Studies of the future competitiveness of reverse electrodialysis (RED) with other energy technologies show that the projected levelized cost of electricity realized through current stack designs is prohibitively high. Despite these high projected costs, RED maintains other advantages namely, the harnessing of a renewable and non-intermittent energy resource, the emissions-free operation, the di...

The levelized cost of energy (LCOE) approach has become popular, especially in the field of renewable energy. We argue that when assessing levelized cost of energy, different rates should be used for borrowing and discount rates. We further argue that the risk-free rate should be used for discounting when assessing and comparing the cost of energy across different producers and technologies. Re...

An evaluation was carried out to investigate the feasibility of utilizing a molten salt as the heat transfer fluid (HTF) and for thermal storage in a parabolic trough solar field to improve system performance and to reduce the levelized electricity cost. The operating SEGS1 plants currently use a high temperature synthetic oil consisting of a eutectic mixture of biphenyl/diphenyl oxide. The sco...

COVER ARTICLE Darling et al. Assumptions and the levelized cost of energy for photovoltaics HOT ARTICLE Shao-Horn et al. Enhanced oxygen reduction activity on surface-decorated perovskite thin fi lms for solid oxide fuel cells Understanding the eff ect of surface profi les of nanostructures on light scattering provides valuable information to optimize both the structure design and fabrication o...

The retail price a household pays for the last unit of grid-supplied electricity consumed is an important driver of the decision to install a rooftop solar photovoltaic (PV) system. This price is the cost a household avoids by consuming a kilowatt-hour (KWh) from their rooftop solar system. Consequently, if the levelized cost of a KWh from a rooftop solar system is less than this retail price, ...

To quantify the potential value of technological advances to the photovoltaics (PV) sector, this paper examines the impact of changes to key PV module and system parameters on the levelized cost of energy (LCOE). The parameters selected include module manufacturing cost, efficiency, degradation rate, and service lifetime. NREL’s System Advisor Model (SAM) is used to calculate the lifecycle cost...