Power generation technologies comparison in the Poland’s reality

摘要

Poland’s energy mix is still mostly based on the hard and brown coal, however increasing penetration of the renewables causes that more and more of those units operate as peaking units. Such operation is not what they were designed for and additionally brings more costs of electricity generation. Shorter operation time means bigger share of the fixed costs per MWh and more frequent start-ups, which in the end means also more costly generation. The appropriate calculations have to be made to catch the full cost of the power generation of different technologies. In the paper classical Poland’s merit order was shown as well as more sophisticated version, including fixed costs and start-up costs. According to the total costs of generation (LCOE – Levelized Cost of Electricity) the comparison of different power generation technologies was performed as well as some conclusions related to the future Poland’s energy mix were drawn.