Analysis of the cost of electricity in a 100\% renewable energy system

Details

Supervisors

Jeanmart, Hervé

Faculty

Louvain School of Management

Degree label

Master [120] en ingénieur de gestion

Abstract

Renewable generation is expected to grow in share in the following years as a result of growing climate concerns among others. Wind and solar energy will become the main generation technologies and their intermittency will result in important changes in the energy system. The question of the cost of such a transition is addressed. The measure of cost used in this paper is the system levelized cost of energy (LCOE) which includes both generation and integration costs. Jacobson et al. (2017) investigates a transition to 100% renewable energy along with the electrification of all energy sectors and developed a broad roadmap for 139 countries in the world. This work challenges some of their assumptions regarding generation, transmission, distribution and storage costs before estimating a corrected value of the system LCOE for Europe by 2050. Results indicate that it would lie between $124.6/MWh and $172.1/MWh and that the cost is not uniformly distributed across Europe. It is higher than the system LCOE projected by Jacobson et al. (2017) and the main difference lies in the storage costs.