"By then, solar-plus-storage costs would already be competitive against gas peakers in all the National Electricity Market (NEM) states of Australia," said research analyst Rishab Shrestha. "The country's utility-scale solar-plus-storage LCOE will hover at about 23% above average wholesale electricity price."
Only Thailand is expected to have a utility-scale solar-plus-storage LCOE below the average wholesale electricity price by 2023. While the country does not have a wholesale electricity market, industrial power price taken as a proxy is higher compared to other wholesale markets and hence shows competitive solar-plus-storage economics.
CAPEX subsidies and additional remuneration through renewables certificates are deemed crucial for projects to go-ahead. In general, Wood Mackenzie expect the average solar-plus-storage LCOE in Asia Pacific to decrease 23% from $133/MWh this year to $101/MWh in 2023.
“Storage is still at its infancy in market development. The market will need to fairly compensate the value storage provides in order for storage paired renewables to take off. There is also enough leg room for pure solar to be added to the grid, although the extent varies from region to region,” Shrestha commented
Going forward, business models still need to be refined according to market design and future policy options. Safety and fire hazards also need to be looked at carefully. “Once these challenges are addressed solar-plus-storage will be a great asset for the power grid,” he said.
On the distributed C&I solar-plus-storage front, the storage premium over solar LCOE is between 56% and 204% this year. This cost premium is expected arrow to between 47% and 167% by 2023.
"The reason you have such wide LCOE range is because we have some mature markets where solar cost is extremely competitive while others are not and some in-between. This is due to a mix of labour/ land/ environment/ civil costs, weighted average cost of capital, and procurement methods -- tenders versus feed-in tariffs (FIT). Also, some markets have very well established supply chains with the availability of storage manufacturing," Shrestha explained.
Unsubsidised C&I solar-plus-storage is expected to be competitive in Australia, India and the Philippines by 2023.