12. Department of Energy and Related Commissions · Minor
Include backup power costs in EIA's levelized cost of electricity reporting
Printed page 387 12. Department of Energy and Related Commissions
“Clarify levelized cost of electricity. … EIA should ensure that its reporting provides an accurate assessment of generation costs. The cost of backup power for when wind and solar resources are not available should be included when comparing the technologies and reported as a separate component in the modeling documents.”
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EIA's levelized cost report for the Annual Energy Outlook 2026, released 8 April 2026, reports levelized cost of electricity, levelized avoided cost of electricity, levelized cost of storage and the value-cost ratio. It does not include the cost of backup power for intermittent resources, and it reports no such separate component in the modeling documentation.
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Research log
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Research notes
Read https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/aeo/electricity_generation/ on 2026-08-31: the paper presents capacity-weighted and simple averages of LCOE, LACE and LCOS across the 25 NEMS Electricity Market Module regions. LACE captures the value a resource provides rather than the cost of backing it up, so it is not the component the Quote asks for.
Covered by the negative search run once for all the EIA asks (#930, #980, #981, #982, #983).
- Action
- other
- Object
- EIA levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) reporting
- ID
- 980