A fuzzy levelised energy cost method for renewable energy technology assessment

Abstract

Renewable energy project development is highly complex and success is by no means guaranteed. Decisions are often made with approximate or uncertain information yet the current methods employed by decision-makers do not necessarily accommodate this. Levelised energy costs (LEC) are one such commonly applied measure utilised within the energy industry to assess the viability of potential projects and inform policy. The research proposes a method for achieving this by enhancing the traditional discounting LEC measure with fuzzy set theory. Furthermore, the research develops the fuzzy LEC (F-LEC) methodology to incorporate the cost of financing a project from debt and equity sources. Applied to an example bioenergy project, the research demonstrates the benefit of incorporating fuzziness for project viability, optimal capital structure and key variable sensitivity analysis decision-making. The proposed method contributes by incorporating uncertain and approximate information to the widely utilised LEC measure and by being applicable to a wide range of energy project viability decisions.

Publication DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.enpol.2013.07.077
Divisions: College of Business and Social Sciences > Aston Business School > Operations & Information Management
College of Engineering & Physical Sciences > Energy and Bioproducts Research Institute (EBRI)
College of Engineering & Physical Sciences > School of Infrastructure and Sustainable Engineering > Chemical Engineering & Applied Chemistry
Additional Information: NOTICE: this is the author’s version of a work that was accepted for publication in Energy policy. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. A definitive version was subsequently published in Wright, DG, Dey, PK & Brammer, JG, 'A fuzzy levelised energy cost method for renewable energy technology assessment' Energy policy, vol. 62 (2013) DOI http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.enpol.2013.07.077 This work was supported by the Economic and Social Research Council [ES/H035818/1] and through the EREBUS (Engaging Research for Business Transformation) cluster in the West Midlands region of the UK.
Uncontrolled Keywords: uncertainty,project development,levelised energy cost
Publication ISSN: 1873-6777
Last Modified: 04 Jan 2024 08:15
Date Deposited: 24 Sep 2013 10:51
Full Text Link:
Related URLs: http://www.scop ... tnerID=8YFLogxK (Scopus URL)
PURE Output Type: Article
Published Date: 2013-11
Published Online Date: 2013-08-19
Authors: Wright, Daniel G.
Dey, Prasanta K. (ORCID Profile 0000-0002-9984-5374)
Brammer, John G. (ORCID Profile 0000-0002-0487-515X)

Download

[img]

Version: Accepted Version


Export / Share Citation


Statistics

Additional statistics for this record