Stehly and Duffy reported in late 2022 that their 11th annual Cost of Wind Energy Review, now presented in slide deck format, uses representative utility-scale and distributed wind energy projects to estimate the levelized cost of energy (LCOE) for land-based and offshore wind power plants in the United States:
− Data and results are derived from 2021 commissioned plants, representative industry data, and state-of-the-art modeling capabilities, and
− The goals of this analysis are to provide insight into current component-level costs and give a basis for understanding the variability in wind energy LCOE across the country.
• The primary elements of this 2021 analysis include:
− Estimated LCOE for:
(1) a representative land-based wind energy project installed in a moderate wind resource in the United States,
(2) a representative fixed-bottom offshore wind energy project installed in the U.S. North Atlantic, and
(3) a representative floating offshore wind energy project installed off the U.S. Pacific Coast.
− Updated LCOE estimates for representative residential-, commercial-, and large-scale distributed wind projects installed in a moderate wind resource in the United States.
− Sensitivity analyses showing the range of effects that basic LCOE variables could have on the cost of wind energy for land-based and offshore wind projects.
− Updated Fiscal Year 2022 values for land-based and offshore wind energy used for Government Performance and Results Act (GPRA) reporting and illustrated progress toward established GPRA targets. The reference project LCOE for land-based installations is $34/MWh, with a range of landbased estimates from the single-variable sensitivity analysis covering $28–$70/MWh.
The authors concluded that:
• The fixed-bottom offshore wind estimate is $78/MWh, and the floating substructure reference project estimate is $133/MWh. These two reference projects give a single-variable sensitivity range of $53–$179/MWh. This range is primarily caused by the large variation in CapEx ($1,990–$6,971/kW) and project design life.
• The residential and commercial reference distributed wind system LCOE are estimated at $143/MWh and $94/MWh, respectively. Single-variable sensitivity analysis for the representative systems is presented in the 2019 Cost of Wind Energy Review (Stehly, Beiter, and Duffy 2020). Analysts included the LCOE estimate for a large distributed wind energy project in this year’s analysis, estimated at $68/MWh.
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