Levelized Cost of Electricity Models: The Good, The Bad and the Potential for Bias

LCOE — levelized cost of electricity — is an unstandardized model used by governments, companies, consultants and others to make an economic assessment of the cost of generating electricity from a specific source. LCOE models are often filled with assumptions (what people believe) instead of field data and even when field data is used, the forecasts generated are based on assumptions (beliefs) that typically skew towards the amorphous phrase: grid parity.