Based on the US Energy Information Administration (EIA) which forms the basis for the calculation of 2007 Annual Energy Outlook, the estimated capital cost of constructing a power generating plant per type of technology is as follow. This is assuming that the order was placed in 2006;
|Advanced open cycle gas turbine||2008||398|
|Conventional open cycle gas turbine||2008||420|
|Advanced gas/oil combined cycle||2009||594|
|Conventional gas/oil combined cycle||2009||603|
|Distributed generation (base load)||2009||859|
|Distributed generation (peak load)||2008||1032|
|Advanced combined cycle with sequestration||2010||1185|
|Coal-fired plant with scrubber||2010||1290|
|IGCC with carbon sequestration||2010||2134|
Based on the above table, advanced open cycle gas turbine has the least cost and one of the fastest to construct (2-3 years), probably due to its matured technology as compared to photovoltaic, fuel cell, and solar thermal technologies, which has a cost of more than 10 times of the advanced open cycle gas turbine plants.
Though the fuel source is clean, cheap and renewable, most renewable power plant technologies utilizing this kind of fuel are the most expensive as compared to plants using fossil fuels. Among renewable energy technologies, wind power plant is the less expensive. Aside from capital extensiveness, low capacity factor (except geothermal) makes the cost of energy produced from renewable energy even higher.
|Gas turbine combined cycle||80-90|
|Average US coal plant||68|
Note that this cost is based on the United States where plant equipment is more likely to be sourced and the unit size of generating units are relatively bigger than what other small countries, usually, have. Thus, the cost per megawatt of constructing a power plant will be higher to other countries outside of the United States and Europe and if the generating unit size is lower. In the Philippines, for example, the cost of constructing a coal power plant is estimated to range from $1.6 million to $2.0 million per megawatt as compared to around $1.3 million per megawatt in the US.