Levelized Cost of Energy Calculations for Microgrid-Integrated Solar-Storage Technology

Abstract

Levelized Cost of Energy (LCOE) enables financial comparisons between different generation technologies with different scales of operation, investment, cost structures, operating time periods, and lifetimes. It serves as a viable metric in comparing the growing sources of energy, such as high-capital renewables, with traditional sources including fossil-fuel based technologies that have different fixed-to-variable-costs ratios and low capital costs. What is yet to be investigated is the LCOE for a combination of technologies that work in a coordinated fashion. In this paper, the LCOE calculation of a microgrid-integrated solar-storage technology is discussed. A set of sensitivity analyses for a microgrid model are further evaluated to show the impacts of various factors in the economic viability of this combination.