This tool calculates levelized cost of energy (LCOE) for photovoltaic (PV) systems based on cost, performance, and reliability inputs for a baseline and a proposed technology.
Choose your inputs and watch the effect on LCOE to determine whether a proposed technology
is cost-effective, to perform trade-off analysis among different technology options,
and to do break-even analysis of cost or performance. Each 
button adjusts a single input to make the baseline and proposed LCOE equal.
For more details, please consult the documentation. You may also be interested in other tools for calculating cost and performance for renewable energy.
Presets for Inputs
Baseline
Cost
Performance
Reliability
Financial
Proposed
Cost
Performance
Reliability
Financial
Results
LCOE result
Baseline LCOE (USD/kWh)
Proposed LCOE (USD/kWh)
Additional results
Baseline
Module price (USD/W)
Total installed system cost (USD/W)
Proposed
Module price (USD/W)
Total installed system cost (USD/W)
Notes
License
This software is made available under a BSD 3-clause license
Citation
If you use results from this calculator in a publication or proposal, please cite it:
SJ Andrews, B Smith, MG Deceglie, KA Horowitz, and TJ Silverman. “NREL Comparative PV LCOE Calculator.” Version 2.0.0, August 2021
Note: We recommend including the URL for a specific commit if citing results from an unreleased version.