Evaluation of micro-scale electricity generation cost using biomass-derived synthetic gas through modeling

Abstract

SUMMARYA promising renewable energy technology is electricity generated with biomass-derived synthetic gas (syngas). The economic feasibility of using biomass gasification for generating electrical power is very much dependent on the cost of the power plant and the cost of its operation. A cost model was developed to analyze the Unit Cost (unit-cost) of electricity generation from micro-scale power facilities that used biomass gasification as its energy input. The costs considered in the model were capital cost and operating costs. The results from the modeling indicated that operating cost was a major part of the total annual production cost of electricity generation, and that labor was the largest part of the total annual production cost of operation, and it was during the time when the power facilities operated at lower generation capacity levels. One effective way of reducing the unit-cost was to operate the facility at high capacity level. The study found that when the capacity level increased the total of annual cost was also increased, but the electricity unit-cost decreased markedly. For a given level of generating capacity, the electricity unit-cost of the facility operating at a two or three shifts operating mode was significantly lower than that of one shift operating mode.

Activity-based costing method in forest industry – modelling the production and costs of sawing, the pulp and paper industry, and energy production

“…This was believed to be caused by the special treatment process, the turbine plant, which is solely needed for electricity production. The study presented results indicating that the utilization rate correlates with profitability, which was also observed by Wei et al (2011).…”

“…Furthermore, several energy economic studies have focused on selecting the right scale and fuel-mix for each case, e.g. Dornburg and Faaij (2001) and Wei et al (2011). Trygg et al (2008) tested the economics of a small-scale power plant with ABC and searched correlations between the workloads and production costs.…”

Comparing the life cycle costs of using harvest residue as feedstock for small- and large-scale bioenergy systems (part II)

“…Small-scale CHP (combined heat and power) facilities that are colocated with industrial facilities or district heating networks can have potential revenue advantages relative to large-scale facilities, which tend to lack proximal heat demand [22]. For example, costs of electricity generation fall from 18 to 11 c/kWh when taking into account the economic value of heat recovered in small-scale biomass gasification CHP systems [23]. With regard to GHG mitigation costs, large-scale systems tend to have higher supply chain emissions, such as those from additional feedstock transportation and processing [24e26].…”

Techno-economic assessment for energy generation using bagasse: case study

“…Here, the size of biogas CHP is assumed to be small because if it is proved that small scale is attractive and economic, so large scale will appear more attractive and economic [15]. Here, the size of biogas CHP is assumed to be small because if it is proved that small scale is attractive and economic, so large scale will appear more attractive and economic [15].…”

“…The energy needed by the factories was supplied by burning bagasse directly, which had an extremely low efficiency. Nowadays, different models were developed in the world to analyse cost of electricity generation from various sizes and types of biomass energy conversion technologies [15,16]. Moreover, technologies such as gasification, anaerobic digestion, pyrolysis and combustion can be joined with combined heat and power (CHP), which has a higher efficiency as compared with the older energy generation technologies [7,[9][10][11][12][13][14].…”