Natural gas-fired power plants will be facing more price competition from solar farms in some parts of the U.S. as falling battery costs make it possible to deliver electricity produced from sunshine even after dark. Solar projects that incorporate storage are becoming cheaper to build per megawatt-hour in parts of the U.S. Southwest than a new gas-fired generation, according to a report Monday by Bloomberg NEF. That positions solar to replace a significant portion of the 7 gigawatts of coal-fired power that’s expected to retire in the region over the next decade, said Hugh Bromley, a New York-based analyst at BNEF. And that trend will likely be repeated elsewhere. “This won’t be contained to the Southwest,” Bromley said in an interview Monday. “This is spreading and will continue to spread. Utilities that buy electricity from solar farms typically still rely on gas-fired generators in the evenings. But the […]