North Carolina-based utility provider Duke Energy is betting on the rise of increasingly efficient battery technology to propel the rise of solar and wind power over the next five years, according to a new report by Forbes . “There’s going to be a lot of excitement around batteries in the next five years. And I would say that the country will get blanketed with projects,” Duke Energy business development managing director Spencer Hanes said on Thursday as part of a conference in Chicago. The cost of generating and storing solar power has dropped from $800 per kilowatt hour to $281 over the past four years. Steeper drops are ahead, experts said at the Solar Power Midwest conference. “The momentums and drivers behind actual installed solar-storage projects are things like backup power and energy independence, and there’s a little bit of a screw-my-utility kind of attitude,” Adam Gerza of the […]