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To: Wharf Rat who wrote (1377230)	10/17/2022 12:40:58 PM
From: Wharf Rat	Respond to of 1578892

Prospects for US solar electricity at $0/kWh A new Credit Suisse report suggests that from 2025 through 2032, the United States could see solar and wind power purchase agreements regularly signed for under $0.01/kWh, due to a combination of manufacturing and project tax credits. October 17, 2022 John Fitzgerald Weaver Commercial & Industrial PV Markets Utility Scale PV United States Image: LaBella Associates Share From pv magazine USA The US Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) could become a transformative document, enabling a grand experiment in energy generation at a national level, according to a new report by Credit Suisse. It believes that the United States has an opportunity to become a global leader in clean energy, much like it is already in the fossil industry. Among the many ideas discussed in the document is a striking prediction – there may be solar power projects whose levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) drops below a penny per kilowatt hour, bottoming around $0.04/kWh ($4/MWh) in 2029. We could see these prices as soon as 2025, and they could persist beyond 2030. If we combine a few data points, we can see how this number is possible – and might even have room to go lower. First, the IRA will pay solar panel manufacturers up to $0.18/W when manufacturing modules. Each item along the module supply chain gets a piece – polysilicon, wafers, cells and modules. Consider that it has only been a few years since First Solar told Bloomberg that their manufacturing costs were around $0.20/W – with the IRA, they’re on a pathway to a $0.02/W product. Since First Solar has nearly sold out for the upcoming few years, and may not feel enough pressure to reach pricing that low, this author doesn’t expect the most extreme lows to materialize. But according to this report, there are plenty of other solar module manufacturers that could get to an essential cost of $0.06/W to §0.10/W. The lowest number could be pushed upward by demand, as some market projections suggest that we could see 100 GW of solar demand by the end of the decade. The report also suggests that the United States might become a net exporter of solar modules to the global market, while pushing our natural cost of manufacturing modules toward $0.20/W near the end of the 2030s. That is still 33% greater than estimates for China’s estimated costs (per the chart, above). Second, we have to layer on the Production Tax Credit (PTC). For 10 years after a project is constructed, it will receive an inflation adjusted tax credit for every kilowatt-hour generated. Larger projects tend to take the PTC in lieu of the Investment Tax Credit, mostly due to project scale and capacity factor. Additionally – we can increase the PTC two times, by about one-third each time. The first increase will come from modules manufactured with domestic content, and the second will come from building solar in energy communities. When we combine the cheap IRA solar panels with the PTC, we’ll start to see domestic solar power PPAs at $0.00/kWh at some point in the second half of the decade. PPAs below zero have happened before. It is clear why Credit Suisse spent more than a hundred pages going far beyond just wind and solar in its report. That includes a lot of discussion about cheaply manufactured green hydrogen as well. Will the hydrogen be produced with $0/kWh solar? Hydrogen will have its own additional incentive of $3/kg. *The article was amended on October 17 to reflect that the expected LCOE for large scale solar by 2029 is $0.04/W. pv-magazine.com

To: Wharf Rat who wrote (1377230)	10/17/2022 1:42:56 PM
From: Broken_Clock	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1578892

French officials also are voicing their unease: Le Maire, who spoke on Monday while addressing the National Assembly, said, “The conflict in Ukraine must not end in American economic domination and a weakening of the EU.” . The French finance minister Bruno Le Maire has warned that the United States should not be allowed to dominate the global energy market while the European Union suffers from the consequences of the conflict in Ukraine. . He described as unacceptable that Washington “sells its liquefied natural gas at four times the price than it sets for its own industrialists,” adding that “the economic weakening of Europe is not in anyone’s interest.”