New approach to techno-economic assessment of power plants with carbon capture and storage: The inclusion of realistic dispatch profiles to calculate techno-economics of part load operations

An approach for the techno-economic assessment of power plants with and without carbon capture and storage (CCS) is proposed. A state-of-the-art natural gas combined cycle (NGCC) power plant is selected equipped with post-combustion CO₂ capture technology (MEA). The technoeconomic indicators are calculated using both the conventional and part load approaches. The economic results also show significant differences between the full load and the part load approaches. The results show that the levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) of gas-based power generation with CCS will more likely be above 100 €/MWh than below this value. This inherently also leads to an increase of the cost of CO₂ avoided in the order of 20-100%. The observed differences between the full load and part load approaches showcase the necessity for including real dispatch profiles when calculating the technoeconomic performance of CCS power.