Levelized cost of commodity production

Computes the levelized cost of energy (LCOE) for a technology, repository, model, or scenario object.

Usage

levcost(object, comm, name, ...)

# S4 method for class 'repository'
levcost(object, comm, name, ...)

# S4 method for class 'model'
levcost(object, comm, name, ...)

# S4 method for class 'scenario'
levcost(object, comm, name, ...)

Arguments

object

A technology (or list thereof), repository, model, or solved scenario object.

comm

Character vector or NULL. Output commodity(ies) to use for LCOE normalisation. NULL uses all commodities in the resolved output group.

name

Character. For technology, a name tag; for repository/model/scenario, the name of the technology / process to price.

...

Additional arguments passed to the underlying implementation. For technology objects the most useful are:

group: Character or NULL. Output group name.
repo: A repository or list of energyRt objects (supplies, commodities, weather) to supplement the mini-model.
fuel_costs: Named numeric vector [commodity -> cost] for input commodities not found in repo.
autocomplete: Logical, default FALSE (repository/model methods). When TRUE, input commodities without a supply in the container are auto-supplied (zero-cost, or priced via fuel_costs) instead of returning NULL.
discount: Numeric (0–1), default 0.05.
base_year: Integer or NULL.
horizon: A horizon object, numeric year vector, or NULL (derives from @olife).
calendar: A calendar object or NULL.
timeframe: "ANNUAL" (default) or "native". "ANNUAL" prices the technology on a single annual time-slice: any weather profile is collapsed to an annual capacity factor (applied as the technology's annual availability), so capacity is sized to serve unit annual demand at that factor (textbook LCOE). "native" keeps the supplied (sub-annual) calendar and normalises by total generation – useful when the technology is analysed together with storage or transmission, where sub-annual dispatch matters.
backstop: Logical, default TRUE. Enables a very expensive dummy-import slack on the output commodity balance so the mini-model always solves even when the technology cannot serve a slice on its own; the slack cost is excluded from the LCOE.
region: Character or NULL.
weather: A weather object, list of weather objects, or NULL.
frontier: Logical, default FALSE. When TRUE additional solves are performed to map the production frontier for technologies with multi-commodity grouped output and share constraints.
solver: Solver spec list, default solver_options$glpk.
as_scenario: Logical, default FALSE. When TRUE the full solved scenario is returned with LCOE tables attached to scenario@misc.
verbose: Logical, default TRUE.

Value

For technology input: a list of class "levcost" with fields:

$levcost: data.frame – total levelized cost by year.
$levcost_npv: Named numeric – NPV-weighted average LCOE.
$cost_breakdown: data.frame – tidy cost components by year. Components: eac, fixom, varom, supply, import, export (negative, a credit).
$cost_breakdown_npv: data.frame – NPV-weighted component breakdown.
$cost_yearly: data.frame – wide undiscounted cost table with activity, capacity, per-commodity outputs and inputs.
$levcost_per_act: data.frame or NULL.
$frontier: data.frame or NULL (requires frontier = TRUE and multi-commodity grouped output).
$scenario: The solved scenario object.

For a list of technology objects: a named list of class "levcost_list".

Details

technology: a minimal single-technology energyRt model is built around the technology, solved, and the LCOE derived from the resulting cost and production variables.
repository / model: give the technology name; the method selects the related commodity and supply objects from the container and prices the named technology as above. If an input commodity has no supply in the container, it returns NULL with a message unless autocomplete = TRUE (which adds a zero-cost / fuel_costs supply). The model method also takes the calendar, region, horizon and discount rate from the model's configuration (each overridable).
scenario: an ex-post cost of the named process in the solved scenario: the discounted sum of its own costs (annualised investment vTechEac, vTechFixom, vTechVarom, plus attributed fuel cost) divided by its discounted output. Fuel is attributed from vTechInp; a technology with a grouped input (whose per-commodity consumption is not a solution variable) therefore reports no fuel component.

Examples

if (FALSE) { # \dontrun{
lc <- levcost(my_tech, discount = 0.07, base_year = 2025)
lc$levcost_npv
lc$cost_breakdown
autoplot(lc)
autoplot(lc, type = "npv")

# List of technologies (each solved independently):
lc_list <- levcost(list(tech1, tech2), discount = 0.07)
autoplot(lc_list, type = "npv")
} # }