What does a power plant really cost per unit of electricity? LCOE spreads its whole lifetime cost over every megawatt-hour it makes — the number that decides what gets built.
Levelized Cost of EnergyLive
the true price per MWh
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LCOE spreads a power project's lifetime cost over every megawatt-hour it produces, letting wildly different technologies be compared fairly. It rewards high capacity factors and cheap capital, and punishes idle plants. The capital-recovery factor discounts future costs to today. It is the number that has made solar and wind the cheapest new power in most of the world.
Reading this result: At a 25% capacity factor the plant sits idle most of the time, so its capital is spread over few MWh — that thin denominator is what pushes LCOE up to $52/MWh.
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How it works
The levelized cost of energy converts a project's upfront capital, financing, and operating costs into a single price per megawatt-hour, discounting future costs to today via the capital-recovery factor. It rewards high capacity factors and cheap capital and penalizes idle plants. Falling LCOE is why solar and wind are now the cheapest new electricity across most of the world.
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