Battery Power's Latest Plunge in Costs Threatens Coal, Gas
This says that if you take ~~free~~ (see edit) energy, store it in batteries, and pull it back out later, you will have to pay $187/MWh.<p>Meanwhile natural gas turbines cost $40/MWh to generate power whenever, wherever. To say batteries are competing with gas in the US is very misleading. Reliable electricity is worth an incredible amount to customers.<p>Unfortunately natural gas is very high carbon and cannot continue in a carbon-constrained world.<p>In any case, it's obviously time to roll back tax incentives on wind and solar generating capacity alone. They worked perfectly, bringing prices of advanced tech down near market levels. Now let's incentivise deep decarbonization schemes that can handle seasonal intermittency and decarbonize the heating, industrial, and transportation sectors.<p>Edit: The $187/MWh number includes an extremely low battery charging cost of around $0.033/kWh (it's reasonably assumed that charging will occur during energy oversupplies, so it's nearly free).