Offshore wind prices expected to fallibly more than two-thirds by 2020
From Greentech Media
Building wind farms in the ocean is still more expensive than building them on land. But maybe not for much longer.
A new report from McKinsey finds that fast growth, increased investment, bigger wind farms, falling costs and new technologies are driving new project bids to record lows in Europe.
Late last year, the Netherlands approved a bid for its cheapest offshore project yet, €54.50 ($61.10) per megawatt-hour, a sharp drop from the €72.70 ($81.50) per megawatt-hour bid for the same site just five months earlier. Denmark set its own record in a November auction, with a winning bid of €49.90 ($55.94) per megawatt-hour, down 50 percent from 2014.
Some of these bids are coming in at grid parity prices as well. In a German auction in April, the average winning bid for the projects was far below expectations, with some bids coming in at the wholesale electricity price — “meaning no subsidy is required.”