The real cost of electricity

Some numbers (well, lots of them) and political lessons

I’ve been accumulating a number of sources on the “real” cost of electricity generation, and I’d like to put them together in one place – here.

There are several items that influence the cost of electricity:

* the initial investment amount, and the discount rate used to amortise it over the life of the power plant;

* the fuel costs (for those power plants that need a fuel, like coal, natural gas or uranium);

* the operating costs;

* the externalities, i.e. the cost imposed on society by the power plant, if not internalised by regulation.

Any comparison between various power sources that does not explicitly states which assumptions are made with regards to fuel costs and discount rate should be considered as dubious.

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