PDF on Costs for building and operating power plants

This attached PDF report is from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) , showing a cost comparison of different ways to generate electricity in the United States.

The cost estimates are specifically for power plants entering service in 2030. EIA picked 2030 because it's the earliest year by which all the technologies considered (including slow-to-build ones like nuclear) could realistically come online. So it's a single snapshot year, not a multi-year projection.

That said, the costs are levelized over a 30-year cost recovery period, meaning they spread the plant's lifetime costs across 30 years of operation , but the plant itself starts in 2030.

The main idea is the Levelized Cost of Electricity (LCOE) . It's a single number (in dollars per megawatt-hour) that represents the total cost of building and running a power plant over its lifetime.

This reports this way compares very different technologies like nuclear, natural gas, wind, and solar .

The LCOE is the headline metric, but the report actually compares 3 things :