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Wind is not at 300kEUR/MW, but rather at 1,500 for onshore and about 3,000 for offshore, so the pelamis does not seem to be unreasonably expensive, for a first of a kind. As you note, maintenance costs will be very important to understand properly, and, as far as I'm concerned, the biggest uncertainty right now.

In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes
by Jerome a Paris (etg@eurotrib.com) on Sun Oct 5th, 2008 at 07:39:17 AM EST
I just did a quick levelized cost of energy (LCOE) calculation. LCOE is the only way I'll use to compare different power generation technologies (which is what I do for living...). Using the numbers above, off-shore wind comes to about 90EUR/MWh and pelamis 160 EUR/MWh. That is at cost of generation with zero profit  included.

I also did a sensitivity analysis around the O&M cost. Using a 2% per year of capital cost as the basis (from off-shore wind literature), the pelamis number rises by 20 EUR/MWh for each percentage point increase. So, at 3% of

Those seem like pretty great numbers for an immature technology.

by jam on Tue Oct 7th, 2008 at 04:54:57 AM EST
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