Journal of the Korean Solar Energy Society ISSN:1598-6411(Print) 2508-3562(Online) 한국태양에너지학회 논문집

A study on estimation of the Levelized Cost of Energy (LCOE) was conducted for the Korean onshore wind farms. The LCOE was estimated on the basis of the actual wind farm data from Data Analysis, Retrieval Transfer system (DART) run by Financial Supervisory Service. Recently, social discount rate of Korea dropped from 5.5% to 4.5%, which was taken into account for this study. The onshore wind farms studied accounted for 42% of all the onshore wind farms of South Korea. Capital Expenditure (CapEx) and Operation Expenditure (OpEx) were calculated from the actual data, while Capacity Factors (CFs) were obtained from the wind farms of five provinces. Their distributions were estimated using Maximum Likelihood Estimation method, and then Monte Carlo Simulation (MCS) was performed for estimating LCOE, Levelized Fixed Cost (LFC), and Levelized Variable Cost (LVC). As a result, the LCOEs at the two discount rates, 4.5 and 5.5%, were 142 and 152 $/MWh, respectively, which were lower than that of financially viable onshore wind project of Korea. The 1% drop of social discount rate was estimated to result in a 10 $/MWh decrease in LCOE and a 4 $/MWh in LFC, which can be an advantage for wind project investors.