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Evaluation of the energy/thermal unit cost for each RET

The main elements of the pre-feasibility analyses of a certain plant are the initial investments, operations and usage costs, fuel costs, produced electric energy, interest norms, the life duration of the plant and some other indicators. LDC (Leveled Discount Cost) calculated with the following formula will be used to realise the cost-benefit analyses enabling the cost calculation as unit of electrical and thermal energy generation is:

In order to realise the preliminary analyses of the benefit-cost analyses, basically for each RES three different power rates plants (250 kW, 1000 kW and 3000 kW respectively) have been analysed. They supply thermal/electrical power for the family consumers, hotelier sector for the buildings in service sector as well as agriculture sector. The basic parameters of this analyses are in the following table:

Figure 27 Unit cost for each technology and each capacity [cent/kWh]

The figure analyses shows that the long term marginal cost of electrical/thermal energy is in high values for two technologies: photovoltaic and urban waste plants. The second group of the low cost plants consists of: wind and geothermic energy source. The third group is compounded by the classical plants with comparable costs such as: SHPP (which have a lower cost), the co-generated plants that realise the production of electrical energy, the efficient heater plants working with biomass (fire wood) and solar panel plants that realise the production of the thermal energy.

March 5, 2013