in the United States remains for solar energy. If a recent report is any indication though, that hurdle will soon be jumped over.
Take a look at this excerpt from an article dealing with some potentially big news coming out of New Mexico:
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New Mexico To Purchase Solar Energy At a Lower Price Than Coal
The economic viability of solar power is advancing rapidly. It’s actually already more then competitive within certain markets, and the price of solar panels saw a precipitous decline over the last four years.
In fact, solar technology has been advancing so rapidly that analysts have had trouble keeping their models up to date. When the Electric Reliability Council of Texas revised the circa-2006 assumptions about the state of technological development in its economic models, it found massive increases in the economic viability of wind and solar power, making them competitive with natural gas within the state over the next twenty years. Former Energy Secretary Steven Chu predicted in 2011 that, along with wind, solar would be no more expensive than oil or natural gas by the end of the decade.
The latest evidence of solar power’s rise comes via Bloomberg: El Paso Electric Co., a southwestern utility, has agreed to purchase electricity from a New Mexico solar project owned by the solar panel manufacturer First Solar, for a price lower than the going rate for coal:
First Solar bought the 50-megawatt Macho Springs project from Element Power Solar, according to a statement yesterday. El Paso Electric Co. (EE) agreed to buy the power for 5.79 cents a kilowatt-hour, according to a Jan. 22 procedural order from the New Mexico Public Regulation Commission.
That’s less than half the 12.8 cents per kilowatt-hour average price for new coal plants, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Thin-film photovoltaic power typically sells for 16.3 cents a kilowatt-hour, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance.
The price would be “the lowest solar power purchase agreement price we have ever seen,” Aaron Chew, an analyst at Maxim Group LLC in New York, said in an e-mail. It’s less than half the price that First Solar will get for its Antelope Valley, Topaz, and Agua Caliente projects, he said.
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To check out the rest of this article, along with more details on this big step forward for solar power, head to its full version here: http://theenergycollective.com/josephromm/180841/new-mexico-solar-power-lower-than-coal