For Students · Levelized Cost of Energy
Levelized Cost of Energy for a solar farm
Built for students learning it for a class or exam. See the concept move instead of memorizing formulas — and check your homework intuition. Simulate a solar farm live below — adjust the inputs and watch it respond, right in your browser.
Levelized Cost of EnergyLive
the true price per MWh
Controls
Presets
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.
Data Inspector
LCOE$52/MWh
Per kWh5.2¢
Capacity factor25%
Governing equation
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.
Runs locally in your browser — free forever. Scale to the cloud when reality gets heavy.
Also for:ResearchersEducatorsEngineersHobbyists & MakersK-12 StudentsFirst RespondersGeneral version →
More with Levelized Cost of Energy
Levelized Cost of Energy for a wind turbineLevelized Cost of Energy for a home batteryLevelized Cost of Energy for an EV chargerLevelized Cost of Energy for a power gridLevelized Cost of Energy for a heat pumpLevelized Cost of Energy for a gas turbineLevelized Cost of Energy for a hydro damLevelized Cost of Energy for a nuclear plant
Frequently asked questions
- Is this good for students?
- Yes — this version of "Levelized Cost of Energy for a solar farm" is framed for students learning it for a class or exam. See the concept move instead of memorizing formulas — and check your homework intuition.
- Do I need to install anything?
- No. It runs in any modern browser, free, with no account required.