(Invited) Technoeconomic Analysis of Transformational Energy Technologies

Abstract

In 2015, this group asserted that discussions of emerging energy conversion technologies are often made more difficult by conflicting terminology, assumptions, and perspectives of researchers who are often in different scientific specialty areas. There continues to be a gap between how researchers tend to describe their work and how policymakers and the general public tend to understand R&D involved in areas like materials discovery. A common framework to discuss low-carbon energy conversion technologies would facilitate the transfer of ideas and foster development between the different scientific and engineering disciplines and help policymakers and the public to understand the potential risks and benefits of publicly funded research. One goal of technoeconomic analysis (TEA) is to take a purely economic and technology agnostic view of competing technologies. In a TEA framework, lab-relevant metrics are coupled to conceptual systems to estimate what a fully realized system based on the technology of interest would cost to install and operate.Strategic Analysis Inc. (SA) has conducted a variety of techno-economic analyses of emerging low-carbon energy conversion technologies for the Department of Energy covering a range of hydrogen production technologies including electrolysis (Alkaline, Proton Exchange Membrane (PEM), Solid Oxide (SO)), photo-electrochemical (PEC) (electrode and slurry-based systems), biological, and solar to hydrogen conversion (STCH). Additionally, SA has examined fuel cell systems (PEM, SO) and fuel-cell/electrolyzer regenerative systems. Examination of these systems grants SA an excellent vantage point to classify the similarities and differences between the systems and their corresponding performance and economic metrics.The objective of this presentation will be to discuss common performance and economic metrics that apply to many low-carbon energy conversion technologies. An overview of recent analyses will be presented showing how disparate technologies are compared and how cost is used as a metric for guiding R&D priorities. In so doing, we will show how TEA provides a direct path between system level performance and economic parameters that policy makers and the general public find most useful, with the laboratory and scientific metrics that researchers typically use to discuss their work. From this, researchers will have a better holistic understanding of how their particular efforts would translate into system-level performance and a heighted awareness of negative factors that might sabotage the overall economics of the system.