Innovative overview on levelized cost of energy
Hellisheidi geothermal power plant, Iceland (source: flickr/ Jon Ragnarsson, creative commons)
Francisco Rojas
13 Feb 2015
Renewables are getting cheaper and cheaper, yet they still suffer from a rather big caveat, the lack of baseload capability. Can geothermal fill the gap?
Energy Innovation has recently published a very interesting article providing a general overview on the levelized cost of energy for different technologies, both renewable and non-renewable.
The one key asset is the use of a standarizing measure to be able to compare different technologies, in this case, Lazard scale, done by “Lazard, an international financial advisory and asset management firm. Their latest version of the study, version 8, was released in late 2014. The graphic below summarizes the cost components of 16 different energy technologies evaluated by Lazard: 10 of them are alternative (which includes mainly low-carbon, renewable technologies), and six are conventional (which includes fossil fuel sources and nuclear).”
The same source makes a good point is done regarding the actual viability of some renewable energies such as solar or wind-power:
“Although wind and solar are now cost-competitive and offer many health and environmental advantages over fossil fuels, these are still considered intermittent sources because the sun isn’t always shining and the wind isn’t always blowing). As a result, wind and solar are unable to entirely replace the services that certain conventional “baseload’” sources provide to the system.”
This is where geothermal wold come into the equation, by providing the necessary baseload capability that currently fossil fuels are providing.
To read the full article, please follow the link below:
Source: Energy Innovation
