> LCOE for new offshore wind is ~$125.

This has already fallen dramatically in the last 2 years - see both US east coast and UK off shore tenders.

Perhaps you are referring to floating off shore - which is still developing.

> In the US - we have 3x more wind energy production than solar

Wind matured much earlier than PV - but costs have largely plateaued - while PV progress is relentless.

Even at existing costs, PV (+ LFP!) will swamp every thing else.

Reminder that you'd need either equivalent backing storage and overprovisioning (not yet feasible except in the rare cases where pumped hydro can be built) or backing fossil fuel plants for each unit of wind, even more so than solar. The LCOEs are not directly compatible.

Dependability has value to society and LCOE does not account for it whatsoever.

As your renewables approach “free” (sub 2 cents/kWh), the marginal cost is storage, and is still competitive against fossil and nuclear (per page 122 of NextEra’s most recent investor deck). Near firm is industry parlance for battery backed.

Tangentially, the Australian gov is pulling forward 10 years their coal generator retirements (2037->2027) due to how quickly new utility scale renewables are going live.

https://cleantechnica.com/files/2022/06/lcoe-small.jpg?mrf-s...

Australia does have some geographic and climate advantages when it comes to solar installations. Most of the interior is basically desert. It also helps that it has one of the lowest population densities of any continent.

It's also important to note that plans to phase things out do not indicate success. See California right now.

California solar plateaus at 10-12GW during the day, a bit less than total coal generation capacity in Australia (per ElectricityMap.org). California needs more solar, wind, and batteries, full stop (and CAISO is working on it if you review their interconnect queue). At least they decided to hold on to Diablo Canyon. You refer to Australia’s desert; 75% of California’s natural gas generation could be replaced with solar sited over existing irrigation canals, and there is a large Nevada desert to the east of the state.

Large AC needs after the sun goes down will need to be served by time shifting chillers, batteries, wind, hydro, and the last nuclear plant standing in the state.

And the last piece is HVDC lines to connect regional grids and average out supply and demand geographically.