Why a Big Utility Is Embracing Wind and Solar

Why a Big Utility Is Embracing Wind and Solar
Yet costs for renewable technologies are coming down so much
that by the time the federal subsidies expire, wind turbines and large-scale solar arrays will still be competitive in large parts of the country.
You read that right: In parts of the country, wind
and solar plants built from scratch now offer the cheapest power available, even counting old coal, which was long seen as unbeatable.
Xcel, Colorado’s biggest power company, has pitched a plan to regulators
that will involve replacing two large coal-burning units with renewable energy and possibly some natural gas.
The same trend is occurring all over the world, even in countries
that do not offer subsidies, with renewable projects routinely beating fossil-fuel projects in countries like Mexico and India.
It has taken a couple of decades, but we are reaching a point where the new energy technologies are
going to be cheap enough to drive a lot of the old coal-burning power plants off the market.
The bids have come in so low that the company will be able to build
and operate the new plants for less money than it would have to pay just to keep running its old, coal-burning power plants.
Xcel Energy is a utility company with millions of electric customers in the middle of the country, from Texas to Michigan.
In booming Colorado, the company asked for proposals to construct big power plants using wind turbines and solar panels.