Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
How much does it cost to generate electricity with different types of power plants? The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) has historical data on the average annual operation,
By expressing battery costs in $/kWh, we are deviating from other power generation technologies such as combustion turbines or solar photovoltaic plants where capital costs are usually expressed as $/kW. We use the units of $/kWh because that is the most common way that battery system costs have been expressed in published material to date.
Two valuable sources for gathering accurate information on the cost of power plant are the US Energy Information Administration (EIA) and Lazard, a leading financial advisory and asset management company. In April 2023 Lazard published its Levelized Cost of Energy Analysis - Version 16.
Block 5 of Irsching Power Station in Southern Germany uses natural gas as fuel in a combined cycle, converting 1,750 megawatts of thermal energy to 847 net MW of usable electricity. It cost €450 million to build. This works out to some €531 per kW of capacity.
The $/kWh costs we report can be converted to $/kW costs simply by multiplying by the duration (e.g., a $300/kWh, 4-hour battery would have a power capacity cost of $1200/kW). To develop cost projections, storage costs were normalized to their 2022 value such that each projection started with a value of 1 in 2022.
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