Operation and Maintenance
The Full Cost of Electricity study seeks to quantify the costs associated with different generation technologies, and how those costs interact with the cost of electric delivery, consumption, and to determine the total direct and indirect costs of electricity.
A major component of the Full Cost of Electricity is recurring (e.g., annual) operation and maintenance expenditures required to effectively and reliably generate electricity and deliver it to the end user.
Operating expenditures include fuel, operation and supervision engineering labor, the cost of electric energy consumed by generation and delivery equipment, and the cost of environmental monitoring and controls. Maintenance expenditures include the cost of maintaining the operability of existing generation, delivery, and other infrastructure.
Related Energy Institute Publications
Capacity Expansion and Dispatch Modeling: Model Documentation and Results for ERCOT Scenarios
Federal Financial Support for Electricity Generation Technologies
Impact of renewable generation on operational reserves requirements: When more could be less
Integrating Photovoltaic Generation: Cost of Integrating Distributed Photovoltaic Generation to the Utility Distribution Circuits
Market-calibrated Forecasts for Natural Gas Prices
New U.S. Power Costs: by County, with Environmental Externalities
Download a PDF of the full white paper.
Read a related blog post at IEEE Spectrum
Journal Publication:
Rhodes, Joshua D., King, Carey, Gülen, Gürcan, Olmstead, Sheila M., Dyer, James S., Hebner, Robert E., Beach, Fred C., Edgar, Thomas F., Webber, Michael E.. “A geographically resolved method to estimate levelized power plant costs with environmental externalities,” Energy Policy, 2017, 102 (March 2017), 491-499, doi: 10.1016/j.enpol.2016.12.025. View paper free online here or download PDF.
State Level Financial Support for Electricity Generation Technologies: An analysis of Texas & California
Trends in Transmission, Distribution, and Administration Costs for U.S. Investor Owned Electric Utilities
Download a PDF of the full white paper.