Preliminary Engineering and Economic Assessment of Energy Consumption and Renewable Energy Production Potential for Vashon-Maury Island
Dec
22
Written by:
12/22/2010 2:22 PM
Although this is several years old now I thought it useful to make sure this report was linked to from this site:
www.iere.org/energy/Vashon-Summary.pdf
The report looked at various options but based on the engineering analysis from part I, focused on the economics of tidal power, wind energy, solar photovoltaics & biomass gasification. Their recommendations:
Conclusions and Recommendations
The above analysis screens four renewable energy technologies for Vashon Island. The reader is reminded that tidal power cost and performance are broadly estimated, wind energy is analyzed with the most detail, and solar pv and biomass gasification are in the middle. Screening on the basis of nominal levelized COE for plants with COE's under $0.1200/kWh, say, would select all wind cases (reflecting fast and slow wind speeds, taking or not the PTC or REPI); would exclude solar photovoltaics, would include that biomass where capital cost and fuel cost are low; and would exclude tidal power. Screening on the basis of constant dollar COE for those plants with COE's under $0.100/kWh, say, would yield similar results, including all wind cases, no solar pv cases, both biomass cases, and no tidal power cases.
These results suggest further investigation of wind and biomass might prove fruitful. Biomass gasification is a new technology that may be worth investigating if an inexpensive, reliable long-term supply of fuel can be found. Further, wind is a commercially available technology. Interestingly, analysis showed greatest improvement in COE from locating a strong wind resource vs. adjusting financing or tax assumptions (although the later may be useful, also). Analysis further demonstrated that wind is sufficiently capital intensive, that even if O&M and other expenses increase at the rate of inflation, that project revenues can escalate at a rate slower than inflation (e.g., at inflation less 1%), which is an attractive selling feature to power purchasers. Wind economics are sufficiently strong that the owner need not escalate revenues quickly and backload principal repayment of debt. Bankers, owners, and power purchasers may all relax with clean, comfortable cash flows, where the project makes good economic sense.
More on this topic can be found at IERE’s web site.