System Lifetime Costs

Introduction

The System Lifetime Costs (SLC) module is responsible for assessing the economic performance and financial attractiveness of a given ocean energy project, benchmarking against reference projects.

Structure

This module’s documentation is divided into four main sections:

Tutorials to give step-by-step instructions on using SLC for new users.
How-to Guides that show how to achieve specific outcomes using SLC.
A section on background, theory and calculation methods that describes how SLC works and aims to give confidence in the tools.
The API reference section documents the code of modules, classes, API, and GUI.

Functionalities

The main purpose of the System Lifetime Costs (SLC) module is to generate metrics in order to evaluate the economic performance (e.g CAPEX, OPEX, LCOE) and financial attractiveness (IRR, NPV) of a given ocean energy project, benchmarking against reference projects. SLC’s functionalities include:

Compile Bill of Materials (BOM): it compiles an inventory of materials, assemblies, and components, including the quantities of each, as well as the installation operations required to construct a given ocean energy farm.
Financial assessment: it evaluates the financial attractiveness of the project from the perspective of the investor, assessing project profitability.
Economic assessment: it performs a techno-economic assessment, estimating the LCOE of the farm, or using other alternative metrics for early-stage technologies.
Benchmark analysis: it compares the economic and financial results of the project against values from reference wave and tidal projects.

All assessments produced by the System Lifetime Costs module are carried out based on the design outputs of the Deployment design tools but also project characteristics introduced by the user and a catalogue of reference cost-breakdowns of ocean energy projects at different development stages.

Workflow for using the SLC module

The workflow for using the System Lifetime Costs module can be summarised as 1) provide inputs, 2) perform a design, and 3) view the results, as shown in the figure below.

Overview of SLC data requirements

This section summarises the types of input data required to run the System Lifetime Costs module. Full details and data specifications are given in the how to guide on preparing data. The required and optional inputs to run the module are summarised in the tables below. Note that in integrated mode, the required inputs will come from three different sources

Inputs from the GUI
Inputs from External modules (MC, EC, ET, ED, SK)
Inputs from the Catalogues

Summary of mandatory inputs:

Input Page	Complexity 1	Complexity 2
General inputs	Device type	Device type
	Device topology	Device topology
	Device rated power	Device rated power
	Device unit structural cost	Device unit structural cost
	Project lifetime	Project lifetime
	Number of devices	Number of devices
		Discount rate
Financial inputs	N.D.	Electricity market price
ACE inputs	N.D.
External inputs	Bill of Materials from ET
	Bill of Materials from ED
	Bill of Materials from SK
	Bill of Materials from LMO
	Annual Energy Production from SPEY
	Maintenance solution from LMO

Summary of optional inputs:

Input page	Complexity 1	Complexity 2	Complexity 3
General inputs	Development and other CAPEX costs	Development and other CAPEX costs	Development and other CAPEX costs
Financial inputs	N.D.	Grant value	Grant value
		Feed-in tariff price	Feed-in tariff price
		Years of feed-in tariff	Years of feed-in tariff
ACE inputs	Average Climate Capture Width
	Surface area
	Surface thickness
	Material density
	Cost of manufacture
External inputs	N.D.

User inputs from the GUI

The user will set basic information about the SLC study and provide the main project inputs, device and subsystem characteristics, as well as financing inputs and preferences, depending on the complexity level and technology.

Study: Name, description and standalone mode (yes/no).
General inputs: Device type (Wave/Tidal), device rated power, device structural costs, project lifetime, discount rate, number of devices, other development costs.
ACE inputs: Optional metrics to calculate the ACE metric, a proxy metric for LCOE in low maturity technologies.
Financial metrics: Electricity market price, awarded grant values, feed-in tariff schemas, duration of feed-in tariffs.

Inputs from External modules

In order to run the System Lifetime Costs module, different inputs will be needed.

The Bill of Materials from the Energy Transformation module
The Bill of Materials from the Energy Delivery module
The Bill of Materials from the Station Keeping module
The Bill of Materials from the Logistics and Marine Operations module
The Annual Energy Production from the SPEY module
The Maintenance solution by the Logistics and Marine Operations module.

While the Bills of Materials from each module are not strictly required for the module to be able to run, the respective cost figures will not be considered in the economic and financial assessments. In standalone mode, these inputs will be uploaded to the SLC study through six independent json files. All external modules input studies must have the same complexity level.

Catalogue inputs

Apart from external inputs, and user inputs, the System Lifetime Costs module uses default data stored in a catalogue, in order to benchmark the project outputs against reference projects. These parameters may be modified by the user by directly edditing the catalogue. More information about project stages in Stage Gate: Background and theory.

Project stage	0,1,2,3	4	5	0,1,2,3	4	5
Technology	Tidal	Tidal	Tidal	Wave	Wave	Wave
Description	1st array	2nd array	Commercial	1st array	2nd array	Commercial
CAPEX (€/kW)	9500	7000	4500	10500	9800	4500
OPEX (€/kW/yr)	600	370	270	700	350	300
LCOE (€/kWh)	0.57	0.35	0.22	0.7	0.5	0.41
Station Keeping (%LCOE)	8	8	8	10	10	10
Electrical costs (%LCOE)	8	8	8	5	5	5
Device costs (%LCOE)	28	28	28	43	43	43
Installation costs(%LCOE)	12	12	12	9	9	9
Other Costs (%LCOE)	5	5	5	3	3	3
OPEX (%LCOE)	39	39	39	30	30	30