Analysis from different sources

A draft report of LECs used by the California Energy Commission is available here. From this report, the price per MWh for a municipal energy source is shown here:

California levelized energy costs for different generation technologies (2007)

Technology	Cost (USD/MWh)
Advanced Nuclear	67
Coal	74-88
Gas	313-346
Geothermal	67
Hydro power	48-86
Wind power	60
Solar	116-312
Biomass	47-117
Fuel Cell	86-111
Wave Power	611

Note that the above figures incorporate tax breaks for the various forms of power plants. Subsidies range from 0% (for Coal) to 14% (for nuclear) to over 100% (for solar).

The following table gives a selection of LECs from two major government reports from Australia. Note that these LECs do not include any cost for the greenhouse gas emissions (such as under carbon tax or emissions trading scenarios) associated with the different technologies.

Levelised energy costs for different generation technologies in Australian Dollars (2006)

Technology	Cost (AUD/MWh)
Nuclear (to COTS plan)	40–70
Nuclear (to suit site; typical)	75–105
Coal	28–38
Coal: IGCC + CCS	53–98
Coal: supercritical pulverized + CCS	64–106
Open-cycle Gas Turbine	101
Hot fractured rocks	89
Gas: combined cycle	37–54
Gas: combined cycle + CCS	53–93
Small Hydro power	55
Wind power: high capacity factor	75
Solar thermal	85
Biomass	88
Photovoltaics	120

In 1997 the Trade Association for Wind Turbines (Wirtschaftsverband Windkraftwerke e.V. –WVW) ordered a study into the costs of electricity production in newly constructed conventional power plants from the Rheinisch-Westfälischen Institute for Economic Research –RWI). The RWI predicted costs of electricity production per kWh for the basic load for the year 2010 as follows:

Fuel	Cost per kWh
Nuclear Power	10.7 €ct – 12.4 €ct
Brown Coal (Lignite)	8.8 €ct – 9.7 €ct
Black Coal (Bituminous)	10.4 €ct – 10.7 €ct
Natural gas	11.8 €ct – 10.6 €ct.

The part of a basic load represents approx. 64% of the electricity production in total. The costs of electricity production for the mid-load and peak load are considerably higher. There is a mean value for the costs of electricity production for all kinds of conventional electricity production and load profiles in 2010 which is 10.9 €ct to 11.4 €ct per kWh. The RWI calculated this on the assumption that the costs of energy production would depend on the price development of crude oil and that the price of crude oil would be approx. 23 US$ per barrel in 2010. In fact the crude oil price is about 80 US$ in the beginning of 2010. This means that the effective costs of conventional electricity production still need to be higher than estimated by the RWI in the past.

The WVW takes the legislative feed-in-tariff as basis for the costs of electricity production out of renewable energies due to the fact that renewable power plants are efficiently feasible under the German law (German Renewable Energy Sources Act-EEG).

The following figures arise for the costs of electricity production in newly constructed power plants in 2010:

Energy source	Costs of electricity production €/MWh	Costs of electricity production €ct/kWh
Nuclear Energy	107.0 – 124.0	10.70 – 12.40
Brown Coal	88.0 – 97.0	8.80 – 9.70
Black Coal	104.0 – 107.0	10.40 – 10.70
Domestic Gas	106.0 – 118.0	10.60 – 11.80
Wind Energy Onshore	49.7 – 96.1	4.97 – 9.61
Wind Energy Offshore	35.0 – 150.0	3.50 – 15.00
Hydropower	34.7 – 126.7	3.47 – 12.67
Biomass	77.1 – 115.5	7.71 – 11.55
Solar Electricity	284.3 – 391.4	28.43 – 39.14