WP 4 - Private Costs of Electricity and Heat Generation

Objectives

  • To investigate private costs of generating electricity by combustible renewables, focusing on heat generation technologies (oil, gas and bio-mass heating systems, heat exchanger, heat pump).

Description of work

State-of-the-art power plants are based on existing designs for which reliable cost information is available. They include technologies such as nuclear units of current generation, traditional coal-fired units, combined cycle gas turbines, CHP plants, fuel cells, hydropower, wind mills (onshore and offshore), combustible renewable power plants and solar photovoltaic systems. The major task consists of updating the partially older studies on the current conditions and inserting into a consistent and comparable framework. Technologies under development (such as advanced clean coal technologies, integrated coal gasification combined cycle (IGCC) and advanced nuclear reactors (e.g., PBMR)) are also included.

The calculated private costs provide comprehensive and reliable economic information for assessing the competitiveness of alternative technologies that may be chosen for electricity system expansion within the next 10 - 20 years. To evaluate the competitiveness of the different electricity and heat generation technologies the levelised lifetime cost methodology is used. In order to make sensitivity analysis possible an algorithm of how to produce different costs per kWh based on different load factors, wages and annual energy production per kW installed is made available.

All costs related to the fuel cycle are accounted for. Credit for recycled materials are also accounted for. Front-end and back-end fuel cycle costs reported are calculated with the constant money levelised lifetime method using generic assumptions.

Investigation is accomplished only for selected countries: Germany, Finland, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Italy, Portugal, Bulgaria and Turkey. Outside of Europe, corresponding information is also made available for China, India and Brazil. Apart from the inclusion of the participants from their respective countries VITO is concerned in particular with the fossil and nuclear power plants, while USTUTT/IER is responsible for the remaining electricity and heat generation technologies.

Information from this WP is used for the development of the energy prices on the world markets in WP1.

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